Question Very interesting ping problems

[Aquestionaboutping]

Hi everyone!

I have been playing Overwatch and using Discord for about a month without problem, but this Monday that changed. I started to get huge ping for the entire game in about 1/4 of all games played, and never midway during a game, the high ping only starts when joining a game. If I left it at that I would assume it was a network or a problem with Overwatch, but the thing is that the same monday I started having problems with discord calls so after 10-20 minutes of chatting the ping would just skyrocket. The high ping during the discord call would persist until I left and rejoined the call. Also, other members in the discord call could hear me clear as day while I could only hear faint robot sounds from my friends.

The particular thing is that the huge ping spikes in Overwatch and Discord never coincide, they always happen separately from each other. The huge ping spikes during Discord calls and Overwatch games did not have an affect on my internet speed, since I've tested the internet speed and connection multiple times this has happened.

Things I have tried but problem still persists:
Restart computer
Update Windows to latest update
Change ethernet-cable
Switch to other network
Re-install Discord

Computer (pre-build laptop (about 2 years old) https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-IPS-Type-GeForce-Gigabit-FX505DV-ES74/dp/B0865SCD6L ):
OS: Windows 11 Home
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 4800H with Radeon Graphics 2.90 GHz
MOBO - ???
GPU - NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2080TI

Router:
Asus RT-AX55 ( https://www.asus.com/networking-iot-servers/wifi-routers/all-series/rt-ax55/ )

Thanks for your time and help!

 

[kanewolf]

Hi everyone!

I have been playing Overwatch and using Discord for about a month without problem, but this Monday that changed. I started to get huge ping for the entire game in about 1/4 of all games played, and never midway during a game, the high ping only starts when joining a game. If I left it at that I would assume it was a network or a problem with Overwatch, but the thing is that the same monday I started having problems with discord calls so after 10-20 minutes of chatting the ping would just skyrocket. The high ping during the discord call would persist until I left and rejoined the call. Also, other members in the discord call could hear me clear as day while I could only hear faint robot sounds from my friends.

The particular thing is that the huge ping spikes in Overwatch and Discord never coincide, they always happen separately from each other. The huge ping spikes during Discord calls and Overwatch games did not have an affect on my internet speed, since I've tested the internet speed and connection multiple times this has happened.

Things I have tried but problem still persists:
Restart computer
Update Windows to latest update
Change ethernet-cable
Switch to other network
Re-install Discord

Computer (pre-build laptop (about 2 years old) https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-IPS-Type-GeForce-Gigabit-FX505DV-ES74/dp/B0865SCD6L ):
OS: Windows 11 Home
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 4800H with Radeon Graphics 2.90 GHz
MOBO - ???
GPU - NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2080TI

Router:
Asus RT-AX55 ( https://www.asus.com/networking-iot-servers/wifi-routers/all-series/rt-ax55/ )

Thanks for your time and help!

Have you tried a wired connection to your router? WIFI is less than ideal for real time usage.

 

[Aquestionaboutping]

Have you tried a wired connection to your router? WIFI is less than ideal for real time usage.

Sure thing! I probarbly did not write it out but I never use WIFI, only ethernet-cable, directly connected to my laptop.

 

[bill001g]

This sounds like some kind of software issue on the machine but to be sure do you have another device that you could check the internet with when the first machine is having issues.

You could also try a opening simple CMD window in the first machine with a constant ping running to say 8.8.8.8. If you do not see issue then you know it is some strange software thing.
Now sometimes software affects the ping command but it is not as common. The so called "ping" in a game many times is not a actual ping command they use other ways to measure the latency but many times includes the overhead of the game.

Your problem is very strange. It would not be uncommon to get random data loss but it should occur more randomly. It should for example start happening midway through your game and just from the start of the games.

In general a high ping means data is being held in a buffer, this is very different than data loss which is caused by defective equipment.

So if your internet is overloaded, for example you download a huge game either in the background or on another machine. You game data will at times be placed in a buffer waiting to get its turn competing with the download.
It would be more likely if you have a small internet connection but still it should not be dependent on when you started the game. Microsoft update for example will run whenever it likes but it does not care when or if you started a particular game.

The other one is more complex where there is some bottleneck in the machine itself. For example something could be using large amounts of CPU and the data is in the network buffer in the machine it just does not read it immediately.
These are hard to find. You many times see people make video driver settings changes to "fix" network ping times even though the network and video data are completely separate. This would not explain discord calls though.

