Massive default gateway pings when playing games.

[Thoran]

Hello,

A few days ago I started noticing huge lag spikes whenever I would play games. I realised this problem was caused by my ping moving up into the 1000s at random intervals. The ping spikes are becoming more common, now to the point where every online game I have tested is completely unplayable and I'm kicked in no time. I believe this is due to massive spikes in default gateway pings whenever an online game is launched. Normally it sits at about 2ms but when I load up a game it stays constant at a couple hundred or into the thousands and goes back down when the game is closed. A similar thing happens during streaming YouTube videos but not as severe, I'll see the ping go very high right at the start of loading the video but it quickly settles down into about 50ms. Still quite high but far better. I did not change any settings or download any drivers or anything before this happened. I am using a TP-LINK 802.11ac Network Adapter #2 on driver 6.30.223.228 over the 802.11n protocol, 2.4GHz band. I have a BT HomeHub 5 and websites like speedtest.net show perfectly reasonable results, pinging websites with cmd is again consistent and reasonable and I have performed multiple Malwarebytes scans and Windows Defender hasn't picked up on anything.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

 

[Ralston18]

First check for any loose connections - everywhere within your network. Make certain that all plugs are fully and firmly in place.

Second, who manages your network router? Check the router's logs (if available and enabled) as the logs may have captured some error codes or messages.

Who is your ISP? No harm in calling them and asking that they check the connections from their end.

May take several calls especially if the problem is intermittent.

You can also run tracert and pathping targeting the game site URL or YouTube. The test results should give you some insights as to where the problems are occurring. Within your network, via your ISP, or elsewhere along the internet.

 

[bill001g]

Try a ethernet cable to see if it is some problem with the internet or maybe the router.

It is extremely common to get random ping spikes in games on wifi which is the reason it is not a recommended things to do. Most other applications are not affected as much by variarions in the ping times like games are.

I most cases it is some form of interference causing the long times. The router keeps trying to retransmit damaged data which takes some time to do. You are pretty limited unless you know what is causing the errors. Many times the problem is all the neighbors also trying to use wifi.

It is the standard try other radio channels and maybe set the width to 20mhz rather than 20/40 maybe you get lucky.

 

[Thoran]

Try a ethernet cable to see if it is some problem with the internet or maybe the router.

It is extremely common to get random ping spikes in games on wifi which is the reason it is not a recommended things to do. Most other applications are not affected as much by variarions in the ping times like games are.

I most cases it is some form of interference causing the long times. The router keeps trying to retransmit damaged data which takes some time to do. You are pretty limited unless you know what is causing the errors. Many times the problem is all the neighbors also trying to use wifi.

It is the standard try other radio channels and maybe set the width to 20mhz rather than 20/40 maybe you get lucky.

Plugging an ethernet cable has had no effect on the ping and interference is somewhat unlikely as the high router ping is consistent at all times throughout the day, on all devices. I have however noticed that both my laptop and desktop use 192.168.1.254 as the default gateway. Is this supposed to happen?

 

[Thoran]

First check for any loose connections - everywhere within your network. Make certain that all plugs are fully and firmly in place.

Second, who manages your network router? Check the router's logs (if available and enabled) as the logs may have captured some error codes or messages.

Who is your ISP? No harm in calling them and asking that they check the connections from their end.

May take several calls especially if the problem is intermittent.

You can also run tracert and pathping targeting the game site URL or YouTube. The test results should give you some insights as to where the problems are occurring. Within your network, via your ISP, or elsewhere along the internet.

There does not appear to be any loose connections, I unplugged and replugged everything from the router and gave it a further reboot. The only thing that seems out of place in the logs is that requests keep getting blocked due to ICMP replay which according to licquorice on this thread implies that it is the router's firewall blocking pings. Though I don't think that there are enough pings being blocked to account for the issue entirely.

 

[bill001g]

If you get ping spikes to the router IP using ethernet cable then it almost has to be a defective router.

A faulty cable you would see data loss not delays. There are only 2 place you get the delays. The router got the ping packet and was busy so it delayed responding or the PC actually received the response packet but was too busy doing something else and left it in the ethernet buffer and is telling lies about how long it took.

I could see maybe a extra 10-20ms but if you are getting hundreds of ms on a ethernet cable something has to be very wrong. The normal ping times for most directly connected devices is less than 1ms. The actual data transfer time is less than 1/100 of 1ms.

 

[Thoran]

If you get ping spikes to the router IP using ethernet cable then it almost has to be a defective router.

A faulty cable you would see data loss not delays. There are only 2 place you get the delays. The router got the ping packet and was busy so it delayed responding or the PC actually received the response packet but was too busy doing something else and left it in the ethernet buffer and is telling lies about how long it took.

I could see maybe a extra 10-20ms but if you are getting hundreds of ms on a ethernet cable something has to be very wrong. The normal ping times for most directly connected devices is less than 1ms. The actual data transfer time is less than 1/100 of 1ms.

Ok, thank you for your assistance, I'll be in contact with my ISP to get a new modem.