Question High Latency & occasional PL towards 2nd hop [Ping Plotter results]

[Maphew_]

Hello wise minds!

I have been dealing with sporadic latency and packet-loss issues for the past long time.
The experience that I have, is that i will occasionally get high latency towards the 2nd hop (right after the router) and even periods of packet-loss.

I have posted a couple of result's of ping-plotter; one where I am pinging an external address and one where I am pinging the 2nd hop directly.
In none of the examples I experience packet-loss, but I will also post that as soon as it occurs again.

My current setup:
- I have a router/modem from my ISP which I have setup for bridge mode.
- After that I have a RT-AX86U which is setup as a NAT. (I think this is the term, I am honestly not a master of networks!)
- Running only on cabled connection (no wifi)

My questions, that I hope you might be able to enlighten me of:

1. What is this 2nd hop actually? It looks like a private address. Could it be the ISP equipment? The ping seems to be very high on average for a node that is right next to the RT-AX86U.
2. If the 2nd hop is within my own local network, then what might cause this high latency, and what would be a good approach to try to identify the problem?

A final note:
I have tried running ping-plotter from multiple PC's on the network and the issue is the same across.

First example (Not a good example, as the frequency of high latency spikes isn't high. At the moment the issue isn't that big. But it will likely be in a few hours or later)

Seconds example (direct ping towards hop 2)

Any help is very much appreciated.

 

[kanewolf]

Hello wise minds!

I have been dealing with sporadic latency and packet-loss issues for the past long time.
The experience that I have, is that i will occasionally get high latency towards the 2nd hop (right after the router) and even periods of packet-loss.

I have posted a couple of result's of ping-plotter; one where I am pinging an external address and one where I am pinging the 2nd hop directly.
In none of the examples I experience packet-loss, but I will also post that as soon as it occurs again.

My current setup:
- I have a router/modem from my ISP which I have setup for bridge mode.
- After that I have a RT-AX86U which is setup as a NAT. (I think this is the term, I am honestly not a master of networks!)
- Running only on cabled connection (no wifi)

My questions, that I hope you might be able to enlighten me of:

1. What is this 2nd hop actually? It looks like a private address. Could it be the ISP equipment? The ping seems to be very high on average for a node that is right next to the RT-AX86U.
2. If the 2nd hop is within my own local network, then what might cause this high latency, and what would be a good approach to try to identify the problem?

A final note:
I have tried running ping-plotter from multiple PC's on the network and the issue is the same across.

First example (Not a good example, as the frequency of high latency spikes isn't high. At the moment the issue isn't that big. But it will likely be in a few hours or later)

Seconds example (direct ping towards hop 2)

Any help is very much appreciated.

What IP address is listed as the WAN IP on your Asus? If it is a 10.116.x.y then either your ISP is not providing you a public IP or you don't have the ISP router in bridge mode.

 

[Maphew_]

What IP address is listed as the WAN IP on your Asus? If it is a 10.116.x.y then either your ISP is not providing you a public IP or you don't have the ISP router in bridge mode.

Hello kanewolf,

Thank you for the very quick reply. The WAN IP of my ASUS is not 10.116.x.y, it's a public IP starting with 175.x.y.z.

So I guess my ISP is providing me with a public IP.

 

[kanewolf]

Hello kanewolf,

Thank you for the very quick reply. The WAN IP of my ASUS is not 10.116.x.y, it's a public IP starting with 175.x.y.z.

So I guess my ISP is providing me with a public IP.

The IPs listed in the trace are odd. Private IPs. What do you get with a trace to 8.8.8.8 ?

 

[Maphew_]

The IPs listed in the trace are odd. Private IPs. What do you get with a trace to 8.8.8.8 ?

First three are identical:

Update: for a short duration it was no longer showing the 1st hop:

tracert:

Is it not also odd, that the average ping to the 2nd hop (Private IP) is ~20ms?

Another minor detail, that I am not sure has any relevance to understanding the trace-route:
When I turn on a VPN, I can no longer resolve the 2nd hop (10.116x.y)

 

[bill001g]

It is much easier to get a ISP to fix packet loss. Almost no ISP has any agreement to provide low latency.

The difference between the minimum and the average are not real far apart so your spikes are not real common and not real bad.
This makes it harder to find.

Pretty much latency is ether cause by distance or data being held in buffers. Data is held in buffers generally because of a overload condition. Be very sure that no other traffic other than your test traffic is running. If you were to exceed the bandwidth you purchase from your ISP you will see higher latency. If you were for example to download some large files on another machine at the same time you run this test.

The bad news is that you share the bandwidth between your house and the ISP with your neighbors. Although not as common as years ago it is possible that a couple of your neighbors combined is exceeding the ISP bandwidth. The ISP will never admit this and they can't really fix it without running new cables under the streets.

It can be some strange issue with the ISP equipment but you are going to need something that is more obvious to help them find it. The test the ISP runs can see packet loss easy and if the ping spikes are huge say 1000ms or if they are constant they will see them. 100ms here and there they will not really be willing to work with your and they will attempt to blame software on your machine. You plug directly into the modem if that is a option to eliminate the router which they will also attempt to blame

Also do not give the ISP pingplotter results they will blame the tool because they do not understand it. Use a normal ping command to test to hop 2 (if it responds) or hop3.

 

[Maphew_]

It is much easier to get a ISP to fix packet loss. Almost no ISP has any agreement to provide low latency.

The difference between the minimum and the average are not real far apart so your spikes are not real common and not real bad.
This makes it harder to find.

Pretty much latency is ether cause by distance or data being held in buffers. Data is held in buffers generally because of a overload condition. Be very sure that no other traffic other than your test traffic is running. If you were to exceed the bandwidth you purchase from your ISP you will see higher latency. If you were for example to download some large files on another machine at the same time you run this test.

The bad news is that you share the bandwidth between your house and the ISP with your neighbors. Although not as common as years ago it is possible that a couple of your neighbors combined is exceeding the ISP bandwidth. The ISP will never admit this and they can't really fix it without running new cables under the streets.

It can be some strange issue with the ISP equipment but you are going to need something that is more obvious to help them find it. The test the ISP runs can see packet loss easy and if the ping spikes are huge say 1000ms or if they are constant they will see them. 100ms here and there they will not really be willing to work with your and they will attempt to blame software on your machine. You plug directly into the modem if that is a option to eliminate the router which they will also attempt to blame

Also do not give the ISP pingplotter results they will blame the tool because they do not understand it. Use a normal ping command to test to hop 2 (if it responds) or hop3.

I do live very close to other neighbors running on a COAX connection.

So you're saying this could be a result of the combined bandwidth usage in my neighborhood?

Keep in mind that I am also seeing packet loss at times, it's just a bit less frequent as the latency spikes.


Example of packet loss:

2nd hop direct:

 

[bill001g]

Packet loss tends to be much better because it many times is caused by defective equipment.

Try to get into your modem and see if you see error messages. You can check the signal levels to see if you are within the recommended levels. Many modems also tend to have things like uncorrectable errors which is packet loss.

A common ip to access the modem is 192.168.100.1

It depends on what you find but it can be as simple as dirt or water in a connection.