[SOLVED] Severe ping spikes how do i fix them?

[peterpeter2345432443]

A little background. I noticed it due to inconsistencies while playing games. I get ping spikes from time to time and its very annoying.

I already tried resetting my router and then doing a ping test while having all internet using programs closed. Furthermore i have fiber internet with a speed of 100/100 mb/s plus i use an ethernet connection to my modem. If i left out any important details then please let me know. I'm gonna call the ISP monday but i thought i'd consult you guys first to see if i could do anything myself.

Here's the results. I also included a speedtest if that could help with anything.

Spoiler: Results

I used https://ping.canbeuseful.com/en#ping

 

[peterpeter2345432443]

I tried to flush my DNS and check if it would make any difference but im still getting the same ping spikes. I also tried pinging my modem but theres nothing going on there its all normal 0% loss and ping 0. I then tried to ping google but im not sure what to do with the results, im not really any computer genius i just know how to google stuff lmao.

Here's the google ping results.

My internet is not under heavy usage either. Its only me (my main desktop) and like 2 other ipads.

 

[bill001g]

It does look like your internet has issues.

What you want to do is run tracert to some ip like 8.8.8.8. It likely will not show a problem, the goal is to get the ip addresses in the path. Hop 2 is generally the ISP router on the far end of the connection coming to your house. What you want to do is ping your router ip and at the same time ping hop 2. This is so you can show the ISP that your router is not the problem but you see issues on your line.

Depend if the modem/ont has any error messages or if you can even access it. This kinda depends on if the fiber connects to your router directly or there is a different box that the fiber hooks to. Many cable modems have logs but fiber termination depending on the system may not.

 

[peterpeter2345432443]

It does look like your internet has issues.

What you want to do is run tracert to some ip like 8.8.8.8. It likely will not show a problem, the goal is to get the ip addresses in the path. Hop 2 is generally the ISP router on the far end of the connection coming to your house. What you want to do is ping your router ip and at the same time ping hop 2. This is so you can show the ISP that your router is not the problem but you see issues on your line.

Depend if the modem/ont has any error messages or if you can even access it. This kinda depends on if the fiber connects to your router directly or there is a different box that the fiber hooks to. Many cable modems have logs but fiber termination depending on the system may not.

I did exactly what you said ran tracert 8.8.8.8 took the ip on hop 2 and pinged it simultaneously with my default gateway. I don't see any issues though. The results for both;

Spoiler

Hop 2 seen here

Router seen here

Was i supposed to show the results for the tracert as well? I'm kinda oblivious as to what is a good idea to share and what not to so i decided not to include it.

As to my setup it works as a modem and a router at the same time, its 1 box. Its something the ISP setup and its controlled by them. I can't access it locally only through my ISP's website with very limited control of the modem/router.

 

[bill001g]

Try hop3. It appears you have 2 routers in your house. The latency even on a fiber connection is 3-5ms and you are seeing 1 or less. Most times the latency to the first ISP router is closer to 10ms for most types of internet connections.

 

[peterpeter2345432443]

Try hop3. It appears you have 2 routers in your house. The latency even on a fiber connection is 3-5ms and you are seeing 1 or less. Most times the latency to the first ISP router is closer to 10ms for most types of internet connections.

The first 6 hops all had ping <10 so i took the hop 7 and pinged that. Pinging hop 3 had a no response/100% packet loss.

Results
Hop 7

Router

 

[bill001g]

All it means is the ISP has configured hop 3 to not respond to ping. Evil people try to flood a router with ping commands to attempt to crash it.

That can also be why you get random ping loss to a router so very tiny amounts of loss do not actually mean there is loss in the path. The router is configured to always prioritize passing traffic and if it has extra time it will respond to ping and trace.

This is going to be very tough to find and then to actually get fixed when the problem is not in the connection coming to your house. This means the ISP have some design issue or equipment issues in their network. ISP have monitoring tools and generally they will find problems before you do and if they are not detecting it they will pretty much deny there is a problem.

It maybe that you are not collecting data for long enough. You could leave ping run for hours against all the IP addresses.

