Frequent Packet Loss and High Ping with Internet

colonelva

Hello,

I frequently run into packet loss while gaming. I use a Motorola MB8611 and an ASUS GT-AX11000 Pro router. Doesn't matter how many times I factor reset modem/router, or adjust QOS settings or Port Forward, it always happens. I have the 1 gig internet plan. My most recent internet speed test results were, 907 down and 35 up.

I checked out my modem connection settings and found the following.

It appears channel 32 has a large number of corrected issues. I was told this is not normal and could be the cause of my latency issues.

I've also copied and pasted the modem event log, removing the MAC information. Any help as to what could be going on would be great.

After completing this post, I noticed channel 32 corrected moved up to 50501990.

 

William_M

Hi @colonelva, welcome to our community!

Corrected errors are generally not a problem and signal levels are good.

What are you using to measure the packet loss?

Do you see the same loss to all IPs?

Have you tried testing with just one device plugged straight into the modem, bypassing the router completely?

colonelva

Good morning William. Currently, when gaming, I see a constant stream of packet loss on multiple games. I've used pingplotter, as it was recommended, and found the following when connected to my router.

It shows PL at the router, I'm not sure if that means anything or not.

When I connect directly to my modem, I get the below:

What can be ascertained from the above? Where would my problem lie? Is there a different test I should run to isolate problems?

colonelva

Additionally,

I ran speed test with the router, and modem.

Modem speeds:

and

I then connnected the router and did a test.

and

Steph_S

Do you notice if this issue is present while browsing the Internet or just while playing the game?

colonelva

Correction this is my modem speed test.

Steph,

I notice this primarily when gaming. I don't really browse the internet on my PC much. We usually stream shows, or play games.

Jaleesa_F

Thank you for that information. Are you usually wireless when gaming or wired? I see you ran a test connected to your router, are you able to bypass the router?

colonelva

My apologies for not responding sooner. I just got the notification. I usually game wired. Are asking for a speed test or a ping plotter test?

colonelva

I recently posted about having issues with my ping while gaming. I have a cable line with download speeds of up to one gig and upload 40mbs. That line uses a router and a bunch of clients connect to the wifi. They are primarily other gaming machines and smart tvs that stream shows.

I had spectrum come out for a second line. I thought having a new line would alleviate my constant high ping and packet loss issue. So the technician accesses the line at the tv box attached to my house. This is where the line comes to from the spectrum box on the street. The spectrum technician then used a splitter on that line and has two line going into my home. The first line is for my original Internet I mentioned above. The second line I only have a modem and my PS5 is connected to it.

Does the main line, the one that has all the streaming TVs and other gaming devices affect the service of the new line? Meaning If two TVs are streaming and there is a ps5 online, will the machine attached to the new line be affected? Could I experience lag due to the other devices on the other line? Did I get bamboozled into thinking this split will crear a new line and they’ll be not interference by the other? Thank you.

RAIST5150

Hard to say for certain without more specifics on the topology, protocols, etc. in play.

One of the concerns with HFC systems has always been how bandwidth ultimately gets shared on the nodes.

Basically, the more demand put on it by multiple devices requesting data in a given time frame, the greater the risk of queuing that could negatively impact overall throughout for any one particular device or task.

In a DOCSIS 3.0 plant, with 32 channels available, a tapped line's max downstream bandwidth could theoretically cap out around 1.2 or 1.3gbps, depending on certain factors. In a 3.1 plant, it may go all the way to around 10gbps... depending on how frequencies, channels, etc. are configured.

Keep in mind it is not just about the raw bandwidth. Load latency is an important factor.

As more requests are queued to go on the wire, the greater the risk of perceived delays in transfers ramping up due to increased load latency. Higher priority content may get ushered through first, which can cause other things to feel sluggish/laggy If it takes too long for those prioritized packets to come through first.

This, in a nutshell, is why we are more likely to see slowdowns during peek usage periods in certain areas.

William_M

Hi @colonelva!

Services used by the other modem should not impact your connection any more than your neighbors using their service would, however having a few other devices streaming/gaming/browsing should not impact your connection much even if through the same modem. Most online games need less than 1mb/s other than downloading/updating, and video streaming only uses around 10 Mb/s. Your ping usually should not be impacted unless you are close to 100% utilization, so unless someone is downloading something at ~900Mb/s+ through the same modem then that is unlikely to be causing your issue.

William_M

Will you please try just a normal ping test by opening your command prompt by pressing Windows+R and typing in "cmd" in the run window. In the black window that opens type "ping 8.8.8.8 -t" and press enter. This will start a continuous ping test. Please let this run for a few minutes and then press Control+C to end the test and share your results. If you know the IP of your games server you can replace the 8.8.8.8 with that and run another test.

