[SOLVED] Hi there, just looking for some Tech support, having a hard time figuring this one out, details in body text

[RiverGem]

So basically i am having an issue with my internet wherein my internet is stable when my PC is running on idle but when i start up any game, my connection drops significantly,
my ping can reach 1200ms, my download goes from 40Mbps to 4-5Mbps, and my upload stays stable.

This happens with any game, despite the load or size, for example Among Us, or Counter Strike: Global Offensive.
If i am on call with friends i will drop from the call within a minute and it will take 2-5 minutes before i can reconnect after closing said game.

I live in the UK so my current ISP is Virgin Media. My home broadband is set up quite oddly, we have the Virgin Media supplied Hub 3.0 set up in the living room,
connected to the TV and a booster via Ethernet, which is plugged into a wall socket, which then transfers to a booster that is plugged in in my room, with my D-Link router
connected also via Ethernet, and finally that is connected to my PC through Ethernet. So obviously the connection is not the best but it is usually adequate for my needs.

I initially thought that this could be the problem as it is a bit complicated and means that the data stream has to go through 3 routers essentially, but this has been stable in the past.
Recently i figured out that this issue occurred when launching any game, which makes me think that it is a problem with my Drive capacity tanking the games as i only have 17GB free on my system SSD,
which is 180GB large, although again this has not been a problem in the past. I asked a friend who is currently training in networking and he confirmed that it could be drive space,
or potentially a virus which is causing the issue.

I will give my Specifications below and any more information required i would be happy to provide. i can also take screenshots if necessary.

Might be useful to know that about a month ago my drivers failed and i had constant blue screens before i had to reinstall my windows drivers,
which fixed the issue, although i feel like this could have impacted my PC in other ways, such as interfering with my connections.

Any help is greatly appreciated

Thanks,
River

Nvidia RTX 2060 Super 8GB
Intel i7 4790k @ 4Ghz
16 GB HyperX RAM
64 bit OS Windows 10

 

[bill001g]

How are you measuring the ping. If you are using number from inside a game those number are affected by many factors. You want to run ping in a simple cmd window. I would leave a constant ping run to your router IP to start in the background. This way when the games say it has a problem you can see if you have a real issue. Testing to the router IP would show if the problem is inside your house. If it shows nothing you could try ping to 8.8.8.8 also. That way you are testing the internet connection also.

Maybe try to play a youtube video and see if it causes similar issues. True network problems can be affected by data rates. So when it is idle and not transferring data you will not see errors but as the traffic load goes up you get more errors. Since youtube will transfer use more bandwidth than a game you should see similar issues.

If all this is good then you start to blame the game. It has so many variables involved. Watch the resource monitor for clues. You can see things like memory /cpu/ disk usage. Many times it is video drivers and those if you are lucky show up as cpu issues but many times they are actually in the video card and the game is waiting for something to complete so the cpu load will be low. Not sure how you troubleshoot this issues....then again I am a networking guy and there was another group that did pc problems.

 

[RiverGem]

How are you measuring the ping. If you are using number from inside a game those number are affected by many factors. You want to run ping in a simple cmd window. I would leave a constant ping run to your router IP to start in the background. This way when the games say it has a problem you can see if you have a real issue. Testing to the router IP would show if the problem is inside your house. If it shows nothing you could try ping to 8.8.8.8 also. That way you are testing the internet connection also.

Maybe try to play a youtube video and see if it causes similar issues. True network problems can be affected by data rates. So when it is idle and not transferring data you will not see errors but as the traffic load goes up you get more errors. Since youtube will transfer use more bandwidth than a game you should see similar issues.

If all this is good then you start to blame the game. It has so many variables involved. Watch the resource monitor for clues. You can see things like memory /cpu/ disk usage. Many times it is video drivers and those if you are lucky show up as cpu issues but many times they are actually in the video card and the game is waiting for something to complete so the cpu load will be low. Not sure how you troubleshoot this issues....then again I am a networking guy and there was another group that did pc problems.

so currently I am using Speedtest.net on and off to measure my ping/download rates but I will use that cmd window.

apologies, I should have mentioned that YouTube is fine, the only time I have connection problems is when I launch a game, otherwise my computer will run fine and the connection will stay up.
I was reading through some support sections last night trying to find some information, I ended up finding something that said I had to update my network drivers, which I ended up doing and it half fixed the issue, now I can launch games, offline and online without issue, for about 10 minutes, then my connection will drop completely again, a step in the right direction though I think, thanks for your reply

 

[Ralston18]

The DHCP router's logs (if available and enabled) may offer some clue.

