Question Latency/Ping Spikes Randomly throghout the day

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Apr 15, 2019
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Before I start here are the stats of my internet connection:

ISP is Cox High Speed Internet- Our plan is 100 mbps which we get 100+ when its not spiking
Modem is a Cisco Model DPQ3212
Router - Apple Airport - roughly 15 device connected via wifi and 4 ethernet
My computer is currently wired directly into the router
For my computer I built it about 3 years ago some specs are
i5 intel Processor
Asus z170 Motherboard
I can't remember power supply but It's definitely got enough power
Windows 10 OS


As the title says I have been having high ping spikes randomly throughout the day. My internet was always able to handle anything I threw at it until roughly 10 months ago when I first started experience any kind of regular spikes. At first it seemed to be just a small spike every once in awhile that would cause my game (Usually League of Legends on the computer or COD on Xbox One) to freeze for a second then get right back to where I was. This was OK, it was annoying but definitely still playable. Around 5-6 months ago things seemed to get progressively worse with the spikes happening quite frequently. Within the last 3 months it's pretty much a daily encounter. My internet can be fine for hours at a time, sometimes a day or two, then randomly my ping with start to jump erratically. Typically the ping on LOL is around 70-80 but when I get spikes it goes all over from 90-300. I also play COD on the XBOX One with my brother in the same house and when experience the same issue with super random spike in latency when playing. It stays relatively unstable for any length of time. Sometime lasting 5 mins and others going for a few hours. This happens at any time of the day as well 2am, 2pm, 11 am, literally all times of the day. And it will happen when there's everyone in my family using the internet or when I am the only one up at 4 am it can start to spike, even if I have changed nothing at all.

Here is a list of everything I've tried or tried to monitor until now:

-I first tried restarting the whole network by unplugging the router, modem and shutting down my computer then plugging the modem in and letting it boot, then the router and finally my computer. Sometimes this might make the internet better but just as often the internet is still spiking.
-I've monitored my task manager and made sure my CPU/RAM or any other stats aren't being maxed out, which they do something if I have Microsoft Edge open while gaming.
-We've called Cox numerous times, and since the internet only spikes randomly I've never been able to get them to see this issue since they only monitor it through speed test.net (which in my opinion is awful at capturing my connection since it never seems to capture the spikes when they're happening). They've sent out technicians 2 times now. The first time they changed a setting on the router and told me the apple airport might be the issue and I should to replace it before calling again. The second guy went and checked all of the wires in our house which he said they all seemed fine.
-We then replaced our router and modem with a nighthawk x6s router and a good modem we were told, I forget which one(Arris Surfboard I think), but the internet didn't get better and even seemed to feel worse no matter what combination of old and new equipment I used.
-I have plugged my computer directly into the modem and tested it and he issue seems to persist or even get worse.
-I've tried changing firewall settings, updating computer drivers and router/modem settings
-After some researching I then began testing my ping first using the command "ping -t 8.8.8.8" to ping google.com on a loop and started monitoring the ping. I took those pings and plotted them in excel to get a graph over time of my ping at certain times of the day. I included some screenshots of them at the end. After studying the ping a bit I noted a few things 1) my ping when not spiking was usually 20-30ms with the occasional 50 or 60 so not bad 2) when I started to lag in game the ping would reflect that and pretty much go haywire 3) after a while sometimes the pings go back to 20-60 but every 10-20 seconds I will still get to 100-200ms 4) when it gets bad I will start to get a bunch of "Request times out" messages in a row.
-As stated earlier I experience this on my PC and also my Xbox one. I also tried to test the ping on two other separate computers, all of which show similar results so I've concluded not my computer.
-I have also tried a tracert to google.com to see if there was a specific hop that seemed to be the issue. The first hop(which I believe is my router) is always consistently at 1-2 ms but after that its random which hop comes up with high ms. I run the tracert command a few times to see if there is a consistent hop that is the problem but each time I run it usually a different hop then before is spiking which I believe means there isn't a problem with any one of those hops and it just spikes as my connection does. This also mad me thing it could possibly be my modem/ISP company even though they say everything is working. I'm inluding screenshots of just the pings to google for some of my tracerts at the end as well.

