[SOLVED] Routing issues in online fps game; valorant

[Mortarious]

Reason I'm sure it's routing issues is that I talked to riot support, makers of valorant, and after I gave them the ping plotter-results they told me to do a couple of things.
Restart the router then run some commands and disable IPv6, and try DNS. DNS did not work well but the rest yielded amazing results. I played 2 games after this and it was like I was playing a different game. Everything is smooth and I can take gunfights with people without a problem.

After this we are back to normal without me changing anything or restarting the pc or anything. So. I'm pretty sure it's routing issues.
Also everything is new. Windows is updated. Drivers are updated. No FPS drops or packet loss, router is couple months old, internet speed is 33/6.5 and it seems stable, no overheating...etc And the basics like playing on ethernet and making sure that nothing is taking my speed...etc are covered. Overall nothing I can think of to reflect the problem.

Router is: "ZXHN H168N V3.5" And I don't have money to upgrade it.
I'm running Windows 10.
The rest of the hardware should not matter.

What is the problem?
Best I can explain is that I think something happens resulting in my character freezing or 1-2 sort of lagging where I'm just sitting in place. I know for online FPS games there is a hundred things but like I said I ran tests and recorded my gameplay. Right after the fixes I was able to play normally. But we revert back to the same old sluggish hell that makes me unable to play.
I did this twice as well, counting for placebo because it might be, and same thing. I even tried comparing results with others and it was a stark contrast between the average being 3-5 seconds to die and me dying in 1-2 seconds.

I also noticed that after doing what riot said I had pop ups of higher ping and network issues but things were smooth and I did not have those freezes, I did have higher ping. Those messages continued until my ping settled at a lower number and I did not get the messages and that's when problems were back.
Riot suggested I talk to my ISP but I'd like to know more about the issue and exactly what it is so I can try to explain it. Because you have to understand that where I'm only few have the knowledge and ability to solve my problems. The rest are expected to be braindead. I need to be able to explain it to my ISP like they are 5 all in the hopes that I might get a specialist on the phone.

Even then I should not count on my ISP at all. And obviously I don't want to restart my router, pc, and run commands every 2 games.

What what I do to solve it?

 

[bill001g]

It is not likely it is the router. Most router problems show up as packet loss and things like rebooting itself. Maybe instead of just restart the router do a factory reset and only configure the admin and wifi passwords leave everything else default. Maybe there is some QoS or some other crap configured by accident.

Where does the pingplot show problems. If there are issues in the first hop it is a issue with your pc or unlikely your router. If the problem is in the second hop it is a issue with the connection coming to house. Normally you see packet loss here not increased ping. If you do see increased ping in hop 2 on a DSL connection it is most times becuase you have over used the bandwidth you buy from the ISP. Check very carefully that you do not have some other application running on either your pc or other pc in your house using up all the bandwidth.

The other advice like disabling IPv6 is valid and DNS might help but is more of a web browser thing since games generally use the game client to find server IP rather than DNS.

The other thing to check for is that you do not have any of that silly "gamer" network acceleration software. Some of this is packaged with the motherboard, especially if you have a killer chipset, but others comes with some video cards. Make sure you uninstall any of this software.

Now if the problem truly is the routing some place in the network there is nothing you can do about this. The path data takes is fully in control of all the different ISP in the path. There is nothing you can change or set that will affect this. Even things fully within your ISP will be extremely hard to get them to look at...especially if it is just ping delays. They will fix errors but delays are almost always a distance issue or they have overloaded a connections and for whatever reason choose to not upgrade it.

All you can do is change ISP which is not a option for most people. You can also consider VPN but this only works if the vpn happens to have a better path. It in most cases will make it slower because of all the overhead. No way to tell which if any vpn service will help since it is too dependent on how your ISP connects to the VPN company ISP, it is all trial it and see.

 

[Mortarious]

It is not likely it is the router. Most router problems show up as packet loss and things like rebooting itself. Maybe instead of just restart the router do a factory reset and only configure the admin and wifi passwords leave everything else default. Maybe there is some QoS or some other crap configured by accident.

Where does the pingplot show problems. If there are issues in the first hop it is a issue with your pc or unlikely your router. If the problem is in the second hop it is a issue with the connection coming to house. Normally you see packet loss here not increased ping. If you do see increased ping in hop 2 on a DSL connection it is most times becuase you have over used the bandwidth you buy from the ISP. Check very carefully that you do not have some other application running on either your pc or other pc in your house using up all the bandwidth.

The other advice like disabling IPv6 is valid and DNS might help but is more of a web browser thing since games generally use the game client to find server IP rather than DNS.

The other thing to check for is that you do not have any of that silly "gamer" network acceleration software. Some of this is packaged with the motherboard, especially if you have a killer chipset, but others comes with some video cards. Make sure you uninstall any of this software.

