[SOLVED] Reason for High Ping/Bufferbloat?

[xxxmasterpvpxxx]

Connection Details:
Optus NBN Landline connection.
Router/Modem Combo: Sagemcom F@ST 3864V3HP
10 Devices connected via WiFi.
All issues occurring are over WiFi.

Ever since I have gotten NBN installed (had it for about a year now), It has been pretty decent for the most part. A few issues here and there at the beginning but eventually was working fine. Recently however (past week), I have been receiving very high ping spikes in games. These happen usually every 30 seconds, and can vary from jumping to around 100ms and 500ms. This happens on all devices that are running any multiplayer game, although is not noticeable when browsing the internet or any other small internet application due to it being a ping problem. My download and upload speed remains at what I should be getting for what I am paying for.

This was very odd as it has usually been fine no matter how many devices were connected to the internet at once. Although I have figured out that it still occurs even when 1 person is using the internet. The issue also seems to fix itself every once and a while and will be fine for the rest of the day, but will begin happening again the next morning.

I have done pretty much everything on my end, including resetting the NBN box, resetting the router, power cycling both etc. I have tried changing WiFi channels, with all having the same effect. I also decided to do a Bufferbloat test, which shows I have a lot of excess ping and thus giving me a bad result for the test (I have never actually done this test before, so I do not have any knowledge on what it was giving me before the issue started occurring). I have pinged (in CMD) both my router and google, and have found they both show the same ping spikes that I am receiving in games.

After trying pretty much everything on my end, I called up Optus to ask if they could do any troubleshooting such as reset the line. They had done this which still did not work in the end. Everything they told me to do was something that I had already tried. So they offered to send a technician to replace our router in the next few days.

At this point I am wondering if you guys could think of anything that it could be (other than a router fault)? I would appreciate some suggestions so that I could have some to try just in case the new replacement router does not fix the issue. Either way I am thinking of getting my own router as the ones that Optus supply are obviously a pile of garbage.

Thanks for any help in advance.

 

[bill001g]

You need to test on ethernet to see if the problem might be the ISP or maybe the router. Random spikes in ping is extremely common in wifi and will hide any issues with other equipment. The largest problem with wifi is not the devices inside your house it is all the people living near you using wifi in their houses. This signal leaks into your house and causes interference which causes latency spikes.

Bufferbloat is only a issue if you are using attempting to use 100% of your download rate. The data gets put in buffers to avoid dropping the data. If you are not using all your bandwidth then you should never see bufferbloat. The testing sites are making too big a deal about this. It just a symptom of your connection being overloaded which is the actual problem not that it causes buffer bloat.

 

[xxxmasterpvpxxx]

I just find it really weird that this has not happened for over a year and has all of a sudden been consistently bad for the past week. I have always used WiFi and have never had an issue like this, or at least for this long. If I were to ever have latency spikes it would be at most for like a half hour. Here it has been ongoing for about a week. But obviously as you said, this is common with WiFi, so it wouldn't surprise me.

I currently do not have any device close enough that can test with ethernet, but I should be able to by tomorrow. Is there anything else that I could possibly test to narrow on the cause?

 

[bill001g]

Wifi you never know what new toy your neighbors purchased. All kinds of people buying stupid mesh systems so now you have mulitple wifi device hogging wifi bandwidth in more houses.

You end solution if it is wifi might be powerline network. You really only need to plug gaming things into it wifi spikes have little impact on other traffic.

 

[xxxmasterpvpxxx]

Wifi you never know what new toy your neighbors purchased. All kinds of people buying stupid mesh systems so now you have mulitple wifi device hogging wifi bandwidth in more houses.

You end solution if it is wifi might be powerline network. You really only need to plug gaming things into it wifi spikes have little impact on other traffic.

Sorry for the late reply. I do not really have the option for a powerline network. I don't know but I just struggle to believe it would be anything to do with neighbors purchasing anything like this, especially in my area.

I only got to test with ethernet for a little bit, and found only 1 ping spike to 150ms with the rest remaining consistent if that means anything. The new router was also installed (same model), however the same issue still occurs. This made me feel like it was not on my end, but have been told many times by my ISP that the connection is good. I'd also like to mention that I tried testing at 3am in the morning and it still had the issue. I highly doubt anyone in my area was up using wifi at that time.

Can you think of any other suggestions, or should I just hope that it gets better over time? Because I still find it very weird that this out of nowhere started happening, and has not stopped ever since. I'd also like to reassure that it will sometimes work fine during the day, and then returning to the same issue soon enough.

 

[bill001g]

You could try to ping your router IP. If you get spikes on the wifi it definitely is the wifi causing the issue.

 

[xxxmasterpvpxxx]

You could try to ping your router IP. If you get spikes on the wifi it definitely is the wifi causing the issue.

Do you mean the gateway ip? The one or I use to get into my router settings or something else?

 

[bill001g]

Yes gateway which should be the same as the admin ip