Question Internet problems

[glasschan]

Hello whoever reads this.

So, I've had issues with high ping and a decreasing download and upload for the past month.
(I pay for a 50 download/5 upload packet)
I'm a gamer, so whenever it occurs, boy do I feel it.
This problem comes on the surface as spikes, so it has no typical regularity or timing, it just happens when it happens.
I'd say this spike usually happens 5 times (let's say 2x in the morning and 3x in the evening) and has like a 5-10 minute duration.
So...I thought there was a problem with my router, right? Because it's quite old (vey old) and the cables are munched from my rabbit lmao.
So I did stuff with the router like resetting it, today even brought it to factory default settings, which did not work as well.
Then I tried to use the command 'tracert google.com' and 'tracert 8.8.8.8' when the spike happened which did not help at all, because I have 0 idea how to read it.
I tried to flush the DNS...I tried to set a Static IP address...I called my ISP, they told me they measured it and there were no signs of ethernet degradation or any issues at all.
A technician told me it could be due to some torrent downloading or something like that, I used to use a torrent to download movies, but not anymore, and it's removed from my computer, so this seems not to be the issue.
Although I am aware there are a lot of devices connected on my router, this also cannot be the problem, because that's how it ALWAYS was and the internet was fine.
I think my ISP is at fault, because nothing seems to work and I have no idea what to do/try anymore...
Thanks in an advance for reading and responding to this.

Here are some screenshots of 'tracert' and my measures - - - - http://leteckaposta.cz/462184479
(I forgot to include the tracert of 8.8.8.8 (dns.google) but it's the same as the tracert of google.com) (20 ms on the beginning but 200-500 ms in the middle and end)

 

[xenthia]

Hello whoever reads this.

So, I've had issues with high ping and a decreasing download and upload for the past month.
(I pay for a 50 download/5 upload packet)
I'm a gamer, so whenever it occurs, boy do I feel it.
This problem comes on the surface as spikes, so it has no typical regularity or timing, it just happens when it happens.
I'd say this spike usually happens 5 times (let's say 2x in the morning and 3x in the evening) and has like a 5-10 minute duration.
So...I thought there was a problem with my router, right? Because it's quite old (vey old) and the cables are munched from my rabbit lmao.
So I did stuff with the router like resetting it, today even brought it to factory default settings, which did not work as well.
Then I tried to use the command 'tracert google.com' and 'tracert 8.8.8.8' when the spike happened which did not help at all, because I have 0 idea how to read it.
I tried to flush the DNS...I tried to set a Static IP address...I called my ISP, they told me they measured it and there were no signs of ethernet degradation or any issues at all.
A technician told me it could be due to some torrent downloading or something like that, I used to use a torrent to download movies, but not anymore, and it's removed from my computer, so this seems not to be the issue.
Although I am aware there are a lot of devices connected on my router, this also cannot be the problem, because that's how it ALWAYS was and the internet was fine.
I think my ISP is at fault, because nothing seems to work and I have no idea what to do/try anymore...
Thanks in an advance for reading and responding to this.

Here are some screenshots of 'tracert' and my measures - - - - http://leteckaposta.cz/462184479
(I forgot to include the tracert of 8.8.8.8 (dns.google) but it's the same as the tracert of google.com) (20 ms on the beginning but 200-500 ms in the middle and end)

Hi, because you mentioned that these issues occur in a timely manner, and since your router is a bit old like you said, it is possible that you are experiencing some form of electromagnetic interference either around the cables or somewhere near the router or somewhere else. Like a device that turns on for 5 minutes and then it turns off.

If this is not the case, because you mentioned that there were a lot of devices connected to the router, it is highly likely that one of these many devices is on a cron-job (like on Linux machines) or managed tasks (on Windows machines) (these are tasks that are managed to run in a timely fashion or based on some events) and these automated tasks or jobs probably need to use heavy Internet for a few seconds or like 5 minutes.

I only do not understand why if you are experiencing speed-drops why you ran the command 'tracert' ?!

 

[glasschan]

Hi, because you mentioned that these issues occur in a timely manner, and since your router is a bit old like you said, it is possible that you are experiencing some form of electromagnetic interference either around the cables or somewhere near the router or somewhere else. Like a device that turns on for 5 minutes and then it turns off.

If this is not the case, because you mentioned that there were a lot of devices connected to the router, it is highly likely that one of these many devices is on a cron-job (like on Linux machines) or managed tasks (on Windows machines) (these are tasks that are managed to run in a timely fashion or based on some events) and these automated tasks or jobs probably need to use heavy Internet for a few seconds or like 5 minutes.

I only do not understand why if you are experiencing speed-drops why you ran the command 'tracert' ?!