Now if the problem truly is the routing some place in the network there is nothing you can do about this. The path data takes is fully in control of all the different ISP in the path. There is nothing you can change or set that will affect this. Even things fully within your ISP will be extremely hard to get them to look at...especially if it is just ping delays. They will fix errors but delays are almost always a distance issue or they have overloaded a connections and for whatever reason choose to not upgrade it.

All you can do is change ISP which is not a option for most people. You can also consider VPN but this only works if the vpn happens to have a better path. It in most cases will make it slower because of all the overhead. No way to tell which if any vpn service will help since it is too dependent on how your ISP connects to the VPN company ISP, it is all trial it and see.

It is not likely it is the router. Most router problems show up as packet loss and things like rebooting itself. Maybe instead of just restart the router do a factory reset and only configure the admin and wifi passwords leave everything else default. Maybe there is some QoS or some other crap configured by accident.

Where does the pingplot show problems. If there are issues in the first hop it is a issue with your pc or unlikely your router. If the problem is in the second hop it is a issue with the connection coming to house. Normally you see packet loss here not increased ping. If you do see increased ping in hop 2 on a DSL connection it is most times becuase you have over used the bandwidth you buy from the ISP. Check very carefully that you do not have some other application running on either your pc or other pc in your house using up all the bandwidth.

The other advice like disabling IPv6 is valid and DNS might help but is more of a web browser thing since games generally use the game client to find server IP rather than DNS.

The other thing to check for is that you do not have any of that silly "gamer" network acceleration software. Some of this is packaged with the motherboard, especially if you have a killer chipset, but others comes with some video cards. Make sure you uninstall any of this software.

Now if the problem truly is the routing some place in the network there is nothing you can do about this. The path data takes is fully in control of all the different ISP in the path. There is nothing you can change or set that will affect this. Even things fully within your ISP will be extremely hard to get them to look at...especially if it is just ping delays. They will fix errors but delays are almost always a distance issue or they have overloaded a connections and for whatever reason choose to not upgrade it.

All you can do is change ISP which is not a option for most people. You can also consider VPN but this only works if the vpn happens to have a better path. It in most cases will make it slower because of all the overhead. No way to tell which if any vpn service will help since it is too dependent on how your ISP connects to the VPN company ISP, it is all trial it and see.

Below is the test results they asked for.

• Everything in router settings is default anyway.
• Problem is not ping. I can handle ping. Problem is like failure is accurately update my actions and enemy action. Basically at some point I freeze.
• Yes I ruled out other internet usage. I disconnected the other pc from the router and shut down the wifi then shutdown all other programs and checked task manager. Even then internet usage is ping not freezing. As far as I know
• No "gaming" acceleration software.
• If it is ISP I will need to understand the problem so I can try to tell the braindead agent so he can connect me to a less braindead person. And like you said it's extremely hard to get them to change it. So. Trying to get just a basic understanding can help.
• No money for paid VPN. Free VPN I used softether but it's completely random and lately it started not even working.
• No. If I use my internet quota my speed gets reduced to something like 100 kilobyte or something. Not joking.
• Yes. Changing ISP is meaningless. In fact my ISP is probably the best or 2nd best here anyway.
• I was hoping for a software fix. If I can disable IPv6 and run commands then it works well for a while. Does not that mean I have some control over it?
• You have to excuse me. Networking is not my thing. But thanks for trying to help

 

[bill001g]

Well that shows nothing very interesting.

In this case it show you have no ping issues and very little jitter. Your average ping times are close to the minimum number. Your overall latency is very good if this is to the game server.

Now this could be because your problems are random which is a huge pain. You have to get lucky to get a tool like pingplot to catch it.

I would leave IPv6 disabled all the time. Uncheck the box in the nic setting if you have been doing it a different way. IPv6 has very little use and for some reason even though it is has been called the "future" of the internet for 20yrs it many times is slower and has more issues.

What you are going to have to do is make your own ping plotter that you can run all the time. Open a number of CMD windows and let them run in the background while you play the game. You want to run constant ping to commands to 192.168.1.1 (your router), 172.16.53.150 (the ISP first router), and some other IP like 8.8.8.8. If you can get the game server IP to reply to ping you can try that instead but in the ping plot it appears the server is configured to not reply.

This could be a game issue. If your ping commands show nothing it makes it even more likely. Many times stupid stuff like video drivers or video settings in the game can cause the program to get stuck in the video routines but it blames the network for the delays.

 

[Mortarious]

Well that shows nothing very interesting.

In this case it show you have no ping issues and very little jitter. Your average ping times are close to the minimum number. Your overall latency is very good if this is to the game server.