Could you also tell me what exact problems you are having while gaming and what first indicated you were getting packet loss?

colonelva

Good morning William. I’ll try the rest you’re describí by once I return home this afternoon and then post the results. Thank you!

colonelva

So the game I play is Rainbow Six. They don't make their server IP known. But this primarily occurs on the west coast servers, which I believe are housed in Los Angeles. I did the CMD test with 8.8.8.8 and got the following:

Ping statistics for 8.8.8.8:

  Packets: Sent = 203, Received = 203, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

  Minimum = 10ms, Maximum = 33ms, Average = 15ms

This has been happening for the better part of a year. I just never bothered to try and identify the cause.

HT_Greenfield

"Worst hit are online multiplayer games such as Rainbow Six Siege, and Ghost Recon Breakpoint."

🔗https://www.the-sun.com/tech/7820594/rainbow-six-siege-down-assassins-creed-ghost-recon-breakpoint/

"Update 33 (April 7, 2023) 01:32 pm (IST): According to fresh reports on Twitter, Rainbow Six Siege is currently down or not working for some players."

🔗https://piunikaweb.com/2023/04/07/rainbow-six-siege-connectivity-issue-being-looked-into-says-ubisoft/

colonelva

I know Rainbow six isn’t perfect. I’m not talking about today this has been occurring for a year.

colonelva

Here’s another wrinkle. In the past and it still happens, I’ll have my two kids on their ps5 wifi. I’ll be wired. My ping will be in the 60-80 range and theirs will be in the 20’s on wifi.

HT_Greenfield

What fault effects with the game/servers are you experiencing and how often and during which hours of which days of the week do they happen? Is there a pattern?

colonelva

Hi HT, I'm noticing high pings when I should be low. I'm in Arizona and the server is in LA. This leads to times when I die suddenly while gaming. Lag is the major culprit. Literally I see someone and I'm instantly dead. On the kill cam, they clearly saw me before I saw them. There is no pattern, it occurs all throughout the day and on different days of the week.

Here is a tracert I did on a west coast WOW server.

 2   7 ms   7 ms  11 ms 142-254-187-061.inf.spectrum.com

 3  106 ms  24 ms  21 ms lag-61.yumaaz1401h.netops.charter.com

 4  32 ms  23 ms  22 ms lag-22.yumaaz1401r.netops.charter.com ]

 5  15 ms  14 ms  15 ms lag-39.lsancarc01r.netops.charter.com

 6  16 ms  15 ms  17 ms lag-46.lsancarc0yw-bcr00.netops.charter.com

 7  19 ms  16 ms  14 ms lag-0.pr2.lax10.netops.charter.com

 8  14 ms  15 ms  15 ms 24.30.201.95

 9  191 ms  217 ms  218 ms ae1-br01-eqla1.as57976.net

 10   *    *    *   Request timed out.

 11  35 ms  19 ms  18 ms et-0-0-0-pe03-swlv10.as57976.net

 12  19 ms  19 ms  21 ms 137.221.105.2

William_M

That last traceroute shows you are making it to the WoW server in 19ms, which is similar to the ping you said your kids are getting and most likely means the increase is from the game server itself. From the tests you have run I am not seeing any issues at all with your internet.

While lower is always better, 60-80ms is still fine for most online gaming. A 30ms difference is about 2 frames at 60 FPS and would be hard to notice even if side by side. Average human response time is around 250ms, unless you are playing at the highest competitive levels small ping changes will have very small affects on your gameplay.

RAIST5150

Ubisoft is a weird animal like Bungie... no matter where the game's instance is hosted, you have another link to their home data center that checks in periodically for synching data.

I would hazard a quess you may be wrangling with something like a 10hz or so update to servers in Montreal. This has been a longstanding issue with Bungie (reaching back to Seattle). It can cause some weirdness periodically when inventory is updated and such in their Destiny games.

Keep in mind that these types of games may also track data between peers to assist with lag compensation in addition to using a lot of UDP packets instead of TCP in an attempt to move user data more efficiently. In place of actual peer to peer synching, they may opt to use cloud hosting for the same tactic, but that can still run into similar pitfalls, one really annoying one being inconsistency from instance to instance.

Any of these approaches can have issues when the data arrives too far out of order and such, as they do not have any error recovery mechanism built into the protocol like TCP. It is especially bad when peer to peer traffic is involved, as you are dealing with routes between clients that will often be less optimized than routes to known data centers.

colonelva

I’ve tried doing all kind of fixes. What I’m finding is a streaming tv is still interfering with my gaming. How can a plan which sees downloads of 1 gig and upload of 40 have a connection that is effected by a streaming tv.

RAIST5150

Could be a prioritization/queueing issue... one device waiting for another's scheduled transfer to complete.

Can look into your router to see if you can give the gaming device priority through QoS.