Question Insane Packet Loss/Jitter

iiSlashr

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I've been using the same setup for a couple years with the exception of a few upgrades here and there to my CPU and such, and had no issues with packet loss or jitter at all. Starting 2 days ago, my internet suddenly has up to 90% packet loss and up to about 500ms jitter with ping spikes up to the thousands. I am on ethernet with my router and my modem literally about 1 foot from my PC. I am using the built-in ethernet controller on my MSI B450-A motherboard, with a Ryzen 5 5600X, a 3060Ti FE, 32 gigs of Vengeance LPX at 3000MHz, and a Linksys EA6350 router. I have tried restarting both the router and modem, my PC, unplugging/replugging all of the ethernet cables, and nothing has worked so far. Should I buy a new router or a network card to try and fix this or is there something I can do to actually pinpoint the issue?
 

iiSlashr

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Update, I have tried using PingPlotter, which shows packet loss of around 30% after a hundred or so pings to any address on most of the hops. My router's IP as well as localhost both had no packet loss whatsoever. I also tried using ping -t on 1.1.1.1, 8.8.8.8, and my router, and the former 2 timed out about a third of the time, presumably due to packet loss. I also tried swapping out each individual ethernet cable between my router and modem and then between my router and PC with a different one, to no avail.
 
Although you have to be careful about ping plotter results what you are saying is you see no loss to the first hop but then you see loss to the second hop and every hop past there including the end node.

That would indicate there is something wrong with the internet connection coming to your house. It is almost always some kind of wiring issue but most times it is outside your house.

Some basic things that will likely show nothing but help to eliminate the ISP blaming your stuff when you call them. I would try to remove your router and plug the PC directly into the modem. This will eliminate your router as a possible cause. I would also check all the wires you can see in and around your house to see if there is any damage or maybe a loose connection or water or dirt got into the fittings. Some animal chewed cables for example can cause issues.
 
Here is a couple of simple thing to try first:
  • Is this issue present on other devices connected to same network ? (in NO, then disregard next suggestions)
  • Cut power to your internet router / modem. Let it stay disconnected for a minute just to be sure (internal powe supply can often have enough internal charge to keep the memory intact for some seconds)
  • Modern switches (and maybe your router - I haven't investigated) often have settings that prioritize multimedia content over other traffic. If your internet connection is less than good and you also have a TV, then check this. Look for QoS setting <wikipedia article about this>.
 

iiSlashr

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Although you have to be careful about ping plotter results what you are saying is you see no loss to the first hop but then you see loss to the second hop and every hop past there including the end node.

That would indicate there is something wrong with the internet connection coming to your house. It is almost always some kind of wiring issue but most times it is outside your house.

Some basic things that will likely show nothing but help to eliminate the ISP blaming your stuff when you call them. I would try to remove your router and plug the PC directly into the modem. This will eliminate your router as a possible cause. I would also check all the wires you can see in and around your house to see if there is any damage or maybe a loose connection or water or dirt got into the fittings. Some animal chewed cables for example can cause issues.

I tried to plug my PC into the modem directly, but my PC registered it as Unknown Network with no internet. I think this is probably down to the modem not having a built-in router if I had to guess.
 
It should work you might have to reboot the modem before you plug the pc in.

You could I guess try to change the mac address on the ethernet port to match the router. It is unlikely the ISP locks the mac of the router because then nobody could replace a broken router.
 

iiSlashr

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It should work you might have to reboot the modem before you plug the pc in.

You could I guess try to change the mac address on the ethernet port to match the router. It is unlikely the ISP locks the mac of the router because then nobody could replace a broken router.
I actually have noticed that there is only packet loss showing up when I try to send packets at .5 second intervals in PingPlotter, but not when I do 1 second intervals. Is there a reason why this would make a difference? Also, this is what it looks like for each example.

1 second to 8.8.8.8: View: https://imgur.com/a/k1VVVd6

.5 second to 8.8.8.8: View: https://imgur.com/a/wfI2GdS
 
This is where you have to be very careful about using tools like pingplotter when you do not fully understand what the program is doing.

Any issues that show up in earlier hops but do not actually affect the final node means it is some kind of testing issue and not a real problem.

