Question Latency Spikes on both Ethernet and WiFi ?

[Ryzzzaaaa]

Over the past few months i have been experiencing major lag spikes and disconnecting/timeouts when gaming on my pc and console. Note: these spikes also happen when not playing online games too. I have called my ISP 2-3 times and they said everything was fine on their end of things so i stopped calling up and decided to do my own little investigation. It all seemed to have started ever since we upgraded our WiFi to 5G or so i can remember.

After still experiencing these major lag spikes and high latency i decided to switch to a CAT-6 ethernet cable to run directly from our router to my computer. Note: My brother also has a pc and console and has no issues whatsoever when also running an ethernet cable. After switching to ethernet the same problem would still occur. I could be home alone and still experience problems with the internet.

It also may be worth noting that we have an external Wi-Fi adapter that is still active and in use for mobile phones and a PS5, although as stated as above i still experience these issues when i'm home alone and am the only person connected to the internet. I have tried:

Changing Ports on the Router (tried using the same port that my brother had been using)

Tried using a different ethernet cable

Reset the router multiple times

Tried using a VPN

Tried disabling the network adapter inside of my pc and updating it aswell, neither had changed anything.

I have run multiple ping tests, one using ethernet, one using the 5G and one using the external adapter, all pinging to 8.8.8.8. All ping tests would result and align perfectly, being the latency spiking at the same time in an online game, a discord call and on the ping test. I'm unsure what all this might mean hence why im writing this thread.

Note: There are times where i can still hear people even though my discord is at 5000+ ping except i cant communicate with them. Again i don't know if this could point to anything in particular.

Im not to sure how to test these things for my console but it has identical issues on both Wi-Fi and Ethernet.

I'd really appreciate it if someone could help out, this is so draining and frustrating!

Thanks, Ryzzzaaaa.

 

[bill001g]

If you have a ping spike on ethernet to 8.8.8.8 then it is likely a problem with the ISP. The ISP though does not see it because they likely are not testing long enough.

If you had data loss that they might see. Latency is generally something overloaded and data is being held in buffers.

So I would first run tracert 8.8.8.8

This will likely show nothing intersting since it also does not run long enough. It is purely to get the IP addresses of the router in the path.

Now you want to open at least 3 cmd windows. You want to ping your router (normally hop 1), the first ISP router(hop 2) and the final 8.8.8.8.

If you see issues with hop 1 it is something inside your house, most times the pc. What you want to see is no issues to hop 1 but problems to hop 2. This means your equipment is ok but there is some issue with the connection between your house and the ISP. If both hop 1 and hop 2 are clean it gets more complex. You can try other hops but the farther you get from your house the worse it gets. The ISP will for example blame google (8.8.8.8) which is why you ping their router. Problem is in some cases it can actually be another ISP.

 

[Ryzzzaaaa]

If you have a ping spike on ethernet to 8.8.8.8 then it is likely a problem with the ISP. The ISP though does not see it because they likely are not testing long enough.

If you had data loss that they might see. Latency is generally something overloaded and data is being held in buffers.

So I would first run tracert 8.8.8.8

This will likely show nothing intersting since it also does not run long enough. It is purely to get the IP addresses of the router in the path.

Now you want to open at least 3 cmd windows. You want to ping your router (normally hop 1), the first ISP router(hop 2) and the final 8.8.8.8.

If you see issues with hop 1 it is something inside your house, most times the pc. What you want to see is no issues to hop 1 but problems to hop 2. This means your equipment is ok but there is some issue with the connection between your house and the ISP. If both hop 1 and hop 2 are clean it gets more complex. You can try other hops but the farther you get from your house the worse it gets. The ISP will for example blame google (8.8.8.8) which is why you ping their router. Problem is in some cases it can actually be another ISP.

Thankyou for the response I will try this in the morning

 

[Ryzzzaaaa]

If you have a ping spike on ethernet to 8.8.8.8 then it is likely a problem with the ISP. The ISP though does not see it because they likely are not testing long enough.

If you had data loss that they might see. Latency is generally something overloaded and data is being held in buffers.

So I would first run tracert 8.8.8.8

This will likely show nothing intersting since it also does not run long enough. It is purely to get the IP addresses of the router in the path.

Now you want to open at least 3 cmd windows. You want to ping your router (normally hop 1), the first ISP router(hop 2) and the final 8.8.8.8.

