Random ping spikes - shared house

[i_l_y_s_m]

Hi, thanks for reading this.

I've recently moved to this shared house where we have 4 studios in the same building who shares the same internet. Normally everything is fine and I'm pulling a nice 40ms, but at random times (mostly at weekends) I have sometimes experienced high ping spikes, up to 400ms.
See picture below:

As I'm a big fan of FPS games and such, you may understand that this is very frustrating.

Everyone in the household is connected via WiFi and I've tried both wireless and wired connection where both show the same ping. I have 2 different computers with completely different build which shows roughly the same pings.

I've also tested my download rate when these random spikes appears and I'm still able to download at 100 mbit/s. I've also tried my ping while fully downloading and then it shows a constant ping of 300ms, rather than the spikey ping.

The hub we're using is a Virgin Media Hub 3.0. The internet provider is then also Virgin Media.

Any suggestions of what can causes this?

The reason why I haven't asked anyone in the household yet is because we all have our separate place and therefore we do not even see each other. And I know for a fact that my landlord knows nothing of these things at all. So I thought I'd ask you guys, as I also have the opportunity to learn something myself.

If you would need any further information, please ask. I'm not very good at these kind of stuff so feel free to ask.

Thank you once more, much appreciated!

 

[Urumiko]

Hi,

Most of my experience is with BT connections as I dont live in a cable area but recently My GF got Virgin and is getting similar problems at times with her housemates. I was getting inexplicable disconnects on league of legends which i never get elsewhere.

One thing you can do if you are able to catch the spikes is narrow it down to where its occurring to better understand the problem.

IF you ping your default gateway (the router) and the spike shows then the issue is either the router itself or your computers connection to it.

If you ping something beyond the router and it only then shows its a problem on the wan.
I suggest running a trace route to bbc.co.uk and run pings to the first 2/3 hops and see where the spike shows.

Again i am more familiar with BT but if there is any kind or error counters within the virgin router, see if these increment in a burst when the spike occurs.