High ping (latency) and slow navigation

[alanps]

I'm quite tired of having so many issues regarding slow navigation and high latency when playing games.

Every time I contact my ISP's technical support they tell me to close everything in the PC where I'm experiencing this issues and then write "netstat -n" in CMD. When I do that, it appears some lines, and when I answer that to them they say "if there's some things there is because there's open connections and we can't do the proper tests to verify issues, maybe you have malware or viruses".

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I already made antivirus and firewall analysis (everything was fine). I'm using Windows 7 x64 and Avast Antivirus, with COMODO firewall.
My internet connection is 30mbps download and 3mbps upload speed. Using a modem-router and I'm connected to it directly by cable.

I also tried disabling NAT serveral times so modem-router works as modem only (that changes IP address as well) but didn't help.

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What should I do?

Thanks for your time and help!

 

[bill001g]

You need to start much simpler.

Ping your gateway ip of your router from both machines. You should get just a couple of ms from a wired connection. If both ping exactly the same then you have no basic problem with either pc. It could be a issue with the router but both devices would have similar issue.

Next instead of running tracert using names use the IP addresses. In the 2 traces you have included you are actually getting different IP resolving to google.com.

The difference between the 2 can be easily explained since one is staying in argentina and the other is going to washington dc.

Exactly why you get 2 different IP gets tricky. It could be because you are using different DNS serves or it could be because of google using akamai. You can do little if akamai is not working correctly it is suppose to pick the closest server. In addition some DNS servers know about multiple locations for servers and try to pick the closest. So if you are using a DNS server based in the US it will use US based server and if you use one in argentina it will use a closer one...you hope.

This tends to confuse people a lot because most think that google.com represents a single location. Even tomshardware.com comes up with multiple servers.

In most cases you are best off using the DNS your ISP provides for you. If they are at all competent....(would be nice).. they will have optimized the DNS to use the best upstream dns peers. Otherwise you can try 8.8.8.8 which is google. In this case even a ip address resides in multiple locations. There are many machine that use the address 8.8.8.8 and hopefully you use the closet one. You can also try 4.2.2.2 which is level3 and they do the same thing with multiple machine sharing the ip.

Really what you need to do is run traceroute to the actual sites you have issues with. you will need to run the traceroute by IP address so you can get consistent results. The IP will change even on a single PC.

 

[alanps]

I don't have much else to offer. It's either a boot sector virus (less likely) or a bad NIC (more likely).

Could also be the CAT5e cable you are using is damaged, try swapping that as well.

That's about it for removable parts. Next would be install a different network card and see if that works (if you have one lying around).

You need to start much simpler.

Ping your gateway ip of your router from both machines. You should get just a couple of ms from a wired connection. If both ping exactly the same then you have no basic problem with either pc. It could be a issue with the router but both devices would have similar issue.

Next instead of running tracert using names use the IP addresses. In the 2 traces you have included you are actually getting different IP resolving to google.com.

The difference between the 2 can be easily explained since one is staying in argentina and the other is going to washington dc.

Exactly why you get 2 different IP gets tricky. It could be because you are using different DNS serves or it could be because of google using akamai. You can do little if akamai is not working correctly it is suppose to pick the closest server. In addition some DNS servers know about multiple locations for servers and try to pick the closest. So if you are using a DNS server based in the US it will use US based server and if you use one in argentina it will use a closer one...you hope.

This tends to confuse people a lot because most think that google.com represents a single location. Even tomshardware.com comes up with multiple servers.

In most cases you are best off using the DNS your ISP provides for you. If they are at all competent....(would be nice).. they will have optimized the DNS to use the best upstream dns peers. Otherwise you can try 8.8.8.8 which is google. In this case even a ip address resides in multiple locations. There are many machine that use the address 8.8.8.8 and hopefully you use the closet one. You can also try 4.2.2.2 which is level3 and they do the same thing with multiple machine sharing the ip.

Really what you need to do is run traceroute to the actual sites you have issues with. you will need to run the traceroute by IP address so you can get consistent results. The IP will change even on a single PC.

Ok that's lot of stuff and I'm a bit confused but I will start with the traceroute to same IP.

I've done the ping tests to the same IP from different computers (my PC, wired and another one, wireless). The ping results were THE SAME, high ms replies.
But I don't know why I couldn't do the traceroute in the wireless PC, I could in my PC and below is the result, but in the wireless PC it always says "request timed out".