If you see issues with hop 1 it is something inside your house, most times the pc. What you want to see is no issues to hop 1 but problems to hop 2. This means your equipment is ok but there is some issue with the connection between your house and the ISP. If both hop 1 and hop 2 are clean it gets more complex. You can try other hops but the farther you get from your house the worse it gets. The ISP will for example blame google (8.8.8.8) which is why you ping their router. Problem is in some cases it can actually be another ISP.

i have just pinged hop 1 and hop 3 at the same time, as hop 2 wouldn't let me as it just said "Destination Net Unreachable". Whenever the internet would lag spike hop 1 wouldn't notice it but hop 3 would. Is there any other way i can access the hop 2 ping?

 

[bill001g]

The ISP has either configured hop 2 to not respond to ping or if it is using private IP there could be some issue with the routing.
Neither you can do anything about and it does not matter a lot.

A problem in hop 2 will cause issue in hop 3 and every hop beyond. You can not 100% prove if it is hop 2 or hop 3 but you have proved it is not your house but you do see a issue in the ISP router. The ISP though likely does have a way to ping both these devices from their side. It would only be a big issue if hop 2 and hop 3 were owned by different ISP. Not very likely but if it was say hop 9 or 10 etc then it very well could be another ISP and your ISP could not really do any more testing than you can.

Problems with latency are hard to get a ISP to fix. Packet loss is easy they find and replace something that is broken.

Latency can mean something like some neighborhood kid that is on the same fiber/cable/etc in your neighborhood is running torrent and using all the bandwidth. That is not as common as years ago when the total bandwidth in a neighborhood was not so high.

It all depends on why. If it is they do not have enough fiber that is hard to fix if it is some setting in their equipment that they might change.

Note be sure you see the actual issue. You need to see very large spikes in the latency, like over 100ms extra. You will always see random spikes to say 20-30ms extra. This is mostly testing error and limitation on the ISP router. The routers will delay responding to ping commands if they are busy doing real work like passing customer data.

 

[Ryzzzaaaa]

The ISP has either configured hop 2 to not respond to ping or if it is using private IP there could be some issue with the routing.
Neither you can do anything about and it does not matter a lot.

A problem in hop 2 will cause issue in hop 3 and every hop beyond. You can not 100% prove if it is hop 2 or hop 3 but you have proved it is not your house but you do see a issue in the ISP router. The ISP though likely does have a way to ping both these devices from their side. It would only be a big issue if hop 2 and hop 3 were owned by different ISP. Not very likely but if it was say hop 9 or 10 etc then it very well could be another ISP and your ISP could not really do any more testing than you can.

Problems with latency are hard to get a ISP to fix. Packet loss is easy they find and replace something that is broken.

Latency can mean something like some neighborhood kid that is on the same fiber/cable/etc in your neighborhood is running torrent and using all the bandwidth. That is not as common as years ago when the total bandwidth in a neighborhood was not so high.

It all depends on why. If it is they do not have enough fiber that is hard to fix if it is some setting in their equipment that they might change.

Note be sure you see the actual issue. You need to see very large spikes in the latency, like over 100ms extra. You will always see random spikes to say 20-30ms extra. This is mostly testing error and limitation on the ISP router. The routers will delay responding to ping commands if they are busy doing real work like passing customer data.

Thankyou for the response. I just dont understand it all that well as my brother has no issues whatsoever and we are both connected to the same router on ethernet. I see spikes in latency up to 5000+ and its in very short bursts most of the time and in some cases the internet will just drop out on me. The ping test i had run were also hitting response times up to 300ms. Would switching to a different ISP possibly fix this. I'm all ears.

 

[kanewolf]

Thankyou for the response. I just dont understand it all that well as my brother has no issues whatsoever and we are both connected to the same router on ethernet. I see spikes in latency up to 5000+ and its in very short bursts most of the time and in some cases the internet will just drop out on me. The ping test i had run were also hitting response times up to 300ms. Would switching to a different ISP possibly fix this. I'm all ears.

This kind of contradicts your original post. BUT ...
That might say it is a Windows problem. You should get a portable Linux on a USB drive. See if the ping spikes are gone then.

 

[Ryzzzaaaa]

This kind of contradicts your original post. BUT ...
That might say it is a Windows problem. You should get a portable Linux on a USB drive. See if the ping spikes are gone then.

will have to look into it thanks. Not sure if this is worth mentioning but i had just turned off both the 2.4g and 5g with my ethernet cable still connected to my computer. When i lag spiked the latency on my discord wouldnt notice it but a ping to 8.8.8.8 and my game would.