 

[Aquestionaboutping]

This sounds like some kind of software issue on the machine but to be sure do you have another device that you could check the internet with when the first machine is having issues.

You could also try a opening simple CMD window in the first machine with a constant ping running to say 8.8.8.8. If you do not see issue then you know it is some strange software thing.
Now sometimes software affects the ping command but it is not as common. The so called "ping" in a game many times is not a actual ping command they use other ways to measure the latency but many times includes the overhead of the game.

Your problem is very strange. It would not be uncommon to get random data loss but it should occur more randomly. It should for example start happening midway through your game and just from the start of the games.

In general a high ping means data is being held in a buffer, this is very different than data loss which is caused by defective equipment.

So if your internet is overloaded, for example you download a huge game either in the background or on another machine. You game data will at times be placed in a buffer waiting to get its turn competing with the download.
It would be more likely if you have a small internet connection but still it should not be dependent on when you started the game. Microsoft update for example will run whenever it likes but it does not care when or if you started a particular game.

The other one is more complex where there is some bottleneck in the machine itself. For example something could be using large amounts of CPU and the data is in the network buffer in the machine it just does not read it immediately.
These are hard to find. You many times see people make video driver settings changes to "fix" network ping times even though the network and video data are completely separate. This would not explain discord calls though.

Thanks for you answear and clearing some things up!

It's indeed a strange problem, although I recently tried flushing the DNS (recommended by this site: https://itechhacks.com/fix-overwatch-2-high-ping-issue/ ) and I don't know to what extent that will help, but I will do as you say and try opening CMD and comparing ping. Since flushing I have not had any pingspikes, and with some luck it will stay that way, although if the bad luck continues I'll have to continue investigating.

 

[bill001g]

Flushing DNS should have no effect at all.

DNS only purpose is to translate a the textual name of a site to a IP address. Once it translated the DNS function is done and the IP address is used. Now in some cases the DNS and ip can change but that would only be when you open a new session.

In addition most games do not use DNS other than maybe for their main login server. The actual servers your game runs on is communicated to the game application by the game itself. When you get a list of servers you can choose from the game and the server pass the IP address of that server directly not even involving DNS.

Flushing DNS is much more useful say on a web page where maybe the IP address of a web site has changed. Modern web servers are generally not actually 1 physical machine in 1 location. Everything is virtual so there is a lot tricks with DNS and other things being done.

In general none of this applies for games or even discord since discord stays open and it to also negotiates ip and port numbers independent of DNS.

 

[Aquestionaboutping]

Flushing DNS should have no effect at all.

DNS only purpose is to translate a the textual name of a site to a IP address. Once it translated the DNS function is done and the IP address is used. Now in some cases the DNS and ip can change but that would only be when you open a new session.

In addition most games do not use DNS other than maybe for their main login server. The actual servers your game runs on is communicated to the game application by the game itself. When you get a list of servers you can choose from the game and the server pass the IP address of that server directly not even involving DNS.

Flushing DNS is much more useful say on a web page where maybe the IP address of a web site has changed. Modern web servers are generally not actually 1 physical machine in 1 location. Everything is virtual so there is a lot tricks with DNS and other things being done.

In general none of this applies for games or even discord since discord stays open and it to also negotiates ip and port numbers independent of DNS.

Indeed, you where right, flushing the DNS did not help. This evening I tried playing Overwatch again and using Discord, and per request I checked my ping constantly through the CMD and had a second laptop that I compared discord and overwatch ping with, and no problems where ever to be found on the second machine.

Although what I found this evening when using Discord was that the pingspikes only lasted for 1-3 minutes, but the rate at which these occure are still once every 10-20 minutes.
I also found that when joining an Overwatch game and having high ping, the ping would as previously mentiond be high throughout the entire game, but if I manage to leave and re-join, the problem will disappear. Any ideas :/?

 

[bill001g]

These are the problems I hate the most. It is not a actual networks problem. It is some stupid windows problem. Microsoft has so much bloat in the OS you never can be sure if there is some obscure setting you missed.
One very common things that causes strange issues is some crapware that comes with some motherboards and video cards. It try to claim it can reduce game latency or lag but it can not affect traffic outside the machine so it is rather silly, hopefully you are not running torrent downloads in the background while you play a game.
You want to uninstall any software like this that claims to favor one kind of traffic over another. A very common name is CFOSspeed.

Discord is a pretty simple program. Do you get trouble with discord just running that with no game running.

Games are another story many times you can get video driver issues that or video settings that can cause delays in a game.
or
Maybe the resource monitor will give you a clue if something is being overloaded.

