Question When little brother uses his computer, internet connection randomly crashes ?

[Rodrq]

Hello guys. I am desperate. Here's the issue:
Internet works perfectly until my little brother decides to plays some games or talk with Discord friends, then every 20-40 minutes the connection just crashes for a few minutes.

We have a 300mbps download 30 mbps upload plan, so bandwidth is good.

Things that we have tried so far (and didnt work)

• Formatting his computer in case of virus
• Changing his motherboard in case of faulty hardware or voltage problems
• Tried on ethernet and WIFI. Problem doesn't discriminate
• Updating drivers of every kind
• Disabling firewalls and antivirus
• Windows Troubleshooters
• Changing routers
• Calling ISP
• Closing software that could be doing weird stuff. Problem persists even if he's only on discord with his friends or just playing a game without anything else open.
• Checked DHCP list on router. No conflicts whatsoever.
• Using Cloudfare in case of DDOS (?). A little punk threatened him once with that so maybe

And a lot more. Will keep updating as I remember.

Things I haven't done yet:

• Updating BIOS (computer has a 2020 one so I don't know if necessary)
• Resetting CMOS
• Having a technician check the street coaxial cable (seems unnecesary since as long as he isn't online Internet works wonders)

Noteworthy stuff:

• If I am playing, for example, League of Legends, when the Internet crashes I stay online but with 300 ms of ping and a LOT of packet loss, but websites are unreachable
• In my house we have 6 computers, 5 cellphones and a TV connected without problems. Router can handle a lot of devices without problem.
• Router does not turn off, nor do any of its lights
• Problem becomes much more frequent during night (9pm to 12 am)

I literally searched the whole Internet both in English and Spanish and couldn't get to the root of the problem. So any help is appreciated

Thanks for trying to help an Internet stranger!

Problem computer specs:
Motherboard: ASUS A320M-K
GPU: nvidia 1050ti
CPU: Ryzen 2600
RAM: 16 gb
Storage: SSD and HDD
PSU: 500w generic one

 

[bill001g]

Leave a constant ping run to the router IP from both your machine and his machine. This should show if you have any issues on the local network.

There is not a lot that cause this issue if you assume he is not intentionally doing it. I mean there are things like ARP poison where someone attempt to intercept traffic to a router so they can favor their traffic over others.
You would see this in your machine on the ARP -a command and the mac address would be his machine rather than the router.

The other would be he is overloading the internet bandwidth somehow. 300mbps is a lot but a 30mbps upload can be overloaded pretty easy just by doing cloud backups. Does your router have any ability to show the total utilization of the internet connection.

 

[Rodrq]

Leave a constant ping run to the router IP from both your machine and his machine. This should show if you have any issues on the local network.

There is not a lot that cause this issue if you assume he is not intentionally doing it. I mean there are things like ARP poison where someone attempt to intercept traffic to a router so they can favor their traffic over others.
You would see this in your machine on the ARP -a command and the mac address would be his machine rather than the router.

The other would be he is overloading the internet bandwidth somehow. 300mbps is a lot but a 30mbps upload can be overloaded pretty easy just by doing cloud backups. Does your router have any ability to show the total utilization of the internet connection.

Thank you. Will do and update when I get the results

 

[Rodrq]

Leave a constant ping run to the router IP from both your machine and his machine. This should show if you have any issues on the local network.

There is not a lot that cause this issue if you assume he is not intentionally doing it. I mean there are things like ARP poison where someone attempt to intercept traffic to a router so they can favor their traffic over others.
You would see this in your machine on the ARP -a command and the mac address would be his machine rather than the router.

The other would be he is overloading the internet bandwidth somehow. 300mbps is a lot but a 30mbps upload can be overloaded pretty easy just by doing cloud backups. Does your router have any ability to show the total utilization of the internet connection.

Internet just died again. Results are the same both on my computer and my brother's (having slight differences in time to respond since he's wireless right now and I'm on Ethernet).
Here are some pictures of the cmd:

When internet connection goes down is the exact moment ping goes from <1m to >7ms.

When internet comes back after a few minutes, it goes from timeouts and delayed responses to 1 ms again:

Shouldn't the router just respond under 1 ms even if there is no connection? Does does mean it's getting overloaded? I'm as lost as before

 

[bill001g]

You seldom see stuff like this. It is almost always under 1ms.

This one has me stumped. Try IPCONFIG /all on both and see if they might have the same IP address assigned.

Try ARP -a and see what the mac address is for the 192.168.0.1 ip. What you want to see is if it ever changes, it should always be the mac address of your router.

 

[Rodrq]

You seldom see stuff like this. It is almost always under 1ms.

This one has me stumped. Try IPCONFIG /all on both and see if they might have the same IP address assigned.

Try ARP -a and see what the mac address is for the 192.168.0.1 ip. What you want to see is if it ever changes, it should always be the mac address of your router.

IP conflicts was the first thing I tried ruling out. Even tried using static addresses but to no avail. Will keep an eye on the router's MAC address while testing.

I guess I'm buying a new computer for my little brother. This is the weirdest problem I've encountered, and the first one that I couldn't resolve after intensive googling .

Thanks for the help Bill! Wish you a happy year

 

[Ralston18]

Question:

Does little brother's computer happen to have both the wired and the wireless adapters enabled at the same time?

 

[Rodrq]

Question:

Does little brother's computer happen to have both the wired and the wireless adapters enabled at the same time?

I disabled his Ethernet adaptar today but Internet went off anyways. Will try the opposite: disabling WiFi adapter and using Ethernet. Thanks for the idea

 

[Rodrq]

Well, the Internet crashing during my little brother's playtime was just a huge coincidence that lasted weeks.
Internet just went off without him playing, so this whole post and my efforts were useless lol.
Thanks everyone. Will create a new post

 

[bill001g]

What is strange is I don't think it is the internet in your case.

What you would see is ping to the router IP address would be perfect but ping to say 8.8.8.8 would have issues. I mean you can take a router out of box and not even connect it to the internet and you can use it to share file etc between machines inside your house.

You said you already tried a different router. If you some other device like a switch in between maybe that. Your issue is very strange

 

[Ralston18]

Question: make and model modem? Make and model router (coax, DSL, fiber)?

Connection paths (line diagram with ----> being an Ethernet cable and ~~~ > being wireless connectivity).

ISP === coax, DSL, fiber ===> modem [ Ethernet Port] ------> [WAN Port] Router [LAN ports] ---- > to wired devices and ~~~~ > wireless devices.

Edit and correct my line diagram as necessary. Include any components or connections that I left out.

Strange issue indeed. I am thinking that there is a loose connection somewhere. May be related to temperature - expansion/contraction.

"Problem becomes much more frequent during night (9pm to 12 am)". And now has become permanently loose.

Check all of the cables and connections for signs of looseness, damage, corrosion, etc.