Just joined from BE - ping spikes making gaming unplayable

[#1]

Update - terrible latency for most of yesterday until early evening. Router then appeared to hang so rebooted. Since then it's been much better - latency back to 'BE levels-ish'  :). The router also appears to have a different IP address (vastly different - first octet has changed).

[#2]

Hi Froug,
We'll be updating your fault ticket shortly.

[#3]

Thanks Chris - saw the update. Sadly we're no further forward.....now into the peak evening period and ping latencies are back all over the place again. First hop from my router into your network is showing 200-500ms delay:

ping -t 195.166.128.183
Pinging 195.166.128.183 with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=248ms TTL=126
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=253ms TTL=126
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=263ms TTL=126
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=245ms TTL=126
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=264ms TTL=126
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=246ms TTL=126
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=242ms TTL=126
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=305ms TTL=126
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=240ms TTL=126
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=247ms TTL=126
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=290ms TTL=126
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=247ms TTL=126
Ping statistics for 195.166.128.183:
Packets: Sent = 13, Received = 12, Lost = 1 (7% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 240ms, Maximum = 305ms, Average = 257ms
Control-C
ping -t 195.166.128.183
Pinging 195.166.128.183 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=445ms TTL=126
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=477ms TTL=126
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=70ms TTL=126
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=351ms TTL=126
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=375ms TTL=126
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=386ms TTL=126
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=385ms TTL=126
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=384ms TTL=126
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=380ms TTL=126
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=408ms TTL=126
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=459ms TTL=126
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=503ms TTL=126
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=500ms TTL=126
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=491ms TTL=126
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=531ms TTL=126
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=499ms TTL=126
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=530ms TTL=126
Reply from 195.166.128.183: bytes=32 time=514ms TTL=126
Ping statistics for 195.166.128.183:
Packets: Sent = 18, Received = 18, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 70ms, Maximum = 531ms, Average = 427ms
Control-C

[#4]

....I suspect I'm suffering from this:
http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,111170.0.html

[#5]

Fairly unlikely, as that problem has been resolved.
Out of interest, what issues were found on your line that prompted Chris to ask you to raise a fault?

[#6]

I'm not sure. The only thing I can see in the (PlusNet) router stats are a high number of FEC errors (which go up during error correction I believe):
FEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 1.466.662
This will be a function of the amount of traffic I assume. This morning I'm getting about 100/min whilst VPN-ed into work and using VoIP, but the pings are fine. I'm not getting ping spikes at this time - still seems more like congestion to me at this stage.

[#7]

...NOT congestion.....bouncing around all of the place this morning, but stable now (latency stats for pcl-ag03 below, current gateway).

[#8]

.......discovered that loading up the router by streaming video/large download etc. results in latencies hitting the floor. Nice and stable to the gateway at 40-50ms, moving to 200-500ms (or more!) when it's busy. I'd expect latencies to go up if I'm filling the pipe, but not that much. I didn't see that sort of drop on BE. The graph above shows the effect of video streaming - notice that it can drop back to reasonable latencies, but more often than not it's bad.

[#9]

Hi Froug,
Pinging the gateways won't show anything relevant I'm afraid. Ping traffic to them isn't prioritised, so the ping times going up when the gateways are busy is normal and in fact as designed.
You'd need to ping an external server (ideally one you connect to when gaming) to show any issues - if you could do that it'll show much more relevant information.

[#10]

Thanks Matt.
Is ICMP traffic shaped for all hosts? I'm thinking *any* ping test would therefore be invalid.....I'll reconfigure SmokePing for some game servers.

[#11]

It's not that ICMP is traffic shaped (besides, it isn't, in fact it gets given a high priority), it's that the gateways put replying to the ping fairly low on their to-do list.

[#12]

Thanks for the clarification - already monitoring some game servers, so I should have some data soon.

[#13]

....and it didn't take long. See below - World of Tanks server, showing pings well into the 350ms range and beyond, apparently caused by my daughter watching a YouTube video. Once you start to get over 100ms it's bad news for any online game.

[#14]

Are you on wired or wireless for both machines ?
I had some interesting pings yesterday when using a couple of machines on wireless - my wireless performance was pretty terrible (thanks to the abundance of TalkTalk routers around here hogging channels) but pings from the wired server was fine.
Not sure if it was the router struggling or congested wireless but things went rather sluggish for a bit. (I use a 3rd Party router - not the one supplied by PN)

[#15]

Wired for all systems (not a good plan to game/stream over wireless, for the very reason you stated  ). I didn't have this problem when I was on BE......