At this point I've tried almost everything I can think of to try and fix my internet and I am extremely frustrated. I've read a lot of the other threads on here but all the other issues seem to be either related to a PC/Wifi or completely lacking in any evidence that they are indeed having an issue. I'm throwing this thread out in desperation that there is a trick out there I haven't tried or something that I missed to fix my internet. If there's any additional information needed I'll do my best to provide it.

Here are the pictures of my ping tests:

View: https://imgur.com/a/NtXVJ0Q
 
If the ISP had congestion on their side then other people would have the same issues. Most of the time they don't have bottlenecks in the last mile. They might oversell really high speed plans and then a bunch of people start downloading + a ton of people watching videos. If they fully utilize their contracts to outside networks then everyone on that ISP would get bufferbloat on that line.

For testing have you tried multiple computers and also are you monitoring your network traffic while you test? You need to rule out your computer as the issue. Using a live boot ubuntu would rule out software side of your pc if you can't test from another pc. If you had malware it could be on all your windows machines.

He has a point. If your neighbor has a 1 gig connection and then all the sudden buffers a 4K Dolby Vision movie, or invokes an unlimited bandwidth game/torrent download, that would cause latency spikes.
 

There are multiple levels of error recovery. I generically used NAK to describe a condition in which the datapacket is bad. This is why we have a "data symbol errors" "data symbols recovered" and "data symbols not fixable" on cable modem pages. I get non-recoverable data symbols a couple dozen times a day. TCP data packets contain a checksum to validate if the data is good or not. If there were not a recovery mechanism, then a lot of my apps would just crash. A lot of this stuff happens transparently. It happens point to point on a local level on the backbone.

Understand that these error correction protocols in no way guarantee your connection will not crap out. TCP/IP is not a guaranteed communication protocol. So in a sense you are correct. There's no guarantee that you will get a re-transmission of said data packet. This is handled by the hardware as the data is reformed. But this is getting down into the weeds of it.
This is why you ONLY test network with ping ie ICMP ECHO. It is a very simple protocol. It lets you test the network and not the application. That is one of the key benefits to ICMP that no retransmission's takes place

Using any other protocol hides the network layer more than it needs. You can have issue at the tcp level or the application levels. Everything you wrote is correct but is the key reason you do not use things like this to test networks. You might as well get into the nasty business of how games that do not use ICMP measure delay they call "ping"

When you use ICMP to test you can sure that delays are due to equipment in the path and not because of retransmission due to data loss. This of course does not apply when you have a wireless connection in the path but pretty much every other protocol just discards data.

This is actually why his problem is different. If he has a poor signal level on his cable modem he would see packet loss not delays. Something is holding data memory the problem is his ISP is not be helpful in locating this device.
 
Apr 15, 2019
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Packet loss = delay. If there's a NAK on a packet, then that packet must be retransmitted which leads to ping delays.

Nighteyes, your signal strength is indeed low. Are you running your cable through a surge suppressor? Most of them use simple diode arrangements, and are quite frankly, junk. They work, but it's sticking a FRAM oil filter on a Ferrari. It lowers signal strength.

If this does not fix your issue, please contact your cable company. They can access your cable modem signal strength and verify your issue over the phone. They will then send a tech out to measure your signal strength. He may want to enter your home. But he should start by impedance matching the signal to 75Ohm at the signal box.

This is trivia of how this all works btw:
TCP/IP packets are numbered. They have an IP and a port number. The port number determines to which app/device on your home network it gets transmitted to. Now there is a maximum size of packet for TCP/IP (software) and a maximum size for an ethernet packet (hardware). So sometimes if one exceeds the other, there needs to be some repackaging to break it into smaller chunks.

That said, packets are broken into chunks. So lets say you have 64K of data you need to receive, and this needs to be broken down into 3 packets of ~21K each. (Packet 1 and Packet 2 and Packet 3). So the TCP/IP sits there and waits for all the packets to arrive in order before it sends them off to you. This means you have to have packet 1 and packet 2 and packet 3.

Now due to the nature of the internet, sometimes these packets arrive out of order. If Packet 3 arrives before packet 2, then the router is going to sit there and wait for packet 2 to arrive before sending your computer packet 3. Again, it packet 3, or 2 arrive before packet 1, then those two pieces of data will wait till packet 1 arrives. (After all data has to be complete and in order.) So all this data hangs around in memory till all packets arrive. This can create "memory" issues and every router is different on how they handle delayed TCP/IP packets. Some dump the packets sooner than later or send a NAK (Not acknowledged) automatically for the missing packet. This will force a retransmit on said packet.

