[Solved] Constant extremely high ping

[#1]

Yesterday the latency on my adsl2+ connection went through the roof; my ping response to the plusnet gateway is now averaging at 632.197 ms  I've reset the router a number of times and initially the ping goes back to around 30ms, but after about 20-60 seconds it jumps back up to the high hundreds.
During testing I connected to various plusnet gateways, and the problem remains.  I've also swapped routers which has made no difference.
What could possibly cause this? Is anyone else experiencing this problem?  

[#2]

HI, my first port of call would probably be to look at tweaking the MTU/RWIN settings. A good starting point is http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/MTU2.htm Maybe worth a try?

[#3]

I'm wondering if there's something funny with pinging the gateways. Can you try please
ping -n 30 ntp.plus.net
Do you have a wired or wireless connection to the router?

[#4]

I've noticed this too today - it's making online gaming fairly difficult - my pings recently have been ~20-30ms and today are ~150ms! I'm on ADSL2+ with interleaving depth of 1 on both up and downstream:
(mtr to news.bbc.co.uk from a box wired to the modem)
Host                                                                                                  Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
1. 192.168.0.1                                                                                         0.0%   288    0.7   0.8   0.5   3.7   0.4
2. lo0-central1.pcl-ag02.plus.net                                                                      0.3%   288  101.2 122.3  47.1 546.8  32.1
3. gi1-13-211.pcl-gw01.plus.net                                                                        0.3%   288  100.6 134.8  53.3 495.3  57.6
4. te2-1.pcl-gw02.plus.net                                                                             0.7%   287  105.5 130.6  49.7 554.4  51.5
5. te2-2.thn-gw2.plus.net                                                                              0.7%   287  105.9 127.2  53.0 442.7  45.3
6. rt0.thdo.bbc.co.uk                                                                                  0.0%   287  104.3 124.0  60.8 332.1  33.7
7. 212.58.238.149                                                                                      0.3%   287  113.7 123.9  41.8 556.2  39.9
8. te12-1.hsw1.cwwtf.bbc.co.uk                                                                         0.0%   287  107.8 118.7  45.2 444.5  25.0
9. nol-vip03.cwwtf.bbc.co.uk                                                                           0.3%   287  109.4 118.2  46.4 337.2  20.6
EDIT: just noticed that OP is getting low pings when he first connects, I'm on high pings all the time despite reconnecting and resetting the modem a couple of times. I've also had the same results using the modem's built-in ping function, and on a couple of other computers.

[#5]

HI newlay,
I've just been having a look at that for you. There's a few things to take into account. It seems that there may be latency issues during the world cup, as per... http://status.aaisp.net.uk/?incident=284
From your results I have seen you're connecting through pcl-ag02 and yesterday we lost 2 pipes and part of pcl-ag02 so this may have caused some congestion when the others had to cope with all the traffic. If you reconnect your router and try to get to a different gateway I'd be interested to see the results then. Instead of having to do a traceroute to see what gateway you are connected to you can use this tool http://usertools.plus.net/@gateway
Hope that helps
Jojo

[#6]

Thanks for the suggestions.
I am wired to the router. We've a number of devices around the house, a few Windows 7 machines, 2 X-Boxes and a Mac.  I've disabled wireless and had only my computer attached to the router, but it makes no difference.
Here is my ping (to ntp.plus.net) after a router reset:

64 bytes from 212.159.13.49: icmp_seq=25 ttl=251 time=30.965 ms
64 bytes from 212.159.13.49: icmp_seq=26 ttl=251 time=31.075 ms
64 bytes from 212.159.13.49: icmp_seq=27 ttl=251 time=30.447 ms
64 bytes from 212.159.13.49: icmp_seq=28 ttl=251 time=32.258 ms
64 bytes from 212.159.13.49: icmp_seq=29 ttl=251 time=31.047 ms
64 bytes from 212.159.13.49: icmp_seq=30 ttl=251 time=49.774 ms
64 bytes from 212.159.13.49: icmp_seq=31 ttl=251 time=30.174 ms
64 bytes from 212.159.13.49: icmp_seq=32 ttl=251 time=31.490 ms
64 bytes from 212.159.13.49: icmp_seq=33 ttl=251 time=30.573 ms
64 bytes from 212.159.13.49: icmp_seq=34 ttl=251 time=31.305 ms
64 bytes from 212.159.13.49: icmp_seq=35 ttl=251 time=42.684 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 36
64 bytes from 212.159.13.49: icmp_seq=37 ttl=251 time=760.160 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 38
64 bytes from 212.159.13.49: icmp_seq=39 ttl=251 time=160.725 ms
64 bytes from 212.159.13.49: icmp_seq=40 ttl=251 time=156.788 ms
64 bytes from 212.159.13.49: icmp_seq=41 ttl=251 time=233.254 ms
64 bytes from 212.159.13.49: icmp_seq=42 ttl=251 time=296.891 ms
64 bytes from 212.159.13.49: icmp_seq=43 ttl=251 time=385.146 ms
64 bytes from 212.159.13.49: icmp_seq=44 ttl=251 time=411.264 ms
64 bytes from 212.159.13.49: icmp_seq=45 ttl=251 time=458.889 ms
64 bytes from 212.159.13.49: icmp_seq=46 ttl=251 time=484.793 ms
64 bytes from 212.159.13.49: icmp_seq=47 ttl=251 time=598.194 ms
64 bytes from 212.159.13.49: icmp_seq=48 ttl=251 time=582.979 ms
64 bytes from 212.159.13.49: icmp_seq=49 ttl=251 time=584.284 ms
64 bytes from 212.159.13.49: icmp_seq=50 ttl=251 time=650.386 ms
64 bytes from 212.159.13.49: icmp_seq=51 ttl=251 time=657.832 ms
64 bytes from 212.159.13.49: icmp_seq=52 ttl=251 time=682.315 ms
64 bytes from 212.159.13.49: icmp_seq=53 ttl=251 time=730.021 ms
64 bytes from 212.159.13.49: icmp_seq=54 ttl=251 time=736.140 ms

And then it stays around this value.
I've tried experimenting with various MTU sizes and it makes no noticeable difference.
I logged a support call yesterday, but as yet, I've heard nothing back.
Any help would be much appreciated.

[#7]

You're not going to believe this, I hardly do myself, but I've proved beyond doubt that it's Mac OS X recent update to the mail client that is causing this!  When Mac mail 4.3 is running (I usually always leave mail running), the high latency behaviour is experienced, but when I quit, pings are back around 30ms.
Thanks for your help,
Right, now to download Mozilla Thunderbird...

[#8]

Mine's solved too - ended up on pcl-ag04 and pings are back in the 15-30ms region...
Only flaw is that the frequent reconnections are going to hamper my efforts to persuade the DLM to get me back to 6dB SNRM...

[#9]

@iciclethief,
That's very interesting, I shall keep a look out for other instances.
@newlay,
Looks like it was the gateway after all.
Jojo

[#10]

Not sure if I should be responding to a topic that now says 'solved' but I'll try anyway, and make a new one if I hear nothing!
Pings seem to be back up. I was connected to pcl-ag02 so reconnected and hit pcl-ag04. They're still high. Are there still problems at the gateway end?
thanks

[#11]

Just to add my experience, if it helps.
I have just moved over to adsl2+ and when I re-sync my router my pings go nuts (around 200-300 ms). If left connected overnight they then come back down to normal 20ms odd. No idea why this happens but it does.

[#12]

Hi newlay,
We don't have any current issues with the gateways. I suggest you raise a fault ticket if you continue to experience these high ping times.
Jojo