Hard to say why your router shows the issue. It is not unusual for a internet router to limit the amount of traffic it will respond to. This prevent denial of service attacks against routers.
 

iiSlashr

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This is where you have to be very careful about using tools like pingplotter when you do not fully understand what the program is doing.

Any issues that show up in earlier hops but do not actually affect the final node means it is some kind of testing issue and not a real problem.

Hard to say why your router shows the issue. It is not unusual for a internet router to limit the amount of traffic it will respond to. This prevent denial of service attacks against routers.

I know it is a real problem though, in Overwatch, Apex Legends, and VALORANT I've seen insane packet loss/rubberbanding/ping spikes the last couple of days.
 

iiSlashr

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The problem could be very intermittent.

Rather than use ping plotter do the function yourself.

Open a bunch of cmd windows and ping different hops in the path. When the game has a issue go check the windows and see which shows the problem

I'm doing this right now, I have the first 4 hops pinging, and one of them is only Request timed out messages. The one to my router is working 100%, and the other two hops which are before and after the fully down server are replying as expected about 90-95% of the time without timing out.
 

iiSlashr

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I'm doing this right now, I have the first 4 hops pinging, and one of them is only Request timed out messages. The one to my router is working 100%, and the other two hops which are before and after the fully down server are replying as expected about 90-95% of the time without timing out.
I've been running ping -t tests to different hops in the chain between me and Google's 8.8.8.8, and it seems that the server at 96.34.84.224 (lag-59.dtr.01hlrgnc.netops.charter.com) is down completely. My router replies 100% of the time when pinged, so it doesn't appear to be the issue. I tested two other servers, one which comes before the one that seems to be down that shows up as 097-089-224-001.biz.spectrum.com (96.34.93.240) and one that is after the one that's down which is lag-20.crr01hlrgnc.netops.charter.com (97.89.224.1) and they are replying with about a 98% success rate. Using an IP location site, it seems that the unresponsive server is in Ashford, Connecticut. Is there maybe something I'm overlooking or should I just send this to Spectrum support and see what they can do about it?
 

iiSlashr

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I've been running ping -t tests to different hops in the chain between me and Google's 8.8.8.8, and it seems that the server at 96.34.84.224 (lag-59.dtr.01hlrgnc.netops.charter.com) is down completely. My router replies 100% of the time when pinged, so it doesn't appear to be the issue. I tested two other servers, one which comes before the one that seems to be down that shows up as 097-089-224-001.biz.spectrum.com (96.34.93.240) and one that is after the one that's down which is lag-20.crr01hlrgnc.netops.charter.com (97.89.224.1) and they are replying with about a 98% success rate. Using an IP location site, it seems that the unresponsive server is in Ashford, Connecticut. Is there maybe something I'm overlooking or should I just send this to Spectrum support and see what they can do about it?
The aforementioned servers before and after the unresponsive one seem to be 100% responsive when the issue in-game isn't happening, but when it does they both drop about 10-20% of my pings.
 
This is the problem with pingplotter and also when you do it manually and do not fully understand what is going on.

Think of this as a traffic lights on the way to work and there is some app on your phone that will give you a report about the delay of each.
Lets say the app say the 3rd light on the way to work is broken and no cars can get past. You drive to work and get there at normal time. That means there is some problem with the way the app talks to the third light but it is not a real delay.
Now lets say there is a 5 minute delay introduced by the 3rd light. That means if you check your time at each hop/light past the point you will be 5 minutes late and you will arrive to work 5 minutes late because of light #3.

Routers in the path are sometime configured to not respond or limit how much they respond to prevent denial of service attacks. Someone could attempt to ping a router a millions time in 1 second and if the router attempted to respond it would use all its cpu responding rather than passing traffic.

So what you are actually looking for is a problem that say affects hop 3 and every hop past there including the last hop which really is the only one that matters. So if you see packet loss of 1% in hop 3 you will see at least 1% in every hop past there including the final node.
You will see some small variations when you have random problem because the problem can come and go between the testing of the different nodes so you need to run the tests for a while until you see a pattern. It is important though to ignore data that only affects a intermediate node but does not affect your real traffic going to the final destination.