Now UDP on the other hand (Universal Datagram Protocol) keeps things simple. "My data is small and contained to 1 packet, and I don't care what order it arrives, just hand it to me, even if out of order" This is useful for things like video streaming, or in your case video games. It doesn't matter if player position at 5 seconds arrives before player position at 4.2 seconds. Because the 5 second position is the most recent. The game might not be as smooth, but contains the most accurate data of the current situation.

Some DNS's will get pinged RELENTLESSLY for UDP DNS services. And because they aren't local and traffic can get quite heavy, the ping time MIGHT actually be higher than TCP/IP. Overall the average might be lower (Cloudflare) but every once in a while you might see a spike. That's why I was asking. Also, my personal firewall when using UPlay (UbiSoft) downloader, was using UDP. And it would crash because it's UDP DNS was timing out due to DPI and causing buffer bloat as the commands built up in the buffer on the firewall.
I am not really sure if I am using a surge compressor. I don't think so but I don't know 100%. I don't know how to identify it if I do have one plus I wouldn't know where too look. I also am having my ISP come out next Friday. I am hoping I can have a thing or two for them to check. It seems my upstream levels might be one thing to check.
 
Apr 15, 2019
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So just a general update on my internet status and this thread. So my ISP is sending a tech out next Friday to check things again... and I am going to see what new things I can ask him to check. It seems like I should have him check my upstream/downstream levels to see if that may be a problem. Also, after talking about these levels and something digital griffin said about them made me think maybe my modem is getting too hot (pretty random though) but somewhere I believe I read where a modem that's too hot can cause issues. I took my modem and am currently using a fan to blow air on it. Preliminary results showed that it didn't fix the problem but in my opinion made it not as bad, though this is after just a few hours and it could just be random luck. I also have a friend about 2 blocks away who has a similar situation to me, I had him test his ping and it looked like mine(though he has had bad internet for way longer then me so might just be him). Also, I appreciate all the replies you guys spammed this morning, even though half of it went over my head and I will try to sift through it later. Finally, unfortunately at this point I am only going to be able to reply minimally until next Thursday as I have 3 semester projects and 3 finals all within the next 6 days. So I will probably keep an eye out and respond when I can until next Thursday.

I also forgot but griffin suggested first comment wireshark to monitor packets and since it seems we might be dealing with paket loss I just wanted to say I have wireshark and have tried monitoring packets but really have no idea how if the few black or red packets I'm seeing are bad or not really out the ordinary.
 
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Most people would love to have low numbers like you do on the upstream side. I am not sure what actually happens if it is too low. The upstream numbers are kinda fake in a way. They only tell what you are outputting there is not way to tell how much the cable company is receiving.

A overly simplistic description is that the ISP equipment adjusts the level your modem transmits at until it gets good SNR numbers The big problems come when the ISP equipment can not hear your modem well and keep increasing the power. It can only go to something like 55 and there are major issues once you get much above 50.

I am not sure why your level is so low and if it really is a issue or not.

What you will see if you have transmission issues is lots of messages in the log saying your modem is losing sync or it reboots. This is very different than the symptoms you report.

The only time I remember seeing modems being the cause of delays was related to the intel puma bug. I get my threads confused sometimes but I though that was ruled out in your case.
 
Apr 15, 2019
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If the ISP had congestion on their side then other people would have the same issues. Most of the time they don't have bottlenecks in the last mile. They might oversell really high speed plans and then a bunch of people start downloading + a ton of people watching videos. If they fully utilize their contracts to outside networks then everyone on that ISP would get bufferbloat on that line.

For testing have you tried multiple computers and also are you monitoring your network traffic while you test? You need to rule out your computer as the issue. Using a live boot ubuntu would rule out software side of your pc if you can't test from another pc. If you had malware it could be on all your windows machines.
I have run the ping test, at the same time, to google I mentioned earlier on 4 different computers and they all show the same general ping spikes to varying degrees.
 
