Need Help With Latency, I've Done My Diligence

[Isaacsg31]

http://imgur.com/gallery/X6POrRX/new

Hi guys,

I'll try to keep this short. I'm getting to the end of my rope with this stuff. I am trying to be able to game effectively on my xbox one (for halo). I have midcontinent communications for an ISP. I have a Motorola surfboard (Docsis 3.0), the most recent version. I have a Netgear Nighthawk x6 as well. My download from my ISP is 110Mbps down and about 15Mbps up with around 5ms latency for the closest server on speedtest. All devices seem to get this speed... other than the xbox. On the xbox I am hitting 290ms latency with maybe 20 down and 6 up. Obviously not ideal.

I ran a tracert and found my fifth hop to be very severe when I pinged xbox live servers, around 550ms. Same for google at around 250 (markedly better, but not great). I have tried swapping Ethernet cables, setting up a manual DNS with namebench, among other things. Is this a problem, albeit recent, with Midco? Any help would be amazing as this is driving me crazy, and I will provide any information I can.

Thank you in advance.

 

[bill001g]

These are hard to find because the issue appears to be that midco has problems with the peering with other ISP. There appears to be a direct connection to MSN network but there is some issue with it. Could be overloaded. Because the latency drops in other hops and then increases again it is very likely the traffic is running asynchronously. The traffic from you to the location can go though one set of routers and the traffic coming back can follow another. A traceroute from your end only show your path to the devices in the path not how they get back to you.

You can dig and dig though multiple ISP using tools like looking glass but even if you figure out they have a router overloaded in some city what do you think you can do with that information. The first level support guys will go ..."what is traceroute have you rebooted your router ?"

If this actually does only affect the xbox then you have a massively strange issue. Once the traffic leaves your router it all appears to come from the same ip address so it should always follow the same trace for all devices in your house.

 

[Isaacsg31]

It doesn't appear to be only with the xbox, as when I trace the servers for xbox on my laptop, I still get 200ms minimum. It is strange, when I get network statistics on my xbox it is almost static at 200ms right now, and I can't figure out why. On a side note, today I ran the same test while directly connected to the modem from the X1 and I got 90ms, so still not ideal, but better. Could the router be causing issues? In my understanding, it shouldn't be as the data has already left the house.

Is there anything I can do in terms of contacting Midco? Will they even be able to assist this issue? When I called them today they said they would get back to me, along with MS support as well. I'm not sure what the best thing to do at this point is, and I'm even more confused why I can knock off another 100ms when direct connecting to the modem, as I only had that device connected at the time.

Any advice is awesome at this point. I need to fix this. And I'll answer any questions I can.

 

[Isaacsg31]

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Also, I just ran a trace against my girlfriends internet the next room over in the apt complex I'm in and got this (first result) vs mine. Differences being obviously the router and she is using the building supplied internet (no modem, its somewhere in the building). I am using Midco's private service. The building appears to be supplied by qwest at much slower speeds, but apparently with better latency. It also appears not to have the lag spike destination that midco does when comparing it to my trace. I think the route I take is in Toronto from Sioux Falls, where Qwest doesn't route through Toronto. At the expense of an additional 130ms in latency. Anyone... why is it doing this? And how can I stop it?

Thank you!

http://imgur.com/gallery/fQVPXu6/new

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4289859590

 

[bill001g]

If you had a issue with your router the very first hop would be higher. Once a delay is in the network everything past it is also delayed. That is why you can tell that there is no issues directly in midco network. It appears to be in the inter connectivity between them and other ISP.

Although you can infer some of it by digging around they will never actually tell you how much bandwidth they have on their various ISP connections. They likely even have connections that only come online if they would fail their primary ones so it is extremely tough.

Still a small end consumer can do nothing.

Maybe if you were a big customer like netflix and paid a huge amount for your connection you could demand they upgrade their network.

If this was just say a bug the ISP will want it fixed as bad as you do. Even a large defective router will be replaced in a day or so. All ISP monitor their network they know what the latency is at all times since that is one of the ways they detect issues with their network, I suspect your ISP just has not purchased enough bandwidth and you are seeing backlogs.

You might try in the middle of the night and see if it is any different.

 

[Isaacsg31]

I think you're probably correct with everything you said in your last post, and I appreciate the input.

Two of my friends are network engineers and they think having between a 200-500ms latency spike on the network handoff really shouldn't happen unless there was something wrong, it's using back up routers, or it's configured poorly. So I guess at this point I have to wait for them to get back to me so I can hopefully convince someone to do something about it.