The results.
My wired PC:

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Thanks a lot both of you!

 

[bill001g]

The numbers are not all that high when you consider this is going all the way to the US from Argentina. Even on a private network with a guaranteed service level I get over 180ms between the US and Argentina. You may want to try sites in brazil and see if you can get better response.

You can do little about this it is a distance and fiber pathing thing. Your connection to most the outside world runs on a fiber up the coast of south america to miami and then connects across to europe. This is a site that shows some of the fiber but this does not mean your ISP can use the fiber it gets very complex to figure that out.

http://www.submarinecablemap.com/

Argentina is just far away from most the servers which are mostly located in europe or the USA. If you can find sites in brazil you will likely get much better response.

 

[alanps]

The numbers are not all that high when you consider this is going all the way to the US from Argentina. Even on a private network with a guaranteed service level I get over 180ms between the US and Argentina. You may want to try sites in brazil and see if you can get better response.

You can do little about this it is a distance and fiber pathing thing. Your connection to most the outside world runs on a fiber up the coast of south america to miami and then connects across to europe. This is a site that shows some of the fiber but this does not mean your ISP can use the fiber it gets very complex to figure that out.

http://www.submarinecablemap.com/

Argentina is just far away from most the servers which are mostly located in europe or the USA. If you can find sites in brazil you will likely get much better response.

The main problem is that I have lot of lag in Brazilian and Argentinian servers. Videogames' servers.
In Argentina I used to have between 15 and 30 ms and now I have 60, 80, sometimes 100 ms. Same in Brazilian ones.

I made a ping test and tracert in one of the IPs I have lag and here are the results from wired PC:

I get similar results in the wireless PC, with 150ms peaks, sometimes more, so I can assume is not my PC only? Is a network issue?

I'm sorry to post every result I get, but I don't understand too much of networks issue and all that stuff.

And thanks again, I'm really desperate and my ISP's technical support doesn't help at all.

BTW I'm using different DNS servers on both computers, but as both of them have same results in pingtests and traceroutes I don't know what to think.

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Why the hell the tracert in the wireless PC always says "request timed out"? =@@@@@@@@

 

[bill001g]

I am surprised you are getting timeouts in the first 3 hops of the trace. Normally your router will show 1ms and then you might get a timeout. Its hard to say why traceroute does not work in wireless it uses different message format than ping. I would suspect firewall rules in the PC or in the router suppressing the response since they appear to come from random addresses

What you are complaining about is called jitter. It can happen for many reasons but most are related to capacity either yours or the ISP. It is not as bad as packet loss but still affects the performance.

It is much harder to find. You really need to find a line in the trace that is the same number on all three values for a constant amount of time. This is the last good hop in the trace. Generally your router in your house will show something like 2ms 2ms 2ms. Of course on wireless it jumps all over the place even in your house which is why wireless is not recommended for games and video streaming.

It is almost impossible to tell from your traces. hop 5 is already showing issues. Still unless hop 4 is your router and hop5 is first ISP router there is little you can do. If it is your router obviously you can do something, If it is the first hop between your router and the ISP you can also likely do something since it implies there is some issue with the connection to your house. When it is further into the network the customer service techs at the ISP will have no clue. You at that point are troubleshooting their network which only their higher level techs have enough information to understand. The large issue is if say hop 4 is some router in say ISP building 1 and hop 5 is in ISP building 2 it is their problem to fix. Even if you knew exactly what the problem was how long would it take to get to a person who has enough understanding. Most ISP customer reps have no clue what to do next when reboot the router does not fix it.

You may be best trying to figure out why hops 1-4 are timing out in the trace this is very strange. You almost always get the first 2 since the first one is your router.

 

[alanps]

I am surprised you are getting timeouts in the first 3 hops of the trace. Normally your router will show 1ms and then you might get a timeout. Its hard to say why traceroute does not work in wireless it uses different message format than ping. I would suspect firewall rules in the PC or in the router suppressing the response since they appear to come from random addresses

What you are complaining about is called jitter. It can happen for many reasons but most are related to capacity either yours or the ISP. It is not as bad as packet loss but still affects the performance.