This is why you ONLY test network with ping ie ICMP ECHO. It is a very simple protocol. It lets you test the network and not the application. That is one of the key benefits to ICMP that no retransmission's takes place

Using any other protocol hides the network layer more than it needs. You can have issue at the tcp level or the application levels. Everything you wrote is correct but is the key reason you do not use things like this to test networks. You might as well get into the nasty business of how games that do not use ICMP measure delay they call "ping"

When you use ICMP to test you can sure that delays are due to equipment in the path and not because of retransmission due to data loss. This of course does not apply when you have a wireless connection in the path but pretty much every other protocol just discards data.

This is actually why his problem is different. If he has a poor signal level on his cable modem he would see packet loss not delays. Something is holding data memory the problem is his ISP is not be helpful in locating this device.

Pings go point to point like any other traffic. The backend hardware can corrupt the data between peers. The backend hardware is responsible for correcting point to point deficiencies. It's transparent, you don't see it. But re transmissions do occur. So a retransmit does occur, even with ping. But again it doesn't guarentee you are going to get it.

You can think of it this way: RS422 has a balanced output at the electrical level. One signal positive, one negative. It's a form of checking data redundancy when transmitting. It in NO WAY affects the data in the packets. But it can be rejected and the hardware will transmit a NAK. (Again I use this generically to describe a bad data packet situation) You don't see it because it's handled at a hardware level. A lot of high speed communication on peers involves a lot of bleeding edge high speed interconnects that are subject to error. You can employ error correction at this level and it doesn't affect the data is wraps. But it does take more time to fix. (Think of it like error recovery on a HDD/RAID array) Takes a little longer to get you the data, but it does. It does not gaurantee that it can be recovered however. Like I said, sometimes things just "barf"
 
Pings go point to point like any other traffic. The backend hardware can corrupt the data between peers. The backend hardware is responsible for correcting point to point deficiencies. It's transparent, you don't see it. But re transmissions do occur. So a retransmit does occur, even with ping. But again it doesn't guarentee you are going to get it.

You can think of it this way: RS422 has a balanced output at the electrical level. One signal positive, one negative. It's a form of checking data redundancy when transmitting. It in NO WAY affects the data in the packets. But it can be rejected and the hardware will transmit a NAK. (Again I use this generically to describe a bad data packet situation) You don't see it because it's handled at a hardware level. A lot of high speed communication on peers involves a lot of bleeding edge high speed interconnects that are subject to error. You can employ error correction at this level and it doesn't affect the data is wraps. But it does take more time to fix. (Think of it like error recovery on a HDD/RAID array) Takes a little longer to get you the data, but it does. It does not gaurantee that it can be recovered however. Like I said, sometimes things just "barf"
How does RS422 apply it is a old serial based protocol. In this case we have ethernet docsis and likely a bunch of different fiber based protocols in the path None of these do any form of data retransmissions. Docsis has some limited ability to correct data errors but it does not retransmit or delay the data if it can correct it with the extra bits that are transmitted

I am not saying I know everything about networking but I am pretty sure on this one. I would be happy to see any documents that show data retrasmission at the hardware level. I am well aware of old stuff like token ring does retransmission but what modern network technology does data retransmissions.
 
How does RS422 apply it is a old serial based protocol. In this case we have ethernet docsis and likely a bunch of different fiber based protocols in the path None of these do any form of data retransmissions. Docsis has some limited ability to correct data errors but it does not retransmit or delay the data if it can correct it with the extra bits that are transmitted

I am not saying I know everything about networking but I am pretty sure on this one. I would be happy to see any documents that show data retrasmission at the hardware level. I am well aware of old stuff like token ring does retransmission but what modern network technology does data retransmissions.

It does on a peer to peer basis. Multiplexed fiber layers different wavelengths on top of one another to increase the bitdepth (and therefore bandwidth). Various issues can cause frequency shifts in the light/lambda attenuation/timing issues due to things like wind/temperature change which leads to data errors. To overcome these issues, the newest multiplex fiber uses retransmission. But again all of this is transparent to the end user. Sometimes packets get so completely garbled the receiving end has NO clue where it came from. These are proprietary solutions though at the hardware level. So the hardware at each node has to conform to that standard. That's why these solutions appear mostly at tier 1 providers as they control more end to end of the backbone.

Docsis does have data recovery like Party. But it also has retransmit request (or so I thought...here I might be wrong.) But like I said, I get a couple dozen unrecoverable data errors per day on my modem. So I would be getting a lot more program crashes with my WebAPI calls if there wasn't some redundancy wired in.

Found it: Forward Error Correction for DOCSIS. I will admit I may be interpreting this wrong.

Forward Error Correction (FEC) FEC enables the receiver to detect and fix errors to packets without the need for the transmitter to retransmit packets.

http://www.cable-europe.eu/wp-content/uploads/bsk-pdf-manager/3_CM-SP-PHYV3.0-I09-101008.PDF
 
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It does on a peer to peer basis. Multiplexed fiber layers different wavelengths on top of one another to increase the bitdepth (and therefore bandwidth). Various issues can cause frequency shifts in the light/lambda attenuation/timing issues which leads to data errors. To overcome these issues, the newest multiplex fiber uses retransmission. But again all of this is transparent to the end user. Sometimes packets get so completely garbled the receiving end has NO clue where it came from. These are proprietary solutions though at the hardware level. So the hardware at each node has to conform to that standard. That's why these solutions appear mostly at tier 1 providers as they control more end to end of the backbone.

Docsis does have data recovery like Party. But it also has retransmit request (or so I thought...here I might be wrong.) But like I said, I get a couple dozen unrecoverable data errors per day on my modem. So I would be getting a lot more program crashes with my WebAPI calls if there wasn't some redundancy wired in.

Found it: Page 11 of 61: Forward Error Correction for DOCSIS. I will admit I may be interpreting this wrong.



http://www.cable-europe.eu/wp-content/uploads/bsk-pdf-manager/3_CM-SP-PHYV3.0-I09-101008.PDF
Error correction is not retranmission it just sends extra redundant bits along with the main transmission. The does reduce the total bandwidth some but it does not increase the delay/ping time. It just used the "spare" bits to get the correct data. This is extremely common in many of the fiber encoding methods. The extra data is always transmitted it would not cause random delays even if there was any delay.

Almost all data transmission methods leave data retransmission to the application. In almost all cases network problems are data loss not delays because the network equipment wants to put the burden on the end stations for retransmitting data.

We are really going nowhere with this. Even if there was something the ISP must admit it. It actually is much easier if you see packet loss. The ISP seem to be able to fix that since it is easy to see where the loss is. Delays are almost always some "router" type device buffering the data because some connection is full or it has some other issue like CPU load slowing its ability. The first level tech guys tend to not have access to any of this equipment. It would be nice if his problem was he was over using his connection and we could tell him to use the bufferbloat QoS options but in this case the delays appear to be outside his direct control.


........I will add this here because it might have been lost. This type of issue is exactly what the intel puma modem bug looked like. I think he said it happened on mulitple modems one of which does not use intel but in case I am confusing threads I will repost it here.
 
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Error correction is not retranmission it just sends extra redundant bits along with the main transmission. The does reduce the total bandwidth some but it does not increase the delay/ping time. It just used the "spare" bits to get the correct data. This is extremely common in many of the fiber encoding methods. The extra data is always transmitted it would not cause random delays even if there was any delay.

Almost all data transmission methods leave data retransmission to the application. In almost all cases network problems are data loss not delays because the network equipment wants to put the burden on the end stations for retransmitting data.

We are really going nowhere with this. Even if there was something the ISP must admit it. It actually is much easier if you see packet loss. The ISP seem to be able to fix that since it is easy to see where the loss is. Delays are almost always some "router" type device buffering the data because some connection is full or it has some other issue like CPU load slowing its ability. The first level tech guys tend to not have access to any of this equipment. It would be nice if his problem was he was over using his connection and we could tell him to use the bufferbloat QoS options but in this case the delays appear to be outside his direct control.

I realize error correction is not re-transmission. It was this that leads me to believe there is some facility there for correction:
without the need for the transmitter to retransmit packets.
Like I said I may be interpreting it wrong.

It is in the best interest of ISPs and backbone providers to retransmit when they can on a peer to peer basis for several reasons. Retransmit over one peer to peer is cheaper to manage/handle than a client doing error correction over the whole path. It also increases reliability on bleeding edge tech.

I'll agree with you though that this is mostly academic at this point and drifting into the weeds. I could be wrong, but it's not relevant to the posters questions. So I'll stop here and admit I may be wrong. I'm just reading white papers on the latest tech. So my interpretation of them might be wrong.
 