I am hoping that you are right about it being a bug, and they want to get it fixed, and it's just no one has become obsessive enough to look into it. My only hope is that I have had midco for 5 years, and it never did this upon until a month or two ago.

 

[The stew]

It doesn't appear to be only with the xbox, as when I trace the servers for xbox on my laptop, I still get 200ms minimum. It is strange, when I get network statistics on my xbox it is almost static at 200ms right now, and I can't figure out why. On a side note, today I ran the same test while directly connected to the modem from the X1 and I got 90ms, so still not ideal, but better. Could the router be causing issues? In my understanding, it shouldn't be as the data has already left the house.

Is there anything I can do in terms of contacting Midco? Will they even be able to assist this issue? When I called them today they said they would get back to me, along with MS support as well. I'm not sure what the best thing to do at this point is, and I'm even more confused why I can knock off another 100ms when direct connecting to the modem, as I only had that device connected at the time.

Any advice is awesome at this point. I need to fix this. And I'll answer any questions I can.

 

[The stew]

There isn't a thing you can do Bud, I have, or had midcontenent communications and literally spent hours with their tecs and hours with Xbox support. I was back and forth between the two since March. The problem is Midco. I finally canceled my service with them today. My Xbox had latency of 215-300 constant with them. Tried my hotspot on iohone6 tonight to see what happen. I had hours of lag free gameplay! Latency was only 135, however I did have strict NAT. Not bad for 4G. I tried asking Midco to look into issue about some of their main routers not programmed properly for Xbox live. They tried telling me there is a setting on my Xbox one that I needed to change. Lol. I guess if you have no clue just make it up and pass the blame. Hope this helps, change providers and your stress will melt away.

 

[murlo26]

I am seeing the same thing:

I just spoke with them and they are getting me a network engineer to talk with soon.

I just moved to Dilworth Mn (basically Moorhead) and have Midco as well, same story, 250mS latency which is unacceptable to me. I had Comcast in the twin cities and they were never over 40mS.

Has anyone switched to another provider? Cable one, century link or someone similar? I told Midco if they don't resolve this I am switching providers and I will. I play enough games where I am not dealing with this shit lag.

I get a great connection to Midco's servers (10mS) so I know it's something on their end.

edit: they fixed it. Their subnets were screwed up according to them and basically routing this to Japan and back causing the huge delay.

It is now 80-85ms, which isn't great but it will work I think. So they said they have been fixing this as people complain about it, so if you are seeing this complain to them and they will fix it.

 

[Isaacsg31]

I am seeing the same thing:

I just spoke with them and they are getting me a network engineer to talk with soon.

I just moved to Dilworth Mn (basically Moorhead) and have Midco as well, same story, 250mS latency which is unacceptable to me. I had Comcast in the twin cities and they were never over 40mS.

Has anyone switched to another provider? Cable one, century link or someone similar? I told Midco if they don't resolve this I am switching providers and I will. I play enough games where I am not dealing with this shit lag.

I get a great connection to Midco's servers (10mS) so I know it's something on their end.

edit: they fixed it. Their subnets were screwed up according to them and basically routing this to Japan and back causing the huge delay.

It is now 80-85ms, which isn't great but it will work I think. So they said they have been fixing this as people complain about it, so if you are seeing this complain to them and they will fix it.

Hey thanks buddy!

 

[Isaacsg31]

I am seeing the same thing:

I just spoke with them and they are getting me a network engineer to talk with soon.

I just moved to Dilworth Mn (basically Moorhead) and have Midco as well, same story, 250mS latency which is unacceptable to me. I had Comcast in the twin cities and they were never over 40mS.

Has anyone switched to another provider? Cable one, century link or someone similar? I told Midco if they don't resolve this I am switching providers and I will. I play enough games where I am not dealing with this shit lag.

I get a great connection to Midco's servers (10mS) so I know it's something on their end.

edit: they fixed it. Their subnets were screwed up according to them and basically routing this to Japan and back causing the huge delay.

It is now 80-85ms, which isn't great but it will work I think. So they said they have been fixing this as people complain about it, so if you are seeing this complain to them and they will fix it.

Hey, what exactly did you have to say to them? I'm going to do this, but I want to know how you went about it. I feel they'll give me the run around as if I don't know what I'm talking about if I don't trigger something that causes my issue to be escalated to someone who knows more about it.

Thanks in advance man.