[SOLVED] High random ping spikes, QoS etc

[Biggy Cent]

For awhile now, 5-6 years, I’ve always dealt with random ping spikes on my PC throughout the day while gaming (it is a wired connection. They usually last 10-45 seconds (obviously unless someone is downloading a big file or whatever). Our ISP is TSC. While I have been able to get ahold of tech support while it’s happening they’ve always said it’s been on our end (aka our router). They’ve sent technicians out multiple times and have never found anything major (they’ve replaced the ends of cables and gave us a newer model of modem).

Fast forward to about 2 months ago.

I’m using a Netgear Nighthawk R7000p. I was doing some research one day and discovered QoS, after further research I decided to go ahead and turn this function off in the router. Now the ping spikes don’t happen AS often, but still do it frequently enough to be annoying.

I have a 50meg connection, we have one other desktop and 4 cell phones connected to the WiFi but other than scrolling through social media every now and then it’s not really being put under any tough strain with the phones. When the ping spikes happen I will go to every device to see if something is downloading and usually there never is.

I’m wondering if I need to try a different router? (We’ve already been through 2-3 routers over the years).

I’ve made sure the router has always been updated with the latest firmware.

It’s very frustrating having to constantly deal with it and I’m kind of running out of ideas.

does anyone have any tips or advice?

 

[bill001g]

I have not had a netgear router in years and I can not tell from the manuals I can find.

Does the router have any ability to see the utilization or users that are using the router. Does the router have the ability to set fixed bandwidth rates both up and down by ip/mac address. If you can find a way to set about 1megbit up and down for your PC it should solve the issue for games. The little I saw was the autoqos which looks pretty worthless.

It is really hard when you do not know if it is your traffic or not. Generally high ping time is some form for traffic bottleneck. If it is due to your traffic you might be able to do something about it.

Try pathping and see if the problem mainly occurs on hop2 that is generally caused by a over use situation.

If you have a low upload rate it could be that your are exceeding rather than the download.

 

[Biggy Cent]

I have not had a netgear router in years and I can not tell from the manuals I can find.

Does the router have any ability to see the utilization or users that are using the router. Does the router have the ability to set fixed bandwidth rates both up and down by ip/mac address. If you can find a way to set about 1megbit up and down for your PC it should solve the issue for games. The little I saw was the autoqos which looks pretty worthless.

It is really hard when you do not know if it is your traffic or not. Generally high ping time is some form for traffic bottleneck. If it is due to your traffic you might be able to do something about it.

Try pathping and see if the problem mainly occurs on hop2 that is generally caused by a over use situation.

If you have a low upload rate it could be that your are exceeding rather than the download.

Thanks for the response.

I think I recall seeing something to where you can set up/down speed for x device and also priority. I’ll have to check after work.

As for the upload speed yes ours is junk. Idk if our ISP doesn’t offer much of upgrading options for it or what because we have 50 down and 2 up. Maybe that could be the issue.

 

[Biggy Cent]

Update: My router has no way to set any limit for each device. Yesterday I was home by myself and my ping was spiking to 900ms lol.

 

[Biggy Cent]

I have not had a netgear router in years and I can not tell from the manuals I can find.

Does the router have any ability to see the utilization or users that are using the router. Does the router have the ability to set fixed bandwidth rates both up and down by ip/mac address. If you can find a way to set about 1megbit up and down for your PC it should solve the issue for games. The little I saw was the autoqos which looks pretty worthless.

It is really hard when you do not know if it is your traffic or not. Generally high ping time is some form for traffic bottleneck. If it is due to your traffic you might be able to do something about it.

Try pathping and see if the problem mainly occurs on hop2 that is generally caused by a over use situation.

If you have a low upload rate it could be that your are exceeding rather than the download.

So I monitored my Ping all day today, once around 12:00 pm and 8:00 pm and this is what I got.

https://imgur.com/vbONmuA

View: https://imgur.com/vbONmuA

 

[bill001g]

What where you running the ping to. If it was your router then I would start to suspect a defective router.

You need to run ping to multiple points in the path. Mostly to your router, to the ISP first router and then some ip in the path to some server you feel you have issues with. Generally if it is a overload condition you will see the problem the hop 2 ip address which represents the connection to your ISP.

 

[Biggy Cent]

What where you running the ping to. If it was your router then I would start to suspect a defective router.

You need to run ping to multiple points in the path. Mostly to your router, to the ISP first router and then some ip in the path to some server you feel you have issues with. Generally if it is a overload condition you will see the problem the hop 2 ip address which represents the connection to your ISP.

i was running the ping to my
Hop2 I believe. It wasn’t my routers IP address .

 

[bill001g]

If you are really sure you have nothing other than your pc running to the internet this tends to be your neighbors causing this. That though depends on the actual method of transmission. Cabletv the last mile is shared but thing like DSL the last mile is unique to you. Things like fiber installs can work like either.

DSL connection can have issues with the cables that cause delays/loss. You connection is then combined with other people when it coverts from dsl to other technology but it is very rare for that to be overloaded since they run 10g fiber connections many times to these nodes.

You might see messages in the log if there are actual issues with the connection.

Problems caused by other people tend to be much less early in the morning and worse during the early evening hours when everyone is using internet.