Apr 15, 2019
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Hey so sorry I was pretty busy until today so wasn't able to respond but I have a slight update on the situation. So I mentioned in my last post about having the fan blowing on the modem, which I have continued to do so, and my internet seems to be doing consistently better. I will still occasionally have some spikes (today I had a few minutes in a row but after a reset it was better) but over all they seem to be less often and less severe. The only exception was on the Xbox playing some COD with my brother so idk. Now after testing this I have a few thoughts on this:

1. I had replaced my modem and the issue persisted so I'm wondering why cooling the modem seems to fix things. I considered the fact that the modem is in a slightly enclosed area (about 2 ft space above and 3 feet under an overhang before the overhang ends and opens into our living room) so maybe the new modem was over heating, but that doesn't seem likely to me as this modem has been fine up there for like 2 years.

2. I'm not sure but was wondering if this could have something to do with the upstream power lvls being low?

3. Also the nature of the spikes is different. Instead of spiking continuously for an extended period of time, causing increased latency, I have been experiencing small blips where my game will freeze momentarily before catching back up(again not my computer as I was checking my task manager for any excessing CPU or memory hogs I occasionally get)

I'm not sure how this changes things or if it really is helping even if it seems to be just wanted to see if this changes any of your guys thoughts.
 
I think you are still pretty much proving that the ISP has some issue since you replaced the modem again.

You need to be very certain that the game freezes you see are due to higher ping times and not packet loss. Packet loss could be caused by the levels on your modem but I don't think the low upstream levels area problem. Packet delays are caused more by router in the ISP network. A modem sends the data and the data either gets to the other side at some fixed amount of time. The data is either good or it is discarded.

For packets to be delayed some device must hold the data in a buffer. A router will do this because the output connection is overloaded. In the past when memory was expensive routers help only a very small amount of data so you got packet loss from a connection overload.

Packet loss is generally due to a some damage to the data in the path or a extremely overloaded link that exceeds the amount of data that can be buffered.

Packet loss due to network problems the ISP will fix. Delays due to overloading the ISP has intentionally done that in many cases. Buffering the data causing delays actually helps the performance of almost every application other than online games so the ISP does not really want to "fix" that if they can not eliminate the source of the delay.

I really doubt there is anything on your side causing this. You can repeat the tests but you pretty much have proved you have no ping spikes between your machine and your router and it does the same when you directly connect to the modem. You have replaced the modem. This pretty much eliminates anything you have control over.
 
Apr 15, 2019
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I think you are still pretty much proving that the ISP has some issue since you replaced the modem again.

You need to be very certain that the game freezes you see are due to higher ping times and not packet loss. Packet loss could be caused by the levels on your modem but I don't think the low upstream levels area problem. Packet delays are caused more by router in the ISP network. A modem sends the data and the data either gets to the other side at some fixed amount of time. The data is either good or it is discarded.

For packets to be delayed some device must hold the data in a buffer. A router will do this because the output connection is overloaded. In the past when memory was expensive routers help only a very small amount of data so you got packet loss from a connection overload.

Packet loss is generally due to a some damage to the data in the path or a extremely overloaded link that exceeds the amount of data that can be buffered.

Packet loss due to network problems the ISP will fix. Delays due to overloading the ISP has intentionally done that in many cases. Buffering the data causing delays actually helps the performance of almost every application other than online games so the ISP does not really want to "fix" that if they can not eliminate the source of the delay.

I really doubt there is anything on your side causing this. You can repeat the tests but you pretty much have proved you have no ping spikes between your machine and your router and it does the same when you directly connect to the modem. You have replaced the modem. This pretty much eliminates anything you have control over.
I guess I didn't make it very clear on what I meant which is my fault but I didn't replace the modem again I was just saying back when I did replace it, it didn't make a difference. Anyways, looks like the issue is most likely out of my control... I appreciate all of your guys help with the matter. I have inadvertently become quite knowledgeable in networks and how everything works haha. Well see if the tech has a revelation this Friday when he comes.
 