Hello, thanks for your advices.
I used the 'tracert' command to see where the internet is failing. I do not understand a thing about this, but from what I've read is that the first 2 hops are my at-home router. So what are the middle hops? Are they from the modem that my ISP provide Internet from?

 

[xenthia]

Hello, thanks for your advices.
I used the 'tracert' command to see where the internet is failing. I do not understand a thing about this, but from what I've read is that the first 2 hops are my at-home router. So what are the middle hops? Are they from the modem that my ISP provide Internet from?

It depends on a lot of factors, it is not easy to say how many of the hops are in your home network, because I do not know the design of your home network, how many routers, firewalls, switches you may be using, and whatnot.
But generally speaking, if you know what IPs your router is using, and what local range your home network is in, running tracert, usually tells you about how many of these hops are inside your home network.

About the issue of "what are the middle hops", depending on the country where you live in, your ISP, and if there are monitoring stations in the middle somewhere and how they may be capturing and analyzing your packets if there are any, after all, all these middle IPs, are routers and switches connecting networks together from around the world that carry your packets from your computer to 8.8.8.8 and that is what you seeing. If you notice one or a couple of them are 'probably' in your ISP's range.

 

[bill001g]

It is strange that your router shows up 2 times in the trace. Normally hop2 is the connection to the ISP

Many times tracert does not show anything interesting or useful because it runs for such a short time it does not collect data when the issue occurs. In this case it does show a large problem.

There is likely some problem in the ISP network. It would be nice if hop 3 gave information. If it gives * * * even when things work it is just programed to not respond to tracert or ping.

Hop3 represents the connection between your house and the ISP. This is the source of most problems because it can be a cabling issue someplace between your house and where you connect to the ISP network.

What makes this much harder is if you had packet loss the ISP will can easily find and fix issues like that. When you have high ping times it generally means you data is being held in a buffer because there is some connection that is overloaded. It could be some kind of equipment problem but in many cases it is actual overload. So first you need to be sure you are not actually overloading your connection to the ISP. Be very sure nothing is making a backup to the cloud at those times. Your upload bandwidth is much smaller and you can overload it much more easily. I would unplug all other machines in your house and turn off the wifi so you are very sure only 1 machine is connected and you can check it usage in the network tab of the resource monitor.

When you are sure it is not that it many times is a issue that someone or many people that live by you are together overloading part of the ISP network. Most ISP will never admit they sell more bandwidth than they actually have. This will be hard to get them to fix because they must upgrade part of their network which costs them money.

 

[gggplaya]

I've seen this happen when my ethernet port on my motherboard started to die. It got steadily worse and worse over several months. Eventually it would cut my internet completely off for several minutes at a time. It drove me nuts. Eventually the port just died completely, which was how I was finally able to figure out it was my motherboard after I had already replaced the router and ethernet cables.

Since your router is very old, perhaps the ethernet switch is starting to die.

 

[glasschan]

It is strange that your router shows up 2 times in the trace. Normally hop2 is the connection to the ISP

Many times tracert does not show anything interesting or useful because it runs for such a short time it does not collect data when the issue occurs. In this case it does show a large problem.

There is likely some problem in the ISP network. It would be nice if hop 3 gave information. If it gives * * * even when things work it is just programed to not respond to tracert or ping.

Hop3 represents the connection between your house and the ISP. This is the source of most problems because it can be a cabling issue someplace between your house and where you connect to the ISP network.

What makes this much harder is if you had packet loss the ISP will can easily find and fix issues like that. When you have high ping times it generally means you data is being held in a buffer because there is some connection that is overloaded. It could be some kind of equipment problem but in many cases it is actual overload. So first you need to be sure you are not actually overloading your connection to the ISP. Be very sure nothing is making a backup to the cloud at those times. Your upload bandwidth is much smaller and you can overload it much more easily. I would unplug all other machines in your house and turn off the wifi so you are very sure only 1 machine is connected and you can check it usage in the network tab of the resource monitor.

When you are sure it is not that it many times is a issue that someone or many people that live by you are together overloading part of the ISP network. Most ISP will never admit they sell more bandwidth than they actually have. This will be hard to get them to fix because they must upgrade part of their network which costs them money.

Thanks for your reply, I'll take note.

 

[glasschan]

I've seen this happen when my ethernet port on my motherboard started to die. It got steadily worse and worse over several months. Eventually it would cut my internet completely off for several minutes at a time. It drove me nuts. Eventually the port just died completely, which was how I was finally able to figure out it was my motherboard after I had already replaced the router and ethernet cables.

Since your router is very old, perhaps the ethernet switch is starting to die.

Thank you for your reply. I'm planning on buying a new router with new cables.