Question Same ISP and Same Routing but only I have issues

Jul 27, 2020
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I have the same ISP along with the same fiber internet package as my friend. However, I seem to be the only one who is having packet loss and higher than usual ping.
I've asked my friend if he experiences any of the issues that I experience in game and out of game and his answer is no. What could be causing me to have these issues but not him?
Here is my WinMTR to League of Legends game server: https://pastebin.com/PEUka3yp
Here is my friends: https://pastebin.com/NXJcZux4
If you compare the two I have higher ping at some of the hops which is weird since we have the same routing and same ISP. We both are connected wired. It's also not only games that I experience internet issues with but also loading 1080p youtube videos sometimes, slow download speeds, and sites loading slow.
Another thing to add is that it seems that I only have packet loss on incoming packets and not outgoing packets. At least that's what Overwatch's net graph says.
 
You traces show nothing really. If you had not said they were different locations I would have said you just ran the test 2 times.

The end node appears to be behind a firewall or set to not respond. This make it harder to troubleshoot.

I would test to 8.8.8.8 or maybe 1.1.1.1

You have to be very careful to not read too much into random loss delays in the tools. A lot of this is based on how the testing is done and many times a ISP router is programmed to put low priority on responding to ping/trace to not disrupts its ability to pass actual traffic.

A bad trace would have loss or delay that starts say in node 5 and then has the problem all the way to the end of the trace. If you see a problem only in node 5 but no problem to the end ip then it is likely some issue with the testing not a real problem.

The only thing that stands out but it is in both traces is the packet loss to hop 3 (not sure why you have 2 routers in your house). Generally this is due to some problem with the connection to your house. You want to run a constant ping to this IP and see if you get loss. This is actually the best place to have a problem because the ISP can fix this because it is almost always due to cabling issues. Make sure you have a constant ping to your router and a ping to that ISP IP address run at the same time. When you call them you can show it is not your pc or your router but you see issues as soon as you attempt to go to the ISP office.
 
Jul 27, 2020
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You traces show nothing really. If you had not said they were different locations I would have said you just ran the test 2 times.

The end node appears to be behind a firewall or set to not respond. This make it harder to troubleshoot.

I would test to 8.8.8.8 or maybe 1.1.1.1

You have to be very careful to not read too much into random loss delays in the tools. A lot of this is based on how the testing is done and many times a ISP router is programmed to put low priority on responding to ping/trace to not disrupts its ability to pass actual traffic.

A bad trace would have loss or delay that starts say in node 5 and then has the problem all the way to the end of the trace. If you see a problem only in node 5 but no problem to the end ip then it is likely some issue with the testing not a real problem.

The only thing that stands out but it is in both traces is the packet loss to hop 3 (not sure why you have 2 routers in your house). Generally this is due to some problem with the connection to your house. You want to run a constant ping to this IP and see if you get loss. This is actually the best place to have a problem because the ISP can fix this because it is almost always due to cabling issues. Make sure you have a constant ping to your router and a ping to that ISP IP address run at the same time. When you call them you can show it is not your pc or your router but you see issues as soon as you attempt to go to the ISP office.

I have two modems because it's the way my ISP set it up the first one is the fiber modem and the second is a gateway. I feel like WinMTR doesn't fully show my issue because when playing games it's not every game that I get packet loss and high ping. Could cabling still cause issues that isn't constant packet loss?
 
Cables would not cause only certain web sites to not work they all would get the same errors. The best test is going to be cmd windows running ping to various hops in the trace in the back ground. When the game complains you can quickly switch and see if the ping see any issues.

It is not uncommon for games to lie and blame the network. Say a game is very busy rendering a image when the ping return comes in. It will blame the network for the time the packet was actually in a buffer in the pc and the program didn't bother to read it. This is why you see people say you can fix ping time by changing video settings. Makes no sense but it actually works in some games because the game is telling lies.

You really hope the problem is either in your house or in the connection to the ISP. You will not get network issues fixed outside your ISP network...or even in their network because the level 1 techs have no access to even look at these routers.
 
Jul 27, 2020
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So if I'm having issues but all my friends with the same ISP as me isn't does it mean the issue is in my home network? or even tho I have the same routing as them it could still be an issue past my ISP?
 
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You are going to have to test to find some tool that see the problem. It can be a net work thing but it can also be software on a pc causing it. In general ping is your best option to see things. You can also see delays and data loss with a tool called wireshark but that captures all the and analyses it. It tends to be too complex a tool for someone who does not have a strong knowledge of how data communication really works at the detail level.

Start by leaving a constant ping command run to your first router ip and second command window to the ip in hop 3 that is the first ISP router. Just leave these run in the background. You are hoping they show something different when you detect problems in games or other applications.
 
Jul 27, 2020
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When running the ping to the first 3 hops while I'm playing, the only thing I see is that each have small spikes of about 10-20ms every once in a while. Is that an issue or normal?
 
That is mostly data errors in the tools. That is a extremely small amount of time could be small spikes of cpu load on your machine or your router or maybe the ISP router. It is too small to worry about. You are looking for numbers well over 100ms and packet loss.

If you are having application issues the problem is either farther into the network or it is something that is not truly a network problem.
 