 

[Aquestionaboutping]

These are the problems I hate the most. It is not a actual networks problem. It is some stupid windows problem. Microsoft has so much bloat in the OS you never can be sure if there is some obscure setting you missed.
One very common things that causes strange issues is some crapware that comes with some motherboards and video cards. It try to claim it can reduce game latency or lag but it can not affect traffic outside the machine so it is rather silly, hopefully you are not running torrent downloads in the background while you play a game.
You want to uninstall any software like this that claims to favor one kind of traffic over another. A very common name is CFOSspeed.

Discord is a pretty simple program. Do you get trouble with discord just running that with no game running.

Games are another story many times you can get video driver issues that or video settings that can cause delays in a game.
or
Maybe the resource monitor will give you a clue if something is being overloaded.

Typical Windows, just so much bloat. I ran ThisIsWin11 ( https://github.com/builtbybel/ThisIsWin11 ) when I reinstalled windows (only a month ago), which may have helped.

When playing I don't torrent any downloads.

If i use Discord by itself, then the pingspikes continues unaffected. I tried a couple of games now with resource mointor in the background, but could not see anything out of the ordinary, although I have started to feel like that during the day that I get fewer spikes than in the evening (atleast when playing overwatch).

 

[bill001g]

The torrent download comment was more to how stupid you would have to be to even need a program like cfosspeed.

This type of program is very easy to get installed by accident. It is for example bundled on almost all asus boards and if you are not careful to exclude it when you install the drivers and other tools it will install it.

You might not have it this is purely a guess as to what the problem might be.

The large issue is what is different between the ping command that has no issues and the program that do have issues. I am not sure where to look. I mean ping does not use the same protocols to send and receive data as other application but that would be a bizarre issue.

Maybe try to dig though the network tab on the resource monitor and see if you see any high latency numbers that correspond to the IP addresses used by discord or the game. It may or may not show something interesting, many games do not use TCP for sessions and the tools only displays latency for TCP.

 

[Aquestionaboutping]

The torrent download comment was more to how stupid you would have to be to even need a program like cfosspeed.

This type of program is very easy to get installed by accident. It is for example bundled on almost all asus boards and if you are not careful to exclude it when you install the drivers and other tools it will install it.

You might not have it this is purely a guess as to what the problem might be.

The large issue is what is different between the ping command that has no issues and the program that do have issues. I am not sure where to look. I mean ping does not use the same protocols to send and receive data as other application but that would be a bizarre issue.

Maybe try to dig though the network tab on the resource monitor and see if you see any high latency numbers that correspond to the IP addresses used by discord or the game. It may or may not show something interesting, many games do not use TCP for sessions and the tools only displays latency for TCP.

Tried it now for a couple of games, both with and without lag, and compared the latency numbers between the two but could not find anything out of the ordianry unfortunatly. Thinking maybe a clean windows install would do the trick, since it seems software dependent?

 

[Ralston18]

Look in Reliability History and Event Viewer for any error codes, warnings, or even informational events that began on "Monday". May or may not be appearing in the following days.

Reliability History is user friendly and the time line format can be very helpful.

As for Event Viewer:

http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-3128616/windows-event-viewer.html

Also look in Update History for any failed or problem updates. Perhaps on or about "Monday".

You may be able to spot some culprit software via Microsoft's Process Explorer (free).

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer

 

[Aquestionaboutping]

Look in Reliability History and Event Viewer for any error codes, warnings, or even informational events that began on "Monday". May or may not be appearing in the following days.

Reliability History is user friendly and the time line format can be very helpful.

As for Event Viewer:

http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-3128616/windows-event-viewer.html

Also look in Update History for any failed or problem updates. Perhaps on or about "Monday".

You may be able to spot some culprit software via Microsoft's Process Explorer (free).

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer

So I looked through event viewer and Microsoft's Process Explorer, but could not find anything out of the ordinary unfortunately.

Edit: So I tried completely wiping windows 11, all files and everything. A complete factory reset. But the problem still persists. I am actually about to give up, could it be problems with Discord and Overwatch severs?

 

[Ralston18]

How was the Windows 11 "wipe" actually done?

FYI:

https://forums.tomshardware.com/faq/windows-10-clean-install-tutorial.3170366

As for the problem potentially being the Discord and Overwatch servers, you would need to do some testing using other known working computers that do not present the ping problem.

Try disabling IPv6.

Run "ipconfig /all" without quotes via the Comman Prompt.

Post the results.