Issues with latency

[Fortuitous]

In the last few months I've had regular issues with my latency spiking later in the evening. I've contacted my ISP regularly, and so far they've been no real help.

I have DSL, my ISP is CenturyLink. I have two routers, one is a pk5001z originall, and the other is a w8980. I originally only had the pk5001z, but my ISP told me the problem was with my router at one point so I purchased the w8980 but it has had no effect.

Later in the evening around peak periods, my latency spikes from around 60ms to between 300ms.

My desktop is connected to the router via a wired connection, and I have also used an Ipad mini with the wireless connection. A cell phone often is connected to the wifi, as is an xbox 360. The problem occurs on both devices.

There is not a bandwidth exhaust in the area according to my ISP, it is DSL and not cable, so I shouldn't be suffering this much from peak periods to my understanding. My wiring has been checked, I've had technicians come out repeatedly - though never during the times in which the problem is actually pronounced. The person who lives in the rental unit in the back yard has a separate billing through the same ISP but has no such problems.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Can you provide a traceroute while it's normal and while it's causing issues?

Is anyone else connected to the internet in the evenings? Things like background torrent/p2p clients are very good at saturating your upload.

 

[Fortuitous]

Can you provide a traceroute while it's normal and while it's causing issues?

Is anyone else connected to the internet in the evenings? Things like background torrent/p2p clients are very good at saturating your upload.

I do not have any p2p or torrent programs running. Skype, yahoo messenger, chrome. The xbox 360 is sometimes connected, but that's about the extent of it. No other PCs or laptops.

This is during a period where I'm having troubles. I'll post another one likely in the morning when things clear up.

Tracing route to google.com [216.58.216.224]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms PK5001Z.PK5001Z [192.168.0.1]
2 277 ms 252 ms 271 ms mo-71-49-72-1.dhcp.embarqhsd.net [71.49.72.1]
3 528 ms 509 ms 490 ms mo-69-34-117-114.dhcp.embarqhsd.net [69.34.117.114]
4 478 ms 557 ms 548 ms 208-110-248-128.centurylink.net [208.110.248.128]
5 577 ms 663 ms 668 ms bb-dllstx37-jx9-02-xe-11-1-0.core.centurytel.net [206.51.69.25]
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 273 ms 259 ms 347 ms dax-edge-04.inet.qwest.net [67.14.2.238]
8 369 ms 249 ms 255 ms 65-120-128-134.cust.qwest.net [65.120.128.134]
9 178 ms 152 ms 161 ms 209.85.244.120
10 290 ms 277 ms 236 ms 64.233.175.148
11 183 ms 125 ms 144 ms 209.85.249.62
12 258 ms 256 ms 231 ms 72.14.239.169
13 211 ms 217 ms 111 ms 209.85.254.239
14 218 ms 285 ms 261 ms 216.239.51.227
15 289 ms 276 ms 254 ms ord31s22-in-f0.1e100.net [216.58.216.224]

Trace complete.

 

[Fortuitous]

My net stabilized just long enough for me to go ahead and do a tracert while it was pretty solid.

Tracing route to google.com [216.58.216.224]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms PK5001Z.PK5001Z [192.168.0.1]
2 40 ms 34 ms 35 ms mo-71-49-72-1.dhcp.embarqhsd.net [71.49.72.1]
3 35 ms 36 ms 48 ms mo-69-34-117-114.dhcp.embarqhsd.net [69.34.117.114]
4 76 ms 90 ms 37 ms 208-110-248-128.centurylink.net [208.110.248.128]
5 53 ms 57 ms 55 ms bb-dllstx37-jx9-02-xe-11-1-0.core.centurytel.net [206.51.69.25]
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 92 ms 103 ms 75 ms dax-edge-04.inet.qwest.net [67.14.2.238]
8 64 ms 57 ms 54 ms 65-120-128-134.cust.qwest.net [65.120.128.134]
9 53 ms 53 ms 54 ms 209.85.244.120
10 61 ms 62 ms 62 ms 64.233.175.148
11 76 ms 61 ms 70 ms 209.85.249.62
12 78 ms 62 ms 89 ms 72.14.239.169
13 64 ms 67 ms 66 ms 209.85.254.239
14 80 ms 97 ms 76 ms 216.239.51.227
15 61 ms 61 ms 60 ms ord31s22-in-f0.1e100.net [216.58.216.224]

Trace complete.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Does the cellphone have anything that can auto-upload photos? Google+ is set to do it by default over WiFi, which absolutely thrashes DSL lines with a slow upload.

 

[Fortuitous]

Nope. I don't allow anything to auto-upload on my phone. So that's not an issue. I don't even have social media set up on it - never been a big fan of the stuff.

However, when the latency goes high, it tends to stay high for often times hours. It'll bounce between maybe 200 and 700, but it mostly stays in the high 300's consistently for hours.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Google+ can be tricky to remove, and it's enabled by default.

Most routers have upload/download counters - you could see how much these increase by.

First-hop latency issues like this are almost always either upload saturation or backhaul saturation - your ISP may not be checking (or may not have access to) the right numbers.

Does it happen at certain times of day? Immediately after you get home from work? Evenings and during the weekend?

 

[FoxVoxDK]

To be honest, the latency is even on the first hub, this is classic ISP line to backbone that's overloaded, it's just not "wide" enough for the current traffic from the houses or apartments that is connected to that particular station.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

If your upstream is pegged by something (so everything has to wait for the data in the oversized buffer to clear first), this could be a local issue. But yeah, there's a good chance of it being an ISP issue too.

 

[bill001g]

My "guess" on this is that something is either exceeding your bandwidth from your house or maybe you are taking errors on the dsl but I am more inclined to think bandwidth.

If this was a cable connection the connection between you and the telco is shared so your neighbors traffic will impact your traffic. With DSL you have your own private wire to the telco so only your traffic can use it. The device your wire hooks to is called a DSLAM and generally it is a router or has a router at the same location. This means in general the ping latency on the first hop is only dependent on the connection to your house since the device itself seldom is overloaded.

Now this is not the only way. The DSLAM does not have to have a router in its function and the first router behind it technically can be any place in the world so there could be another shared connection you can not see between the dslam and the router. This would mean all the DSL connection to the dslam would share this common connection to the router. and your neighbors could be overloading it. Because the DSLAM run ATM between devices it it not real common for telcos to run lots of connections but it could happen.

From your symptoms and because this is DSL I would still be strongly inclined to believe it is something over utilizing the connection to your house. Finding out what exactly it is is not always simple if for example if it would be caused by denial of service sending junk traffic to your router over using your link but the traffic never makes it to your PC so you can see it.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Many DSLAMs in remote areas are located in roadside cabinets, and use long backhauls to the ISP. There's a type of cabinet where I am called a Conklin, which typically has 2-4 E2 lines shared amongst up to fifty DSL connections. Evenings leads to massive congestion and sub-500kb/s speeds.

Thankfully, I'm not on one of these, but it is definitely possible to have congestion on DSL.

Not all DSLAMs use ATM backhaul; plenty (especially newer ones) are all Ethernet based.