World of Warcraft Latency Issues

[#1]

I have been having some serious issues with my latency in World of Warcraft, please can someone help.
First a history of the problem, I used to have Pipex as my ISP, I recently swapped to PlusNet because of the problems I've had with my connection and Pipex's complete lack of ability to provide anything which could be described as technical support!
Back in October/November of last year I began experiencing severe problems with my connection. The most annoying of these problems was rocketing latency in World of Warcraft, usually a red bar and plenty of server disconnects. After a month or so of trying to get Pipex to sort it, they must have done something as the problem ceased to occur. Fast forward to May this year, the problems start again and up to this point I have been able to resolve the issues.
To go into further detail - latency in-game is extremely unstable, it can vary from 150-200 latency right up to 1000+ latency. It seems to be worse at peak times, but I can't imagine this is contention related as our exchange is not listed as having high contention and I understand (correctly I hope!) that gaming traffic is prioritised.
Various speed tests I have run out of game indicate the problem is significant levels of packet loss. Speed tests that simply measure connection speed (including the one Pipex asked me to use) have produced variable results  from 100kpbs to 6000kpbs. At peak times the results usually come out at around 500-1000kbps. Trying to watch streaming video (channel 4 and bbc iplayer) at peak times is futile as it's constantly stopping to buffer. Dan Elwell's Broadband Speedtest usually indicates there is 5-10% packet loss at peak times. I also left Pingplotter running (using www.google.com as the address to trace for 24 hours last weekend and this ended up showing 3% average packet loss over this period. The packetloss graph shows the most packet loss (as much as 20% at times) occured between 6pm and 11pm on Saturday and early afternoon on Sunday. The average ping was 45.
I have tried powering the router off and on to change the gateway used, but this hasn't made any difference.
I am running quite an old router, a D-Link DSL-G604T, I have multiple PC's connected and the problem occurs with on all of them. That the problem is more apparent at peak times leads me to believe it is not a problem with my equipment, although if there's a possibility it is my router - I'll jump out and buy a new one asap!

[#2]

What Plusnet package are you on?
Remember that the Pro gives the highest network priority to ganes

[#3]

You're not using the wireless connection to game are you? That will cause latency spikes due to the wireless zero config.
Apart from BBYW Option 1 then gaming should be in the highest traffic priority.

[#4]

As you can see from this page http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/quality_broadband/speed.shtml#OptionProspeeds pro is completely uncapped in terms of speed whereas you maybe falling foul of traffic management on the other plans.
Wireless is no good for gaming or latency sensitive applications as even with a good signal it does by its nature fluctuate.

[#5]

Nope not wireless, got wires running all over the place!
The package I am using is: PlusNet Broadband Your Way Option 2 with included 15GB bandwidth.
Could those levels of packetloss be down to traffic management then, it seems a bit harsh to basically make online games unplayable on all but the most costly packages?

[#6]

No option 2 is fine for gaming, it's only option 1 that isn't.

[#7]

Hi Sbrooks,
I'm sorry to hear that you've been having a bit of bother with your WoW latency.  As others have mentioned, there shouldn't be an issue to do with traffic management on Option 2.
There's a couple of things that you can try.  Firstly, I'd look at optimising your MTU and rWin settings.  We've got a video guide on how to do this here:
http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/troubleshooting/rwin_video.shtml
I'd personally go with an MTU of 1430 (on both your desktop and router) and a receive window of around 111200.  remember you'll need to reboot both your router and your computer after changing these settings.
Secondly, I've had a look at your connection from here and it looks pretty decent.  What we could do is to remove interleaving, which might result in a general improvement to your latency.  Interleaving is something that improves stability at a loss of around 20-30ms to your ping.  I can get this turned off within a working day, and also turned back on if there were any problems within the same timesclae.
Let me know if you would like to try this if optimising your connection doesn't seem to help at all.

[#8]

Thanks for the responses.
Jameseh, I've tried altering the MTU on the router and my desktop pc but with no improvement in the connection. I should mention I have a desktop machine running XP and a laptop running Vista - both experience the same problems and tonight the packetloss was particularly bad - causing about 2000-3000 average latency readouts on both machines at times.
Please could you go ahead and try removing interleaving - I'm open to any possible solutions!
Also would it be possible to run a test on the connection from your end at nearer to peak time please (subject to your working hours of course!!) - during daytime on a weekday the connection is pretty flawless so I don't imagine any problems would show up.

[#9]

Thanks.
Does your router report corrected and uncorrected errors?  Those should help to reveal whether or not removing interleaving is a good idea or not.
Did you try changing the rWin too?
Are you wired directly into the master socket and have you tried changing your filters?

[#10]

I can't seem to find anything in my router that specifically says that!
I tried running a ping test from the router, not sure if this says anything useful.
PING 216.239.59.147 (216.239.59.147): 64 data bytes64 bytes from 216.239.59.147: icmp_seq=0 ttl=246 time=60.0 ms64 bytes from 216.239.59.147: icmp_seq=1 ttl=246 time=50.0 ms64 bytes from 216.239.59.147: icmp_seq=3 ttl=246 time=40.0 ms64 bytes from 216.239.59.147: icmp_seq=4 ttl=246 time=50.0 ms64 bytes from 216.239.59.147: icmp_seq=5 ttl=246 time=50.0 ms64 bytes from 216.239.59.147: icmp_seq=6 ttl=246 time=70.0 ms64 bytes from 216.239.59.147: icmp_seq=7 ttl=246 time=40.0 ms64 bytes from 216.239.59.147: icmp_seq=8 ttl=246 time=60.0 ms--- 216.239.59.147 ping statistics ---9 packets transmitted, 8 packets received, 11% packet lossround-trip min/avg/max = 40.0/52.5/70.0 ms
My Network Statistics give the following readouts, again not sure if anything here is useful:
Transmit
  Tx PDU's 76851 
  Tx Total Bytes 5688989 
  Tx Total Error Counts  0 
 
Receive
  Rx PDU's 74654 
  Rx Total Bytes 20582546 
  Rx Total Error Counts 0
DSL Status
  Connection Status Connected
  Upstream Rate (Kbps) 448
  Downstream Rate (Kbps) 8128
  US Margin 24
  DS Margin 9
  Modulation MMODE
  LOS Errors 0
  DS Line Attenuation 22
  US Line Attenuation 20
  Path Mode Interleaved
 
DSL Statistics
  Near End F4 Loop Back Count 0
  Near End F5 Loop Back Count 0
Yes I did try changing the rWin on the desktop with no luck - I believe I can't change this on the laptop running Vista or the in Router settings?
Finally, no I am not connected to the mastersocket, but I did run some tests a while back with the router plugged in there and there was no difference to the connection. I could try new filters - will pick up a couple tomorrow if they could have something to do with it?

[#11]

It's possibly filters could help.  It appears that something is causing you to see packet loss, and filters is a possbility.
You're right - You can't configure rWin on Vista.
Your connection doesn't seem to be showing errors, so I can try turning off interleaving.  If it doesn't work, I can turn it back on again within a day.

[#12]

New filters don't appear to have made any difference.
Please could you try switching the interleaving off?

[#13]

Sure.
Drop me a PM and I'll place the order in the morning.

[#14]

Unfortunately the switch doesn't appear to have made any difference, I'm still experiencing fairly heavy packetloss.
Any other ideas please?

[#15]

Thanks for the update.
Can you try running a wireshark capture and see how the traffic is being treated?  It *should* be titanium.
http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/troubleshooting/wireshark_video.shtml