Ping problem, need help.

[PrithBubba]

So, here's some background. I have a custom PC, and a reeeally old Wi-Fi router. No, seriously, like 3.5 years old which wasn't maintained well. It's dusty and everything and is placed on the ground. "Binatone" company so doesn't look like the best. Anyway, my ping used to be 130-250 tops on this server I play on, online. As well as pretty much every other server. But now, suddenly, it has gone up to 300 minimum. I don't know what the problem is. I've heard some suggestions about going "without router" but I can't because mine is directly connected, as my cabinet didn't have the "wifi card" thing in it. Anyway, sometimes the router randomly disconnects then gives me the pings as it did, it used to anyway, now it just stays at a solid 300+ ping. It's really annoying and I'm not sure if I'm supposed to buy a new router or talk to my ISP or what. I'm not at all familiar with routers so I'm gonna need help on which ones to buy and if these are able to connect to my ISP etc. It'd be great (if needed) that you guys could show me what router I have to buy from this site; flipkart.com or amazon.in.
Thanks.
~Prith

 

[PrithBubba]

If it'd help, my internet works properly and fast as ever on other sites such as youtube, probably proving no one is downloading anything in my house at the moment I get a seriously high ping.

 

[little_me]

While I don't have clear solution, doing following might point out to what is the problem.
Open command prompt.
tracert www.google.com
see the IP's? and their pings? that is what it takes for each step on the way. if there is a big difference between one and next, the problem is somewhere in there.

Usually 1st one is your own computer, second is the router, third might be the modem unless router/modem is bundled together
next step is usually all your ISP

you can also of course tracert to the ip of game server too to compare where the problem is if it affects games only. For the record, youtube doesn't really care about ping, it can be 10, 50 or 500ms as long as it is stable and youtube can fill your buffer.

 

[PrithBubba]

While I don't have clear solution, doing following might point out to what is the problem.
Open command prompt.
tracert www.google.com
see the IP's? and their pings? that is what it takes for each step on the way. if there is a big difference between one and next, the problem is somewhere in there.

Usually 1st one is your own computer, second is the router, third might be the modem unless router/modem is bundled together
next step is usually all your ISP

you can also of course tracert to the ip of game server too to compare where the problem is if it affects games only. For the record, youtube doesn't really care about ping, it can be 10, 50 or 500ms as long as it is stable and youtube can fill your buffer.

I didn't exactly get the "tracert" part but yeah, I also feel it may be from my computer, but how? The download speeds are the same so that doesn't mean I'm downloading any updates which causes the ping. I haven't updated windows in a while, can that be the problem? Please help further.
Thanks
~Prith

 

[little_me]

I find it unlikely that not having updated windows in a while would somehow cause ping results to change.
Since you didn't get the tracert part, I'll redo it since it is all that my post had.
1. Press windows+R to open run command prompt
2. type in "cmd" without quotes and press enter, this opens command prompt
3. type in "tracert www.google.com" and press enter, this looks up the network route to google's servers and pings each step 3 times (min max, average of all 3)

if the situation is bad at that moment (you might have to run it multiple times depending when ping results are bad) you would see where along the route the problem would be.

Alternately, you can replace www.google.com in tracert with ip of the game server you are having trouble with.

 

[PrithBubba]

Okay, well my results are 1, <1 ms <1 ms <ms
2, * * * Request timed out
3, * 20ms 24ms
4, 19ms 19s 19ms
5, 32m 27ms 270ms
6 94ms 63ms 64ms
7 20ms 20ms 20ms
It went on until 13, after 7 the highest it reached is 49ms.
I don't even know what the problem is. I have a feeling it's my computer, because my brother plays some game in which he gets 200 ping most of the time, now I don't know the server he connects to but I don't think there's many servers hosted around me.
My point being, if it's my computer, how do i fix it? Also, i'm not connected via wifi. I'm connected via the direct thing.
ADDITIONAL INFO: My router's placed on the ground next to a window located about a meter above it and I have no dish installed so is it possible that might be doing something? Should I try relocating it?
Also, I don't know if I said this already but yeah, if it's my computer, how do I fix it?
Although it may be my ISP because my router thing is reallllly old and dusty and cheap. No, seriously. It's like a $15 one from 4 years ago. And I haven't called my ISP for support in over a year I believe, so maybe they took it for granted and slowly degraded it or something like that? lol.
On a serious note, I need help with this. Cheers.

 

[little_me]

Step 2 refused to answer to ping (which is why there were those *'s) which is not common but not necessarily a reason to worry.
part of the problem might be on step 3, where one of the test pings timed out. If this keeps happening it would translate to lost packets which WILL cause a mess on connection when playing.

Since you omitted the text/IP part of the steps, it isn't clear if step 3 is already in the ISP area of network or inside your home.

Besides tracert, you can also run:
ping IPOFTHETARGET -t

which causes your computer to ping the target IP until told to stop (close the cmd window or pressing CTRL-C)
you could leave it running for a bit, like few minutes to screen out possibility of some random lost packet for no real reason.
you should aim it at step 3 (since step 2 doesn't want to answer, it seems) and let it run, then stop it (CTRL-C) which will show the statistics for the run.

Below is the example of the result:
Ping statistics for 216.58.209.132: (Yes, this is what it goes to for www.google.com, your IP will be different)
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 18ms, Maximum = 18ms, Average = 18ms

Things to look out for: lost packets, a network that works normally and which is not full, should NOT have any lost packets. they start to happen if the bandwidth is saturated enough that occasional ping packet has no room.
as example, if your download speed is 8Mbps and you (or anyone else on the network) are downloading something at that or near that speed (close to 800kB/sec) it will cause both lost packets sometimes and increase in ping time.