Latency and packet loss - Do we have a problem?

[#1]

Our connection has been rock solid with no issues until the weekend. I fired up Apex Legends and was getting massive problems with rubberbanding, and at times a complete loss of connection to the server (London) despite low ping. The same in PUBG and R6. All games I have never had any issues with. I restarted all my hardware and router and hooked up an ethernet cable in place of my usual wifi. Same issue. All the while my down/up speed seems ok. Last night I started a BQM trace. It's pinging my Google Home as it's the only device I'm comfortable placing in my DMZ. I'm no tech, but it doesn't look healthy. Seems to show consistent packet loss and a very erratic maximum latency, even overnight when the connection is completely idle. The avg latency spike from last night is the last time I tried any gaming. Any suggestions as to what's going on?

[#2]

Hi @rockplough

Thanks for getting in touch - I've reviewed your account and can confirm that your external connection is good - no faults and you're in sync at 80mb/s.

Could you please run a ping test and a traceroute to somewhere fairly neutral (for example, bbc.co.uk) and post the results here so that we can identify where you're hitting lag?

Thanks

Dave

[#3]

Hi Dave, thanks for your reply. Here are three tracerts I just ran.

Tracing route to bbc.co.uk [151.101.0.81]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 3 ms 2 ms 1 ms dsldevice.lan [192.168.1.254]
2 22 ms 22 ms 21 ms gi12-0-0-441.ptn-ag04.plus.net [84.93.253.72]
3 24 ms 23 ms 24 ms gi2-1-444.ptn-gw01.plus.net [84.93.253.79]
4 24 ms 24 ms 27 ms 195.99.125.140
5 * * 26 ms peer2-et-7-0-1.slough.ukcore.bt.net [109.159.252.120]
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 23 ms 23 ms 23 ms 151.101.0.81

Trace complete.

C:\Users\George>tracert bbc.co.uk

Tracing route to bbc.co.uk [151.101.0.81]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 2 ms 1 ms 1 ms dsldevice.lan [192.168.1.254]
2 21 ms 22 ms 21 ms gi12-0-0-441.ptn-ag04.plus.net [84.93.253.72]
3 23 ms 23 ms 24 ms gi2-1-444.ptn-gw01.plus.net [84.93.253.79]
4 23 ms 23 ms 23 ms 195.99.125.140
5 23 ms 23 ms 23 ms peer2-et-7-0-1.slough.ukcore.bt.net [109.159.252.120]
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 24 ms 23 ms 26 ms 151.101.0.81

Trace complete.

C:\Users\George>tracert bbc.co.uk

Tracing route to bbc.co.uk [151.101.0.81]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms dsldevice.lan [192.168.1.254]
2 22 ms 22 ms 24 ms gi12-0-0-441.ptn-ag04.plus.net [84.93.253.72]
3 * * * Request timed out.
4 23 ms 23 ms 23 ms 195.99.125.140
5 23 ms 22 ms 23 ms peer2-et-7-0-1.slough.ukcore.bt.net [109.159.252.120]
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 24 ms 24 ms 23 ms 151.101.0.81

Trace complete.

If I leave a ping to bbc.co.uk running it reports a consistent sub 30ms with zero packet loss. If however I ping a random AWS London IP (35.176.0.252) I do get about 5% packet loss.

Ping statistics for 35.176.0.252:
Packets: Sent = 70, Received = 66, Lost = 4 (5% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 24ms, Maximum = 45ms, Average = 24ms

[#4]

Just tried a little more gaming and it remains unplayably laggy.

[#5]

@rockplough  Your TBB graph suggests there is a huge amount of traffic flowing on your link, so its not surprising your gaming is laggy.

I would look into what you have going on, and how much traffic you are generating. I seems to be constant throughout the day, whereas I would expect traffic to die down when you are asleep and at work.

[#6]

@Mustrum You'll have to forgive my ignorance but doesn't the graph just show latency and packet loss? How does that imply a particular volume of traffic?

We just have a couple of PCs, couple of phones, a PS4 and a Google Home. Nothing out of the ordinary I would have thought.

[#7]

[url=https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/82221439a3028773a27f5b2d22294...

[url=https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/82221439a3028773a27f5b2d222942c637be769c-09-03-2019]My Broadband Ping[/url]

@rockplough 

If I can do this right, here is mine last Saturday I think it was, you can see when there is no traffic when I was asleep, I watched a program online in the afternoon/early evening, the rest of the time was just general browsing.

[#8]

@Mustrum I see what you're saying. I may try switching everything off tonight and see if it has any effect. Still at a loss as to why this problem would suddenly arise though.

[#9]

Yeah, sorry I failed the post my graph test. Your results will not be quite as clear as mine, my router does respond to pings, pinging a device in the DMZ does cloud the graph a bit.

[#10]

Most Google Homes are connected via WiFi....

Pinging a WiFi connected device will also "cloud the graph" and perhaps explain the busy looking graph.

It is much better to ping the router (if the router supports replying to pings) or failing that a LAN device connected via Ethernet.

[#11]

I thought that might be the case so last night around midnight I placed my (cabled) PS4 in the DMZ instead (turns out it responds to pings in rest mode). The graph is certainly cleaner but still shows latency spikes, and the packet loss looks unaffected. I can't ping the router as it's a Hub One.

I have to re-iterate I didn't have any problems until the weekend, and there haven't been any changes to the setup as far as I'm aware.

[#12]

Hi there.

I've checked your usage over the past few days and it's not something I'd have cause for concern about given that your router is in sync at a line speed of 80mbps and there's no congestion showing at the exchange.

Although it is normal to see some packet loss while your devices are using the connection. The big spikes last night almost exactly tally up with when there was a higher amount of usage compared to previous times.

Have you tried playing the games you're having issues with while no other devices are switched on?

Do you also experience the same issues while gaming across multiple devices for example a computer or laptop too?

Failing that I'd potentially be tempted to get an engineer visit arranged to investigate this further but I don't think we're there yet, I'd like to make sure we've covered everything we can cover first.

[#13]

Hi Anoush.

I can certainly try gaming with everything else off if I can convince my wife I'm troubleshooting!

I game via my PC mainly. The other PC is her laptop which isn't gaming capable unfortunately. I suppose I could try downloading Apex Legends on my PS4 and see if that has the same issues.

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[#14]

if I can convince my wife I'm troubleshooting!

Erm ,wrong reason

Darling, I hate to tell you, but someones trying to hack your Farce Book account. Shut your phone/tablet/laptop off immediately while I fix it!!

Oh, and 2 sugars

It does tend to work around here

[#15]

@rockplough wrote:

Hi Anoush.

I can certainly try gaming with everything else off if I can convince my wife I'm troubleshooting!

I game via my PC mainly. The other PC is her laptop which isn't gaming capable unfortunately. I suppose I could try downloading Apex Legends on my PS4 and see if that has the same issues.

No problem, let us know how it goes.