Apr 15, 2019
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Have you tried changing your connection channel on your router/modem?
Cable or fibre op? Shared connection or independent?(ftth/fttn)
I don't think you can just switch between cable and fiber. Pretty sure I don't have fiber to my house anyways. I also don't think I can switch channels on my modem since I have only limited access to its settings. And we've pretty much eliminated the router as the problem. And not sure about connection or how that would make a difference?
 

davesnothere

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Aug 6, 2016
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If you are getting timeouts in routing its a networking issue inside cox. Especially if the packets are getting routed to an internal office network and out (it will look like addresses in the ip pool: 10.xxx.xxx.xxx). RF Media dhcp servers can do this behavior too if it assigns the wrong DNS server. But there is nothing on your side that can help you here, other than trying to find a better internet service provider. I have to leave mine because it got baught by Vast and when they combined thier network with this one, now on everyone's machine times out on the first hop out, servicing us 5-10 times slower, when the average ping on even the smallest package was 5ms. Now its 200ms. which I can get better speeds with a dsl service provider here.
 
Apr 15, 2019
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Well not really.... So basically after talking to these guys for a few weeks they all seemed to agree that it was my ISP that was the issue. As it is, my ISP is the only one in my area who can provide even close to the speeds I'm getting right now so I'm kind of stuck with them. I am pretty sure it's my ISP because recently my friends, all of whom live within 1 mile of my house, experience the exact same spikes I do quite often when were in the same game. The only options I seem to have left is to either try to upgrade my package to hopefully get preferential treatment from my ISP and hope that fixes it(Since net neutrality isn't a thing they can do that), or to try to maybe file a complaint with the FCC. IDK what else can be done.
 
Jun 12, 2019
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Well not really.... So basically after talking to these guys for a few weeks they all seemed to agree that it was my ISP that was the issue. As it is, my ISP is the only one in my area who can provide even close to the speeds I'm getting right now so I'm kind of stuck with them. I am pretty sure it's my ISP because recently my friends, all of whom live within 1 mile of my house, experience the exact same spikes I do quite often when were in the same game. The only options I seem to have left is to either try to upgrade my package to hopefully get preferential treatment from my ISP and hope that fixes it(Since net neutrality isn't a thing they can do that), or to try to maybe file a complaint with the FCC. IDK what else can be done.

I'm in such a similar situation as well there's only 1 decent ISP In my area which is the one I'm having problems with I'm honestly stuck for ideas the amount of times I've contacted them is crazy we even got a new router installed but that didn't work if they can't fix it looks like we are gonna have to have horrible internet
 
Well not really.... So basically after talking to these guys for a few weeks they all seemed to agree that it was my ISP that was the issue. As it is, my ISP is the only one in my area who can provide even close to the speeds I'm getting right now so I'm kind of stuck with them. I am pretty sure it's my ISP because recently my friends, all of whom live within 1 mile of my house, experience the exact same spikes I do quite often when were in the same game. The only options I seem to have left is to either try to upgrade my package to hopefully get preferential treatment from my ISP and hope that fixes it(Since net neutrality isn't a thing they can do that), or to try to maybe file a complaint with the FCC. IDK what else can be done.

If you don't have low latency when you know you're not using your bandwidth then it's going to be external or possibly a DOS. If someone in the same network as you lags at the same time then it would point towards isp congestion more so. They may have oversold that bandwidth. I personally would rather have low latency than extra bandwidth.
 
Dec 4, 2020
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Before I start here are the stats of my internet connection:

ISP is Cox High Speed Internet- Our plan is 100 mbps which we get 100+ when its not spiking
Modem is a Cisco Model DPQ3212
Router - Apple Airport - roughly 15 device connected via wifi and 4 ethernet
My computer is currently wired directly into the router
For my computer I built it about 3 years ago some specs are
i5 intel Processor
Asus z170 Motherboard
I can't remember power supply but It's definitely got enough power
Windows 10 OS


As the title says I have been having high ping spikes randomly throughout the day. My internet was always able to handle anything I threw at it until roughly 10 months ago when I first started experience any kind of regular spikes. At first it seemed to be just a small spike every once in awhile that would cause my game (Usually League of Legends on the computer or COD on Xbox One) to freeze for a second then get right back to where I was. This was OK, it was annoying but definitely still playable. Around 5-6 months ago things seemed to get progressively worse with the spikes happening quite frequently. Within the last 3 months it's pretty much a daily encounter. My internet can be fine for hours at a time, sometimes a day or two, then randomly my ping with start to jump erratically. Typically the ping on LOL is around 70-80 but when I get spikes it goes all over from 90-300. I also play COD on the XBOX One with my brother in the same house and when experience the same issue with super random spike in latency when playing. It stays relatively unstable for any length of time. Sometime lasting 5 mins and others going for a few hours. This happens at any time of the day as well 2am, 2pm, 11 am, literally all times of the day. And it will happen when there's everyone in my family using the internet or when I am the only one up at 4 am it can start to spike, even if I have changed nothing at all.