Who has full admin rights to that router and the other two routers?

You will need help from that person.

 

[RiverGem]

The DHCP router's logs (if available and enabled) may offer some clue.

Who has full admin rights to that router and the other two routers?

You will need help from that person.

i have management/admin rights to both of the routers, I am currently the most tech savvy person in the household as it is just me and my parents. Which router would I be looking to check? Both of them or?

 

[Ralston18]

You will need to look at all/both of the routers.

Does the following line diagram represent your network? (Note: ---> indicating an Ethernet cable.)

ISP (Virgin Media) ---> Hub 3.0 ----> Booster (Living Room) <=== electrical wiring ===> Booster (your room) ---> D-link router [LAN] ----> Your PC

Edit and correct my line diagram as necessary. Include other devices and connectivity.

Which Router is providing DHCP? Any static IPs?

Only one router (Hub 3 ?) should be providing DHCP services. The other routers' DHCP function should be disabled making the router into a switch.

However,that all said, do not make any changes. Key is to understand your current network environment and configuration.

Do testing recommended by @bill001g and post accordingly.

Also on your computer run "ipconfig /all" (without quotes) via the Command Prompt - post the results.

 

[RiverGem]

Yes that line diagram is correct, I think currently both are set up with DHCP, I don’t really understand a lot of the settings that are in my router configurations even after years of messing with them I find it hard to feel confident about editing them but that is useful to know, thank you.

I will upload this when I am back home as I am at work at the moment.

cheers
River

 

[RiverGem]

Hi again! so i have run the ping on both my own connection and 8.8.8.8 for a while now while having a game running and it seems to be fine for the time being, not sure what has happened but i am hoping it stays this way, i have attached a screengrab of a single spike in my own connection and the ipconfig /all, i have also looked at both of the routers settings and cannot find the DHCP logs anywhere, not really sure where to be looking other than the DHCP pages, i could well be missing it, i can include a screengrab of them if needed. The Hub 3 only shows connected devices and allows for reserved rules but nothing mentions any logs.

Thanks again for your guys help

 

[RiverGem]

So! Update, after it working normally for a while. i have tried to play some counter strike today with my ping running in the background. i have also disabled DHCP on my own router turning it into a switch, dont think it made much of a difference though but i found out now that i am having connection spikes that will happen for about 30 seconds - a minute and then reset and be fine for about 5-10 minutes, highest spike is 2415ms at the beginning of the spike, i am including a screencap of my cmd prompt with this.

if anyone can help anymore, again it is much appreciated.

Thanks

 

[bill001g]

PIng to that IP does not help much it just means something between you and a server far away has a issue. You need to be more systematic about it.

You want to first leave ping run to your router IP and see if the problem occurs there. You then move to the ISP first router.

What this actually looks like is a overloaded connection most times the connection to your ISP. Make sure nothing is downloading stuff. If you take your conneciton to 100% utilization the data is place in buffers. This is the problem called bufferbloat. Your best option is to try not exceed you bandwidth by limiting download rates and being sure you know what is running. There is a special form of QoS that can help but you will need a different router so best to try to fix it by reducing the utilization.

Then again it might not be your internet it could be in the ISP someplace.

Again you need to test to find out where this delay is happening. Does no good to buy fancy router to fix bufferbloat if the problem is your PC or is in a ISP router.

 

[RiverGem]

PIng to that IP does not help much it just means something between you and a server far away has a issue. You need to be more systematic about it.

You want to first leave ping run to your router IP and see if the problem occurs there. You then move to the ISP first router.

What this actually looks like is a overloaded connection most times the connection to your ISP. Make sure nothing is downloading stuff. If you take your conneciton to 100% utilization the data is place in buffers. This is the problem called bufferbloat. Your best option is to try not exceed you bandwidth by limiting download rates and being sure you know what is running. There is a special form of QoS that can help but you will need a different router so best to try to fix it by reducing the utilization.

Then again it might not be your internet it could be in the ISP someplace.

Again you need to test to find out where this delay is happening. Does no good to buy fancy router to fix bufferbloat if the problem is your PC or is in a ISP router.