It is much harder to find. You really need to find a line in the trace that is the same number on all three values for a constant amount of time. This is the last good hop in the trace. Generally your router in your house will show something like 2ms 2ms 2ms. Of course on wireless it jumps all over the place even in your house which is why wireless is not recommended for games and video streaming.

It is almost impossible to tell from your traces. hop 5 is already showing issues. Still unless hop 4 is your router and hop5 is first ISP router there is little you can do. If it is your router obviously you can do something, If it is the first hop between your router and the ISP you can also likely do something since it implies there is some issue with the connection to your house. When it is further into the network the customer service techs at the ISP will have no clue. You at that point are troubleshooting their network which only their higher level techs have enough information to understand. The large issue is if say hop 4 is some router in say ISP building 1 and hop 5 is in ISP building 2 it is their problem to fix. Even if you knew exactly what the problem was how long would it take to get to a person who has enough understanding. Most ISP customer reps have no clue what to do next when reboot the router does not fix it.

You may be best trying to figure out why hops 1-4 are timing out in the trace this is very strange. You almost always get the first 2 since the first one is your router.

I'm sorry but, what should I do then? I mean how can I figure out why hops 1-4 are timing out?
This problem started a few days ago, I experience this sometimes before, but it "solved" from time to time, don't know how or why, I just assumed that it was some ISP's issues.

I made a test in "pingtest.net", this is the result:

 

[Alec Mowat]

Interesting, your Jitter is very high. (Mine was 2ms)

Other workstations get the same results?

 

[alanps]

Interesting, your Jitter is very high. (Mine was 2ms)

Other workstations get the same results?

Same result, sometimes is even higher and higher ping response.

I'm on the phone with my ISP's technical support now, but I'm sure that they will tell me that is a PC problem or something like that.

 

[Alec Mowat]

Interesting, your Jitter is very high. (Mine was 2ms)

Other workstations get the same results?

Same result, sometimes is even higher and higher ping response.

I'm on the phone with my ISP's technical support now, but I'm sure that they will tell me that is a PC problem or something like that.

Ask him what the Demarcation point is.

Could be an issue with the cable lines in the house.

Try moving the modem to a different line.

 

[alanps]

Interesting, your Jitter is very high. (Mine was 2ms)

Other workstations get the same results?

Same result, sometimes is even higher and higher ping response.

I'm on the phone with my ISP's technical support now, but I'm sure that they will tell me that is a PC problem or something like that.

Ask him what the Demarcation point is.

Could be an issue with the cable lines in the house.

Try moving the modem to a different line.

I have just one line in my house. I mean I have other lines but they are just for TV.

I'M FREAKING OUT

 

[Alec Mowat]

Connect it to the other line. I'd go through the ISP if all the systems are experiencing the lag at this point. Could be water/erosion.

Any big storms recently?

 

[alanps]

Connect it to the other line. I'd go through the ISP if all the systems are experiencing the lag at this point. Could be water/erosion.

Any big storms recently?

I'd try in the other line.

No, but now that you mention the water, the wall where the line I'm using now is has some moisture in the last month.

 

[Alec Mowat]

Connect it to the other line. I'd go through the ISP if all the systems are experiencing the lag at this point. Could be water/erosion.

Any big storms recently?

I'd try in the other line.

No, but now that you mention the water, the wall where the line I'm using now is has some moisture in the last month.

Could be that.

I'm not sure if it's beyond the DMARK point. If it's a rental, you might need to call the landlord to replace it. If it's your own home, you may need to tear it down.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_point

The ISP can only test from the DMARK point, which is probably outside the house.

 

[alanps]

Connect it to the other line. I'd go through the ISP if all the systems are experiencing the lag at this point. Could be water/erosion.

Any big storms recently?

I'd try in the other line.

No, but now that you mention the water, the wall where the line I'm using now is has some moisture in the last month.

Could be that.

I'm not sure if it's beyond the DMARK point. If it's a rental, you might need to call the landlord to replace it. If it's your own home, you may need to tear it down.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_point

The ISP can only test from the DMARK point, which is probably outside the house.

But how could it be possible? I mean the coaxial cable has protection and the "chip" where it's connected on the wall it's metallic.

Anyway I remembered that a few months ago I had a similar issue and technical support change the chip of the coaxial cable and that solved the problem.

Tomorrow I'll try to remove the chip of the wall and connect it directly from the outside cable, so it avoids the wall.