You can try a tool called pingplotter. You have to be very careful to not misinterpret the results. Again random or even constant failures of single nodes in the path is not a indication of a problem. For example if hop3 in your case actually dropped 100% of the traffic like the tools say the connection would not work at all.

The ISP will claim that pingplotter is not testing correctly which is why you will need simple ping commands that show the same thing.

 

[SamirD]

As bill001g mentioned, it does appear that you may have some isp issues. run packetlosstest.com and see if that shows any issues.

 

[peterpeter2345432443]

Spoiler

All it means is the ISP has configured hop 3 to not respond to ping. Evil people try to flood a router with ping commands to attempt to crash it.

That can also be why you get random ping loss to a router so very tiny amounts of loss do not actually mean there is loss in the path. The router is configured to always prioritize passing traffic and if it has extra time it will respond to ping and trace.

This is going to be very tough to find and then to actually get fixed when the problem is not in the connection coming to your house. This means the ISP have some design issue or equipment issues in their network. ISP have monitoring tools and generally they will find problems before you do and if they are not detecting it they will pretty much deny there is a problem.

It maybe that you are not collecting data for long enough. You could leave ping run for hours against all the IP addresses.

You can try a tool called pingplotter. You have to be very careful to not misinterpret the results. Again random or even constant failures of single nodes in the path is not a indication of a problem. For example if hop3 in your case actually dropped 100% of the traffic like the tools say the connection would not work at all.

The ISP will claim that pingplotter is not testing correctly which is why you will need simple ping commands that show the same thing.

It seems that the time i do the testing looks to make a difference, whether this is significant or not i cannot tell and maybe its bold to assume but i ran the ping tester a few times early in the morning and the spikes seem less prominent. So maybe load on the servers has something to do with this? I cannot tell for sure.

Heres one of the results. This is the worst out of the 3 i ran. Compared to the original ones i made it looks comparatively better. Not sure if this is significant though..

Spoiler

Ill run pingplotter later today for a few hours during the afternoon where theres more traffic.

As bill001g mentioned, it does appear that you may have some isp issues. run packetlosstest.com and see if that shows any issues.

I'll also try to do the same for this, run it in the afternoon.

Thanks to you both for taking the time and trying to help me out!

 

[peterpeter2345432443]

All it means is the ISP has configured hop 3 to not respond to ping. Evil people try to flood a router with ping commands to attempt to crash it.

That can also be why you get random ping loss to a router so very tiny amounts of loss do not actually mean there is loss in the path. The router is configured to always prioritize passing traffic and if it has extra time it will respond to ping and trace.

This is going to be very tough to find and then to actually get fixed when the problem is not in the connection coming to your house. This means the ISP have some design issue or equipment issues in their network. ISP have monitoring tools and generally they will find problems before you do and if they are not detecting it they will pretty much deny there is a problem.

It maybe that you are not collecting data for long enough. You could leave ping run for hours against all the IP addresses.

You can try a tool called pingplotter. You have to be very careful to not misinterpret the results. Again random or even constant failures of single nodes in the path is not a indication of a problem. For example if hop3 in your case actually dropped 100% of the traffic like the tools say the connection would not work at all.

The ISP will claim that pingplotter is not testing correctly which is why you will need simple ping commands that show the same thing.

Here's pingplotter test #1 running from 9:55 am to 12:10 pm.

Spoiler

Here's pingplotter #1 running from 16 pm to 21:20 pm

Spoiler

Additionally idk if it shows anything in detail or something but heres test #2 showing with a interval of 3 hours instead of 6.

Spoiler

I'm not sure what conclusion to draw but it looks pretty messed up after 18 pm. I set the interval to view as 6 hours. If you want me to select differently then please let me know.

As bill001g mentioned, it does appear that you may have some isp issues. run packetlosstest.com and see if that shows any issues.

Heres the results from the test you told me to try and run.

Spoiler

https://imgur.com/CEURlh1

View: https://imgur.com/CEURlh1

 

[bill001g]

This is going to be extremely hard to get the ISP to fix. It is very deep into their network....assuming it is even the same ISP.