Here is a list of everything I've tried or tried to monitor until now:

-I first tried restarting the whole network by unplugging the router, modem and shutting down my computer then plugging the modem in and letting it boot, then the router and finally my computer. Sometimes this might make the internet better but just as often the internet is still spiking.
-I've monitored my task manager and made sure my CPU/RAM or any other stats aren't being maxed out, which they do something if I have Microsoft Edge open while gaming.
-We've called Cox numerous times, and since the internet only spikes randomly I've never been able to get them to see this issue since they only monitor it through speed test.net (which in my opinion is awful at capturing my connection since it never seems to capture the spikes when they're happening). They've sent out technicians 2 times now. The first time they changed a setting on the router and told me the apple airport might be the issue and I should to replace it before calling again. The second guy went and checked all of the wires in our house which he said they all seemed fine.
-We then replaced our router and modem with a nighthawk x6s router and a good modem we were told, I forget which one(Arris Surfboard I think), but the internet didn't get better and even seemed to feel worse no matter what combination of old and new equipment I used.
-I have plugged my computer directly into the modem and tested it and he issue seems to persist or even get worse.
-I've tried changing firewall settings, updating computer drivers and router/modem settings
-After some researching I then began testing my ping first using the command "ping -t 8.8.8.8" to ping google.com on a loop and started monitoring the ping. I took those pings and plotted them in excel to get a graph over time of my ping at certain times of the day. I included some screenshots of them at the end. After studying the ping a bit I noted a few things 1) my ping when not spiking was usually 20-30ms with the occasional 50 or 60 so not bad 2) when I started to lag in game the ping would reflect that and pretty much go haywire 3) after a while sometimes the pings go back to 20-60 but every 10-20 seconds I will still get to 100-200ms 4) when it gets bad I will start to get a bunch of "Request times out" messages in a row.
-As stated earlier I experience this on my PC and also my Xbox one. I also tried to test the ping on two other separate computers, all of which show similar results so I've concluded not my computer.
-I have also tried a tracert to google.com to see if there was a specific hop that seemed to be the issue. The first hop(which I believe is my router) is always consistently at 1-2 ms but after that its random which hop comes up with high ms. I run the tracert command a few times to see if there is a consistent hop that is the problem but each time I run it usually a different hop then before is spiking which I believe means there isn't a problem with any one of those hops and it just spikes as my connection does. This also mad me thing it could possibly be my modem/ISP company even though they say everything is working. I'm inluding screenshots of just the pings to google for some of my tracerts at the end as well.

At this point I've tried almost everything I can think of to try and fix my internet and I am extremely frustrated. I've read a lot of the other threads on here but all the other issues seem to be either related to a PC/Wifi or completely lacking in any evidence that they are indeed having an issue. I'm throwing this thread out in desperation that there is a trick out there I haven't tried or something that I missed to fix my internet. If there's any additional information needed I'll do my best to provide it.

Here are the pictures of my ping tests:

View: https://imgur.com/a/NtXVJ0Q
Hello,
I too Have this same issue. I also have cox internet and have been trying to figure out why my internet keeps ping spike/packet bursting every so many seconds I am playing COD Warzone. The game is literally unplayable. I have 150mbps download and 10 mbps upload. I am hard wired and I know it’s not my computer since my cpu and ram usage is low. Also this happens when nobody is using any bandwidth. I have a gateway modem/router Arris SBG-69000AC and have contacted cox many times explaining the issues. Everytime they say connection is fine on their end. I tried bridging gateway and using Netgear XR500 router to combat potential bufferbloat, however the lag and packet burst was worse. I even tried attaching managed switch after gateway to implement QOS and it didn’t work either.

At this point I do not know what to do. I think it’s something to do with ISP lines outside my home. There is only one service provider in my area so everyone is using same ISP. Please respond with any feedback.