Now this could be because your problems are random which is a huge pain. You have to get lucky to get a tool like pingplot to catch it.

I would leave IPv6 disabled all the time. Uncheck the box in the nic setting if you have been doing it a different way. IPv6 has very little use and for some reason even though it is has been called the "future" of the internet for 20yrs it many times is slower and has more issues.

What you are going to have to do is make your own ping plotter that you can run all the time. Open a number of CMD windows and let them run in the background while you play the game. You want to run constant ping to commands to 192.168.1.1 (your router), 172.16.53.150 (the ISP first router), and some other IP like 8.8.8.8. If you can get the game server IP to reply to ping you can try that instead but in the ping plot it appears the server is configured to not reply.

This could be a game issue. If your ping commands show nothing it makes it even more likely. Many times stupid stuff like video drivers or video settings in the game can cause the program to get stuck in the video routines but it blames the network for the delays.

Well. I can't play in my current state. So. What to do exactly? I can run the commands as admin and all. Just what are they exactly and what to do after like what are the results that I can expect and so on.

Graphic drivers are updated. Settings are low. I can change them trying to find different results.
Again at this point I just can't play

 

[bill001g]

You have to try a little bit. Either type in ping with no options or find a youtube video if you can't figure it out.

The goal is purely to find out if you actually have a network problem or it is something else. Does no good to try to fix the wrong thing. Your pingplot results say it is not a network problem but you need to verify that. You for example don't want to spend a lot of time replacing cables if the problem is something with the game or the reverse.

 

[Mortarious]

You have to try a little bit. Either type in ping with no options or find a youtube video if you can't figure it out.

The goal is purely to find out if you actually have a network problem or it is something else. Does no good to try to fix the wrong thing. Your pingplot results say it is not a network problem but you need to verify that. You for example don't want to spend a lot of time replacing cables if the problem is something with the game or the reverse.

I'm willing to try of course.
So I ran "ping 172.16.53.150" and got: Min=5/Max=6/Average=5. No packet loss
and "ping 8.8.8.8" Min=4/Max=5/Average=4. No packet loss.
This the data we need?
Interestingly there is a network buffer option in valorant. I set it to max then game was <Mod Edit>. I set it to minimum game was kinda good. Now funnily enough it was always at minimum.
Basically I think messing around with settings changes things and can actually get it to be smooth. But it never stays fixed.
It's like there is a background service that always forces it back to be unplayable.
I also tried increasing the quality option to higher and lower but no noticeable smoothness.
Anyway what makes you think it's not a network problem?

 

[bill001g]

Your ping test shows no problems but it did not run long enough.
You need to use the -t option so it runs constantly. Then when you see issues in the game you can quickly switch over and check. This is why you run these commands in background windows.

The reason I say it is not a network problem is all your current testing shows no problems.

You will quickly get into the case where the game company says it must be a network problem but your ISP says there is not and nothing will be done. The ISP is lazy and when the problem is very intermittent they do not want to constantly test you line. You have to do the work for them basically. It is easy to fix something that is broken all the time.

Game companies constantly blame the network because it is a common cause of lag. Problem is I have seen game companies put out a new patch and everyone is getting lag they still try to blame the network, and then they very quietly fix something and never admit they were wrong.

Pretty much the game company has blamed your ISP to get you off the phone. If you get a halfway smart person when you call back you can say see here is the output from the ping commands I was running at the same time as the game. They showed no problems with the network at the same time the game had lag spikes.

They game company will then of course start to blame something in your computer. It likely kinda is but it is much more likely it is just one of the hundreds of settings you can make in a game.

 

[Mortarious]

Your ping test shows no problems but it did not run long enough.
You need to use the -t option so it runs constantly. Then when you see issues in the game you can quickly switch over and check. This is why you run these commands in background windows.

The reason I say it is not a network problem is all your current testing shows no problems.

You will quickly get into the case where the game company says it must be a network problem but your ISP says there is not and nothing will be done. The ISP is lazy and when the problem is very intermittent they do not want to constantly test you line. You have to do the work for them basically. It is easy to fix something that is broken all the time.

Game companies constantly blame the network because it is a common cause of lag. Problem is I have seen game companies put out a new patch and everyone is getting lag they still try to blame the network, and then they very quietly fix something and never admit they were wrong.

Pretty much the game company has blamed your ISP to get you off the phone. If you get a halfway smart person when you call back you can say see here is the output from the ping commands I was running at the same time as the game. They showed no problems with the network at the same time the game had lag spikes.

They game company will then of course start to blame something in your computer. It likely kinda is but it is much more likely it is just one of the hundreds of settings you can make in a game.

