cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Periods of high latency when gaming

Buggeh8
Hooked
Posts: 5
Registered: ‎26-06-2016

Periods of high latency when gaming

I've had a few troubles with my line which has resulted in various settings being changed around over the last few months, and I also was informed that interleaving was going to be turned on for my connection.  

 

With all that taken into account I have been experiencing some periods of really high latency in games, pings ranging from 120-600ms, instead of the 30 or so i normally get when i'm not having issues.  I've checked the traffic on my router and cant see anything downloading at the same time elsewhere on the network, and i'm not too sure what else I should be doing to try and resolve this.  

 

Any help that can be offered would be appreciated, I know interleaving can cause latency issues with gaming, but if it was just that would it not be causing problems most of the time instead of sporadically?

 

I've run a trace route to google (attached, if it helps) and have set up a monitor at thinkbroadband, but its only been going a few minutes so i'll link it up if needs be once its ran for a while.

 

7 REPLIES 7
legume
Rising Star
Posts: 179
Thanks: 12
Registered: ‎21-07-2013

Re: Periods of high latency when gaming

That does look bad.

What sort of connection eg, wired/wireless internal, adsl/fttc external?

What router doe you use and does it get better for a while if you reboot/power cycle it?

Buggeh8
Hooked
Posts: 5
Registered: ‎26-06-2016

Re: Periods of high latency when gaming

Im using a Asus DSL-N55U router and its a adsl line.  

I was using a wifi-card but swapped to powerline network (TP-Link AV1200) ,  the problems have been present using both systems, and doesnt seem any better/worse.  I'd like to try running an ethernet cable direct from the router but dont currently own one that is long enough.

 

Rebooting the router doesnt seem to have any effect, and and the latency issues are sporadic and seem like they can occur at any point during the day, though anecdotally it seems like it often happens late at night (1-2am onwards).

 

I've attached the TBB monitor below if it helps at all.

Edit: updated the link below..

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/3edd8e23940b2b795b3ee3112d20e29e-27-06-2016.html

 

Buggeh8
Hooked
Posts: 5
Registered: ‎26-06-2016

Re: Periods of high latency when gaming

Ok, so now that the thinkbroadband monitor has run for 24 hours or so, the only monitor on their FAQ that looks similar to my situation is one where the connection is being saturated.  I ran a speedtest and saw that my down speed is around 16.7Mbps, and upload is around 0.32Mbps.  

From using the traffic monitor within the router I don't appear to be capping down speed (which is around 2.1MB/s, and I tend to be nowhere near that when having problems) so i'm guessing its my upload bandwidth capping out maybe?  In which case I should put in a request to get the upload speed on my line uncapped from the standard ~450KB/s?

I'm not the best with this sort of stuff so if anyone can let me know if i'm barking up the wrong tree it would be really helpful!

 

Edit: Line has now been requested to be uncapped, and should go through tonight, guess i'll update in a few days to see if there is any difference.

legume
Rising Star
Posts: 179
Thanks: 12
Registered: ‎21-07-2013

Re: Periods of high latency when gaming

Uncapped upload is the right thing to do even if it's not causing the issue.

 

Your TBB monitor does seem strange with the bad latency overnight. I assume nobody was uploading all that time?

 

If the issue persists I would try, if possible, turning off wireless and disconnecting homeplugs overnight just in case somebody is freeloading.

 

If that doesn't work I would consider trying another router if you can.

Buggeh8
Hooked
Posts: 5
Registered: ‎26-06-2016

Re: Periods of high latency when gaming

I thought about people freeloading onto the system, but unless they are hiding their connection from the router interface somehow i cant see evidence of it (4 clients showing connected, this pc, my phone, my tablet and the ps4, traffic monitor not showing anything up or down across the whole network).  I keep pretty unsocial hours and often end up being awake through the night and have been checking into the router at random times and havent noticed anything strange, or devices i dont recognize.

I've changed all the passwords again anyway just to be safe.  Don't even have any neighbors (on either side) at the moment, and having mucked around using my phone the wifi range doesn't reach much further than there. I was the only person in last night and stayed up watching netflix/twitch but wasn't doing any designated uploading of files anywhere. Made sure to shutdown onedrive/dropbox as they were among the first things to come to mind. So yeah, I dunno whats happening.

 

Cheers for the advice about the router though, i ended up moving to this one as I was having the same issues using the stock thomson one, though I have a friend who works in IT who may be able to borrow another one for a bit to test stuff out.

tokey
Aspiring Pro
Posts: 178
Thanks: 41
Fixes: 2
Registered: ‎30-01-2013

Re: Periods of high latency when gaming

Did you have issues on both Wireless and the Powerline?

 

The reason I ask is that powerline adapters are known to be a bit variable when it comes to throughput. 

 

Best test would be a direct cable connection just to rule out any uncertainties inside the house.  Could you move the PC temporarily to test or have access to a laptop that you could plug in?

Buggeh8
Hooked
Posts: 5
Registered: ‎26-06-2016

Re: Periods of high latency when gaming

Yeah, had the same issues on wireless and now with the powerline setup.  I noticed last night that it wasn't so bad, but i guess that's the difficulty of diagnosing an intermittent problem.

 

Thanks for the comment about running an ethernet cable, i'll wait and see if updating the upload line speed makes any difference first, as it will be a real pain to either run a long cable or move the pc next to the router.

 

Just noticed that the TBB monitor has died as it was on an IP address that got swapped dynamically after i restarted the router following the line changes.  I've started a new one and will keep watching it i guess.  Any chance that being on dynamic IP assignment is causing any of these problems?