 

[Ryzzzaaaa]

The ISP has either configured hop 2 to not respond to ping or if it is using private IP there could be some issue with the routing.
Neither you can do anything about and it does not matter a lot.

A problem in hop 2 will cause issue in hop 3 and every hop beyond. You can not 100% prove if it is hop 2 or hop 3 but you have proved it is not your house but you do see a issue in the ISP router. The ISP though likely does have a way to ping both these devices from their side. It would only be a big issue if hop 2 and hop 3 were owned by different ISP. Not very likely but if it was say hop 9 or 10 etc then it very well could be another ISP and your ISP could not really do any more testing than you can.

Problems with latency are hard to get a ISP to fix. Packet loss is easy they find and replace something that is broken.

Latency can mean something like some neighborhood kid that is on the same fiber/cable/etc in your neighborhood is running torrent and using all the bandwidth. That is not as common as years ago when the total bandwidth in a neighborhood was not so high.

It all depends on why. If it is they do not have enough fiber that is hard to fix if it is some setting in their equipment that they might change.

Note be sure you see the actual issue. You need to see very large spikes in the latency, like over 100ms extra. You will always see random spikes to say 20-30ms extra. This is mostly testing error and limitation on the ISP router. The routers will delay responding to ping commands if they are busy doing real work like passing customer data.

So I’ve just spoken to a mutual friend that is a technician and he mentioned that he believes that it is the ISP. He mentioned something like the pipeline to the internet is congested and also something about bandwidth to the area. He suggested I keep calling up and sending these ping tests over a longer period of time to my current ISP in hopes they will escalate the issue and send a technician out to take a look at it. Could switching ISP possibly save all the time and pain for having to all of this? Note: These problems have started happening to my brother just as of now and I’ve noticed the internet on the TV’s have also slowed down when watching movies online etc.

 

[COLGeek]

Just a basic networking troubleshooting question, when was the last time you restarted your router and cable modem (or whatever ISP connected device you have)?

 

[bill001g]

If you are lucky and can get a different ISP that might be a option. It all depends on if there is some other kind of wire/fiber that can be run to your house. Even threatening to change to a new ISP might get your ISP to fix stuff.

If the wires to the house do not change then you only kinda get a different ISP. There is still a company that owns the wires and the first set of equipment. All the so called ISP would rent this infrastructure. If there is some issue with this stuff it is still the same company who will fix it. Many times this is worse than when the ISP own the wires directly.

When att finally put fiber in my neighborhood I figured spectrum would get better. Nope they raise the prices which are already a lot more than att and from what a neighbor tells me it still goes down a least 1 a month.

 

[Ryzzzaaaa]

Just a basic networking troubleshooting question, when was the last time you restarted your router and cable modem (or whatever ISP connected device you have)?

ive restarted it multiple times now. Looking to possibly do a hard reset some time tomorrow.

 

[Ryzzzaaaa]

If you are lucky and can get a different ISP that might be a option. It all depends on if there is some other kind of wire/fiber that can be run to your house. Even threatening to change to a new ISP might get your ISP to fix stuff.

If the wires to the house do not change then you only kinda get a different ISP. There is still a company that owns the wires and the first set of equipment. All the so called ISP would rent this infrastructure. If there is some issue with this stuff it is still the same company who will fix it. Many times this is worse than when the ISP own the wires directly.

When att finally put fiber in my neighborhood I figured spectrum would get better. Nope they raise the prices which are already a lot more than att and from what a neighbor tells me it still goes down a least 1 a month.

Thanks for the advice, ill take it on board. The worse thing is when i'm on the call with them and they ask me to do a ping test on my end to check latency, download speeds etc. on Ookla (a web browser) and it all comes back fine because its almost impossible to test when the lag spike actually happens considering it occurs for a split second.😆. Ive tried telling them about the tests i've run on each hop through command prompt but they dont seem to care, nor understand any of it.

 

[Ralston18]

Make and model information for modem and router. Or modem/router if combined.

Run "ipconfig /all" ( without quotes) via the Command Prompt.

Copy and paste the results here.

Reason:

"Not sure if this is worth mentioning but i had just turned off both the 2.4g and 5g with my ethernet cable still connected to my computer." Reference Post #8.

It may be that both the Ethernet network adapter and the wireless network adapter are both enabled at the same time. Should be just one or the other.