Thank you for taking the time.
I ran ping -t with the same 2 addresses and the results were basically the same. During a deathmatch btw.
Average of like 4-5 ms and 0 packet loss to both.
However I did get maximum of 76 ms to 8.8.8.8 and max of 42 to 172.16.53.150

Now if you would interpret those results to me I'd appreciate it.
If it's from riot can you explain it so I can make another ticket or just attempt to fix the problem in general. Or is it something else or do I need to run more tests?

 

[bill001g]

The maximum means very little it is the average and and how far that average is above the minimum. Your game traffic is competing with the ping traffic so maybe that one ping had to wait in a buffer for other data to be transmitted.

Those are actually tiny. It take huge numbers like 200-300ms to be able to be detected in a game and you have to have a lot of them. One here and there you will never notice.

Not sure what to tell you. It almost has to be the game in some way. Maybe you see something if you leave the resource monitor tab open. What you are looking for is something unusual that happens when the game lags. Could be cpu or disk or maybe something else.

I am a network guy and all my training and experience is in that area. Detailed PC stuff was always another group so I only know from troubleshooting my own home machines. Games just make this more complex because they do not document anything...the hackers would of course exploit it.

I would ask riot why they think there are ping spikes. Where do they see this. I would point out your 2 ping traces that show no problems to your ISP and to a large google dns server (8.8.8.8). It would mean if there was actual ping spikes it would be either in their ISP or someplace in their network if it were real. I suspect the ping spikes are not real. Many games do not actually use a ping command and measure latency another way. If you want a example open the resource monitor and go to the network tab. You will see session that are open with say your web browser and you can see the actual latency to all the different IP addresses it is talking to. Unfortunately games because of how they send data can not generally be seen on the screen. Do not get too hung up on any number on this screen there are too many variables to make any assumptions. Now if all of them are say 500ms then you likely have a internet problem.

 

[ASHGARD7]

Reason I'm sure it's routing issues is that I talked to riot support, makers of valorant, and after I gave them the ping plotter-results they told me to do a couple of things.
Restart the router then run some commands and disable IPv6, and try DNS. DNS did not work well but the rest yielded amazing results. I played 2 games after this and it was like I was playing a different game. Everything is smooth and I can take gunfights with people without a problem.

After this we are back to normal without me changing anything or restarting the pc or anything. So. I'm pretty sure it's routing issues.
Also everything is new. Windows is updated. Drivers are updated. No FPS drops or packet loss, router is couple months old, internet speed is 33/6.5 and it seems stable, no overheating...etc And the basics like playing on ethernet and making sure that nothing is taking my speed...etc are covered. Overall nothing I can think of to reflect the problem.

Router is: "ZXHN H168N V3.5" And I don't have money to upgrade it.
I'm running Windows 10.
The rest of the hardware should not matter.

What is the problem?
Best I can explain is that I think something happens resulting in my character freezing or 1-2 sort of lagging where I'm just sitting in place. I know for online FPS games there is a hundred things but like I said I ran tests and recorded my gameplay. Right after the fixes I was able to play normally. But we revert back to the same old sluggish hell that makes me unable to play.
I did this twice as well, counting for placebo because it might be, and same thing. I even tried comparing results with others and it was a stark contrast between the average being 3-5 seconds to die and me dying in 1-2 seconds.

I also noticed that after doing what riot said I had pop ups of higher ping and network issues but things were smooth and I did not have those freezes, I did have higher ping. Those messages continued until my ping settled at a lower number and I did not get the messages and that's when problems were back.
Riot suggested I talk to my ISP but I'd like to know more about the issue and exactly what it is so I can try to explain it. Because you have to understand that where I'm only few have the knowledge and ability to solve my problems. The rest are expected to be braindead. I need to be able to explain it to my ISP like they are 5 all in the hopes that I might get a specialist on the phone.

Even then I should not count on my ISP at all. And obviously I don't want to restart my router, pc, and run commands every 2 games.

What what I do to solve it?

did you ever fixed this issue? Im having routing issues as well but with fortnite ive done almost everything except swapping to a new router still on the at&t router

 

[Mortarious]

did you ever fixed this issue? Im having routing issues as well but with fortnite ive done almost everything except swapping to a new router still on the at&t router

Sadly no. I made another ticket and kept with them until we arrived to this "Sorry the troubleshooting didn't pan out up until now. When it comes to VALORANT since it's still such a new game we try to avoid those issues as much as possible but we still do not have all the data in order for a solution to work for everybody 100% of the time. Still we try our best to solve each and every issue our players encounter.

I've send your logs to one of our QA teams. The issue has been reported and the team should be able to find a solution and patch out the issue for you and other players in your situation, tho, I can't say when that is going to be as there are a lot of requests the teams are working on at this time. Still, they should be able to find a fix for this and release it."

I just hope they fix it eventually.