So i followed your instructions and pinged to my router first, came up fine, so i pinged to ISP router and on first run it pinged high then timed out and wouldn't ping again, on second try it straight up just wouldn't ping. I take it this means it is an issue with the connection to the router or the connection to the ISP? this was all while running CS:GO on a multiplayer server.

Also the current maximum connection speed across all devices connected directly to the ISP router is around 100Mbps download. because my connection is going through another router it more than halfs it, or did anyway. Ever since this has started, my maximum is around 30-35Mbps, averaging around 15Mbps, this wouldn't be exceeding the bandwidth limit would it?

this is my network connection while running just Opera and not connected to any online servers apart from.

 

[RiverGem]

so also just pinged to my own router after getting the IP from my phone, the difference between this and getting the IP from the router is that when i get it from the router it says the ping is "<1ms"

 

[bill001g]

Now I am very confused.

How can you get the ip from the phone. You are also using a very strange ip address for your gateway 192.168.100.184. Almost everyone users 192.168.100.1 or maybe 192.168.100.254.

You need the network as simple as possible You want only 1 router and that is directly connected to the modem from your ISP. Anything else should run like a switch or a AP. They should not have dhcp and they must have IP assigned that do not conflict.

Getting massive blocks of timeout is not a load related problem. Either something is going down or maybe you have a IP conflict if you have not been careful about how you assign IP addresses...or have mulitple dhcp servers.

 

[RiverGem]

Now I am very confused.

How can you get the ip from the phone. You are also using a very strange ip address for your gateway 192.168.100.184. Almost everyone users 192.168.100.1 or maybe 192.168.100.254.

You need the network as simple as possible You want only 1 router and that is directly connected to the modem from your ISP. Anything else should run like a switch or a AP. They should not have dhcp and they must have IP assigned that do not conflict.

Getting massive blocks of timeout is not a load related problem. Either something is going down or maybe you have a IP conflict if you have not been careful about how you assign IP addresses...or have mulitple dhcp servers.

So essentially my network is set up as follows ISP > Hub 3 (set up in router mode) > booster > electrical wiring > booster > My router D-LINK 878 (set up now as switch, possibly wrong im guessing) > My PC

and the way i got my IP from my phone, for both of the routers is by checking the wifi connection information and finding the IP in there, for my router, when i do this through my PC in the router settings and ping that IP (192.168. 100.139) or the default gateway 192.168.100.1 the result is <1ms ping constant, which doesn't specifically show me much. To get the Hub IP (192.168.0.77) i cannot find it anywhere on the Hub settings so i have to connect my phone to the WiFi and find the ip through there

 

[bill001g]

What is the the ip 192.168.100.184 then. If that is the second router then it really doesn't matter. That IP is purely used for management.

To a point it depends on how you have this connected. I assume the device you are calling a booster is a powerline network device. If you plug a cable from that to the WAN cable of the dlink router you need to have it set in bridge mode. If you plug it into the lan port and you plug your PC into a different lan port then it actually is running as a switch. Years ago there used to be a small switch chip that run than lan ports. It is now all on 1 chip but the lan ports still function as a simple switch. The traffic goes directly between the ports.

So your traffic does not even go through the 192.168.100.184 ip address. It may pass through the physical device but it is not actually using IP addresses to do it.

 

[RiverGem]

What is the the ip 192.168.100.184 then. If that is the second router then it really doesn't matter. That IP is purely used for management.

To a point it depends on how you have this connected. I assume the device you are calling a booster is a powerline network device. If you plug a cable from that to the WAN cable of the dlink router you need to have it set in bridge mode. If you plug it into the lan port and you plug your PC into a different lan port then it actually is running as a switch. Years ago there used to be a small switch chip that run than lan ports. It is now all on 1 chip but the lan ports still function as a simple switch. The traffic goes directly between the ports.

So your traffic does not even go through the 192.168.100.184 ip address. It may pass through the physical device but it is not actually using IP addresses to do it.

Okay I see, so initially the cable from my booster to my router is in the WAN port, I do not get any internet connection when connecting this to a LAN port so I don’t think I will be able to use it as a switch but I am not sure how to set it into bridge mode so any help would be appreciated. I have also spoken to virgin and hoping they have fixed the connection problem

 

[bill001g]

It has to work connecting it to the LAN port. Look for the many articles how to use a router as a AP. You already have done all the important steps like disable the DHCP and change the IP address. I can't see how it does not work plugged into the lan port.