Jul 27, 2020
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If not a network problem what are the possibilities? If it helps this all started when my internet went out one night and wouldn't turn on no matter how many times I restart it. Asked my friends and none of them had an outage so must've just been my area. But prior to that I was having an issue where my internet would stop working and I would have to restart it to get it to work again. So I had a technician come out and they replaced the modems but the slow speeds and packet loss issue stayed.

I've also tested to see if it was just this PC I'm using so I tested another PC and it also had the same issues.
 
This is the problem when bugs are intermittent. You are going to have to get lucky to find it.

You could also leave a ping run to 8.8.8.8 but if for example the problem is between your ISP and google you are not going to get that fixed.

Not sure until you find something that shows errors it is very hard to say where the problem is.
 
Jul 27, 2020
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Sorry for all the questions but I'm a little confused on how it can be possible for there to be an issue past my ISP when I get packet loss to multiple different game servers and slow load times to websites. Should it not mean that's it an issue with either my home network or ISP since each connection has different routes?

Also if the problem is past my ISP do those never get fixed or is there a possibility that it gets fixed and all I can do it wait?
 
You would have to spend quite a bit of time to find out what is common and what is different in the paths to different servers. Making things worse tracert only shows you the path to the server the path coming back may follow a different set of routers. You have to really do a trace from both ends.

In the end it really doesn't matter. Keep testing the first couple hops. You have to have proof to show the ISP for them to fix it. At some point though if you do not see any issues in the first couple hops you have to start to suspect either the problem is farther out or it is some issue that affects programs on your pc but not simple ping commands. Make sure you do not have any of that stupid "gamer" network software. It comes bundled with some motherboards, ones with killer ethernet chips in particular.
 
That data proves you have a excellent connection. It is consistently 100ms with no loss and extremely tiny jitter. You can't ask for a better connection.

So now you start to ask is what is different between the program that is telling you that there is loss and delay and these traces.

Note...I should have suggested turn off IPv6 in your nic. Sometime one program will use IPv6 addresses and you test using IPv4 and the paths can be completely different. For some reason IPv6 has more issues....even though every ISP has claimed it is the future of the internet for the last 20 years.
 
Jul 27, 2020
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I haven't found anything that say it is somewhere between me and my ISP so I guess the issue is past my ISP. I also tried pinging 8.8.8.8 and I was getting packet loss but no ping spikes so I guess all I can do is hope my issue fixes itself.
 
Jul 27, 2020
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Quick question. I get that there are different routes my connection takes when connecting to different servers in different areas but if two servers are at the same exact location could there still be packet loss to on server but not the other? or would my connection take the same path to both so if one has packet loss the other would too?
 
Depends what you mean "exact" location. Just because 2 companies rent space in the same building does not mean they are using the same internet providers.

Because of how the BGP routing protocol works what you can say is anything within the same subnet will follow the same path. Since the minimum subnet is a /24 ie 255.255.255.0 you can guess which IP blocks will follow which paths. A /24 is the very minimum a company with more servers will use a larger subnet.

It is pretty much impossible for different ip within the same subnet to follow a different path. A ISP can do things like load balance over 2 paths but that is very rarely done, mostly it is a mistake and they put equal weight on the primary and backup paths.

If you get different results for different servers within the same subnet then it would be far more likely it is something wrong with the servers or maybe a firewall or something else inside the server farm.
 
Jul 27, 2020
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Well I know League of Legends has only 1 server location and my issue happen in most games but not all. And in Overwatch they have servers that share the same IP but have different port numbers and I'll get high ping and packet loss to one of the servers but not the other. I guess that maybe tells me that the issue could be on my end since as you said it is pretty much impossible for different ips within the same subnet to follow a different path.
 
Jul 27, 2020
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I have another question about my ping plotter results. The first image it shows results from pingplotter to an Overwatch server ip that I had constant packet loss to and the second image is one that I had no packet loss to. In both images there are nodes that have packet loss but in between those nodes are nodes that don't have packet loss is there still a problem there or is there only an issue at the destination in the first image.
 
You have to be very careful about intermediate nodes. Routers are designed to favor actually passing traffic over responding to ping/trace so if they are busy they will not respond to ping to make sure actual data is not delayed. Also most routers are designed to only respond at some fixed maximum rate. This is to prevent someone form trying to run denial of service attacks against a router with a ping command.

Your trace for example show over 40% loss in hop 3. Since nodes past that do not show that much loss it has to be a false number. Actual loss will generally start in some node and continue all the way to the end. Of course a very intermittent loss in a early node will make it hard to interpret since it may or may not lose data when a certain node is being tested. Each hop is not actually tested at the same exact time. Still pingplotter is better than tracert because it test the nodes for much longer.
 
That is not the actual destination since there appears to be a firewall in the path since the last hop is 100%. The 1.6 may or may not be real, no way to tell for sure when the last node prevents you from testing.

If this wasn't a game and/or it used tcp rather than UDP you can actually see the latency for open sessions in the resource monitor. You can take it a step farther and use wireshark and actually see how much loss an retransmission you get. But this only works for TCP. UDP the application controls everything and game generally at least partially encrypt the data stream so there is no way to tell what is really going on.