Question Sudden Ping Spikes and Packet Loss for 3 months now

[olat_dragneel]

Hello!

I've been using the same ISP for 15+ years and never had issues with network stability.
My download and upload speeds are quite pathetic (12/0.3) but I've never had issues with ping and packet loss.
3 months ago, I started having those issues. When playing any online game, my ping will simply jump from 20-50 (depending on the game) to 800-1000. After 20 or so seconds, it usually goes back down.

I live in a village where there have been no new customers in the last 2 decades, no construction work was done, no natural disasters etc. Additionally, I made no changes to my network in the last 3 months, no new smartphones, devices etc.

This issue happens on my PC, two laptops, my TV and my PS5. Some of the games I play are CS GO, Rocket League, Valorant, all have the same issue.
I tried disconnecting all the devices on my network and disabling WiFi completely. I then tested the devices one by one. After I test all the wired ones, I would switch them off and turn WiFi back on and then test on my PS5 and the same issue persists.

I also tried replacing all the cables in the house and also tried another router from a friend and the issue remained.

My ISP told me that everything looks good on their end and they claim that there isn't anything they can do as this is a "local problem" and I have to troubleshoot on my own.
There are no other ISPs available in my village, so changing them is not an option.
Still, I'm wondering what the cause might be since I've never had problems with the same setup and games in the last 15 years. Before CS:GO I played older CS versions and everything worked great.

Since I have a lot of packet loss, streaming live stuff like F1, WWE and Twitch also became extremely laggy and the quality rarely reaches 1080p. If I switch to 1080p manually, the stream buffers every few seconds. The download speed remains unaffected. Before this issue started happening, I've never had trouble streaming content in 1080p.

Any help or advice would be much appreciated.

Thank you!

 

[bill001g]

How are you testing this with a actual ping command or are you just using in game stuff.

What IP are you testing the ping to.

Pretty standard test open a couple cmd windows and leave constant ping run to 8.8.8.8, your router IP, and the first hop ISP router. Normally you can find the ISP first router by running tracert 8.8.8.8 and it will be hop 2.

Your goal is to first see if you detect issues with the ping command when the game has issues. Then try to determine where the problem is. If you see it to your router then the problem is likely in your pc. If that is ok but the first ISP router has a issue then it is normally some issue with the cabling coming to your house. If both those are good but 8.8.8.8 has issues then there is some issue farther into the network.

If you see no issues on the ping then you start to suspect some software issue but if it affects multiple devices then it is more messy to find

 

[olat_dragneel]

How are you testing this with a actual ping command or are you just using in game stuff.

What IP are you testing the ping to.

Pretty standard test open a couple cmd windows and leave constant ping run to 8.8.8.8, your router IP, and the first hop ISP router. Normally you can find the ISP first router by running tracert 8.8.8.8 and it will be hop 2.

Your goal is to first see if you detect issues with the ping command when the game has issues. Then try to determine where the problem is. If you see it to your router then the problem is likely in your pc. If that is ok but the first ISP router has a issue then it is normally some issue with the cabling coming to your house. If both those are good but 8.8.8.8 has issues then there is some issue farther into the network.

If you see no issues on the ping then you start to suspect some software issue but if it affects multiple devices then it is more messy to find

Hi!

I'm testing via CMD. Whatever I ping, the result is pretty much the same.
I also tried using WinMTR.

Based on your comment, it would appear that the issue is with the cabling coming to my house. That said, what could have happened there? The ISP does not want to do anything about it since they measured something both at my house and the box leading to my house, but at no point did they measure ping for a longer period of time, like at least a minute. Their service person tests using speedtest.net, which will show good ping in most cases since it only takes about 10 seconds to complete.

I've added some screenshots below.
Also, if I run the ping commands while playing any online game, the ping jumps in both the game and CMD at the same time. I usually get packet loss alongside the high ping (some games show packet loss, like Rocket League).

https://imgur.com/EFJiTgy

View: https://i.imgur.com/EFJiTgy.png

https://imgur.com/D6JpQHq

View: https://i.imgur.com/D6JpQHq.png

https://imgur.com/xXUB7Gi

View: https://i.imgur.com/xXUB7Gi.png


Thank you!

 

[bill001g]

In many ways it would be much better if this packet loss and not just large ping.

The only way this can happen is some device is holding the data in a buffer so it can't be the more common things like a loose connection or damaged cable. It is not your router since you replaced it to test. If this is separate from the modem there is a tiny chance it could be the modem but this would be very rare since a modem doesn't generally buffer data it purely converts from one form of cable to another. This leaves the ISP equipment. Could be a defect in the equipment but a error like this is not very common.

The key reason data is held in a buffer is if there is a overloaded network rather than discarding the data. I would first test with just a single device in your house connected to the router. Turn off the wifi radios to be very sure. Then watch the resource manager network tab to be sure you are not exceeding the upload or download rates you pay for. Most people have very large download rates so upload rates are more easily exceeded. Could be something like a cloud backup.

Now if you find nothing in your house doing this then you are left with it being one of your neighbors you share the bandwidth on the cable coming into your neighborhood. This tends to be very rare now days since the ISP generally has multiple gigabits of capacity on each cable segment. Years ago some idiot teen running his torrents could affect everyone living near him.
The ISP tends to never admit they have overloaded a segment going to some group of houses. They have no way to really fix it without digging stuff up to run more cables.

 

[olat_dragneel]

Thank you for replying!

I've already tried testing with one device ln the network at a time and the results are the same. I also don't use a separate modem. I did consider that someone in the neighborhood is maybe hogging the connection, since the infrastructure is old here, it has not been updated in 20+ years. But I don't believe that's the case since there have not been any new users in just as many years, if anything people are leaving. There are like 10 old people in the village, most of whom probably don't use internet at all.

I have a cousin who lives close to me and both of our cables go from the same junction box. I ran the same tests on her network and there are no ping issues.

I'm afraid that it is indeed the ISP issue, but I don't know what else I can do since they technically don't guarantee ping, just download speed and uptime.

Open to any suggestions.

Thanks!