Question Packet loss I believe while gaming

[Salamander_B0i]

I am not the smartest in terms of networking/wifi area, but recently while I play games it seems that I get packet loss quite often and pretty badly. My ping stays the same, same with fps whatnot, but it seems that I am getting packet loss and I'm not sure why. I have realtek gaming 2.5gbe family controller, ive tried to reset the networking, switched to windows 11 (was on 10 because I just didnt care much to update) I believe my router firmware is up to date as i've looked to update it but cant find anything for it. Next thing I was going to do is try replacing the ethernet cable. I would like to be able to fix it myself without calling some1 for help but I am limited in knowledge Any ideas ?

 

[bill001g]

Pretty easy to see if you are actually losing packet or it is something else.

Open a couple of cmd windows in the background while you play the game. Leave a constant ping command run to say 8.8.8.8 in one and your router IP in the other. When you see issues in the game quickly switch over and see if either ping command shows loss.
Loss to your router IP would be something inside your house. It is rather uncommon when you are using ethernet. Loss to 8.8.8.8 likely means there is loss in the connection coming to your house but you would have to do more testing to be sure.

 

[Grobe]

Only games affected? Does the affected games use UDP ?

 

[Salamander_B0i]

Only games affected? Does the affected games use UDP ?

I'm not sure, the games worked fine before it only recently started

 

[Salamander_B0i]

Pretty easy to see if you are actually losing packet or it is something else.

Open a couple of cmd windows in the background while you play the game. Leave a constant ping command run to say 8.8.8.8 in one and your router IP in the other. When you see issues in the game quickly switch over and see if either ping command shows loss.
Loss to your router IP would be something inside your house. It is rather uncommon when you are using ethernet. Loss to 8.8.8.8 likely means there is loss in the connection coming to your house but you would have to do more testing to be sure.

In the 8.8.8.8 one the time goes up and sometimes the request times out

 

[bill001g]

So if the one to your router is good and it is bad to say 8.8.8.8 then that means there likely is a problem outside your house.

Your next step is to run tracert 8.8.8.8

It will not likely show any issues. The goal is to get the IP addresses of the routers in the path.

Hop 1 should be the ip of your router. Hop 2 should be the ip of the first ISP router. It tests the path between your house and the first ISP equipment. It is the most common place to see data loss.

What you now want to do is ping hop 1 and hop 2 in background cmd windows. What you hope to see is no loss in hop 1 and loss in hop 2. You should then be able to contact your ISP and see if they can find the reason.

You can point out to them that it can not be your pc or router since you would see loss in hop 1.

If both hop 1 and hop 2 are good you can try other hops in the path but the more you go away from your house the harder it is to get fixed. It can be a problem in another ISP network.