I suspect all you can do is keep bugging them until they agree to at least look at it.

In some ways this is better than what you were complaining about. Ping spikes most ISP will not even look at. Packet loss generally means there is something defective. It could be that as traffic get more the loss gets greater so as more traffic passes over the router or connection you get more and more loss.

The pingplot you have show the problem very well. These are exactly what they look like when there is a actual network problem. This first one some people would see the 2.7% loss on that one hop and assume it is a problem. Actual problems look like the second and third ones. The problem starts at some hop and continues to the very end affects the final destination.

If nothing else you are going to have to educate them in how to read these ping plot. If you get lucky and can get the proper tech it is very obvious there is a problem. Now what that problem is you can't tell without access to the equipment. This is where things sometimes get stuck. The level 1 techs likely do not have any access to the central routers. In many cases it is a completely different department that maintains them. And of course you really need to hope this is all the same ISP if you get mulitple it gets even worse.

 

[peterpeter2345432443]

This is going to be extremely hard to get the ISP to fix. It is very deep into their network....assuming it is even the same ISP.

I suspect all you can do is keep bugging them until they agree to at least look at it.

In some ways this is better than what you were complaining about. Ping spikes most ISP will not even look at. Packet loss generally means there is something defective. It could be that as traffic get more the loss gets greater so as more traffic passes over the router or connection you get more and more loss.

The pingplot you have show the problem very well. These are exactly what they look like when there is a actual network problem. This first one some people would see the 2.7% loss on that one hop and assume it is a problem. Actual problems look like the second and third ones. The problem starts at some hop and continues to the very end affects the final destination.

If nothing else you are going to have to educate them in how to read these ping plot. If you get lucky and can get the proper tech it is very obvious there is a problem. Now what that problem is you can't tell without access to the equipment. This is where things sometimes get stuck. The level 1 techs likely do not have any access to the central routers. In many cases it is a completely different department that maintains them. And of course you really need to hope this is all the same ISP if you get mulitple it gets even worse.

I see i see oh well at least I've got some kind of understanding of it now, whether or not getting it through to the tech support will be a different problem to solve haha. I appreciate you helping me out!

I have a few questions I'd hope you'd answer in hopes of clarifying so i can explain to the ISP whats happening.

1. Is the ping spikes not caused by the packet loss? I assume you're saying this is easier to explain because the PL is hard proof of something thats wrong and causing the ping spikes, correct me if im wrong.
2. This is time dependent i guess? So if i call in during early hours, there won't be any significant PL. But i assume they have tools to check logs from yesterday around the time it gets bad.
3. It just seems weird to me that the ISP hasn't picked this up on their own, i mean its quite significant isn't it? Wouldn't they in theory be able to see all this before i even notice i have a problem?

I figured I'd lastly show the progressive increase in packet loss over time but im sure the graph in the pictures already displays that very well.

 

[bill001g]

It all depends on who owns those routers. It maybe the upstream provider to your ISP. Your ISP like you would have no easy way to monitor it. They may or may not have logs it depends on how they monitor. Commerical routers actually keep track of how much data is lost but they must have a system to pull the data and produce reports. Solarwinds which has been in the news lately for being hacked is actually what a lot of ISP use.

There are basically 2 kinds of packet loss. You get packet loss because the packet is damaged in transit so it is discarded. This is what I suspect you have here. The other form is when the router get so overloaded that it just takes the whole buffer of packets and discards them trying to catch up. That kind of packet loss you generally see the latency increase also. You see the latency get higher and higher and then you get packet loss and the latency drops a bit. This type of loss is caused by a capacity issue. That could mean that they feel it is too costly to upgrade something, that is why you hope it is never the issue for you are experiencing because they have made a financial choice rather than a technical one.

 

[SamirD]

Thank you for the packlosstest result--that's terrible and you've got packet loss as bill001g mentioned. And it's clearly a problem with the isp or beyond, none of which you can control. Usually this will cause other problems and will end up getting fixed at some point, but it can take a long time. (I dealt with this once and it took 2 years. I was about to rig a Internet connection from another building to beam into my office.)