When it comes to lag spikes, I want to know where they're coming from.
-If the lag spikes are coming from a node within your ISP, you need to contact them. (Smoke Ping/Line Quality Test)
-If it's between you ISP and your router, you need to look at the physical cable connection between you and your ISP. This may involve having an ISP tech come look at your house wiring and checking signal levels.
-If it's coming from your Router, you want to look for a firmware update.
-If it's on your private network, It could be a problem with your wiring, it could be coming from your computer, or another computer on the internal LAN that has some type of infection.
Network lag spikes can also be created if you are maxing your Internet bandwidth. So if you have an 10Mb connection to the internet and people are streaming netflix while you're gaming, there could be moments when the line is saturated and you get lag. I personally allocate 15Mb per person that might stream in my house to make sure I always have extra bandwidth. We can potential run 3 streams, so we have a 45Mbps internet connection.
Lag spikes can also be caused by bad LAN connections. This can be a bad ethernet cable or wifi connection that experiences interference. Wifi interference comes from other wifi devices or sometimes microwaves (on 2.4Ghz).
In my experience, it's just easier to diagnose the public side of you router first with Line Quality Tests and Smoke pings. You can get solid data that can easily pinpoint the problem. If you finished your Smoke Ping and there's no issues on the public side, it's time to start diagnosing your private network.
To do that, I'd start by using extended pings, hopefully from two computers. The first is to google, the second is to your gateway:
ping 8.8.8.8 -t
ping 192.168.1.1 -t (usually either 10.1.1.1 or 192.168.1.1, but use your gateway)
Make the ping CMD windows big enough that you can watch it scroll. You're watching to correlate spikes in latency. It's hard to see huge spike when you ping your gateway, so by pinging 8.8.8.8 you get an amplified result that can be easily to see.
By running this on two computers, you can see if both are having the same issue, or if it's only your computer.
- If your gateway pings are perfectly consistent and your 8.8.8.8 pings have spikes, then you might have a program with your router.
- If both of your computer have ping issues on both destinations, you have a problem on your network (router, cabling, or possibly computer virus)
- If only your computer, then your network isn't lagging at all, your computer is lagging. This gets into a whole other territory of diagnostics. The easiest and most time consuming solution is to perform a clean install of windows and just start over. But before you do that, try turning off your virus protection and disabling any non essential programs that might be running in case they are the culprit.
Easy things to try:
Swap ethernet cables.
If Internet is using a cable modem, make sure you don't have extra live jacks in the house with nothing connected to them.
Turn off virus protection (for testing)
Reset your router (I rarely do a factory reset, usually just rebooting can help if this is the problem)
Make sure you router is connected to the wall with the right cable. (this can be a big issue with cable modems using cheap coax)
Turn off all other computers in the house while you play game (for testing to see if the problem is being introduced by one of them)
Test when no one is streaming.
Ensure your wifi is secure and you don't have neighbors piggy backing all your bandwidth.
If you're on wifi, try connecting over ethernet (I think you said you're on ethernet, but not sure if this is your computers connection or not.)
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram