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Still Experiencing Intermittent Lag Spikes frequently

Zhain
Zhain Posts: 20 Contributor

Hi there,

Last post on this was closed without any additional input/troubleshooting steps. (

I am still experiencing frequent occurrences of my ping in various games (FFXIV and Honkai Star Rail for example) spiking up to 300+ ms for 5-10 seconds and then being normal for 3-5 minutes. This has persisted whether connected directly to the modem or through a router. I ran another ping test to the FFXIV servers today and have attached the results.

Best Answer

  • Jaleesa_F
    Jaleesa_F Posts: 541 ✅ Verified Employee Moderator
    Answer ✓

    Hello @Zhain,

    I would advise bypassing your router and connecting your device directly to the modem via ethernet cable then checking to see if you see the same lag issues.

Answers

  • RAIST515O
    RAIST515O Posts: 212 Contributor

    Hate to say it, but that graph really is not that bad considering what you are asking of the route.

    New York to California... to SE's servers at that.

    Zero packet loss tracked to that endpoint, with latency swinging roughly 80-113, averaging between 84 and 85.

    It isn't making much (if any) of a case for Spectrum to try to do anything.

    Those numbers fall pretty close to what can be expected with the core backbone latency between those regions.

  • RAIST515O
    RAIST515O Posts: 212 Contributor

    Should also note that in the case of Final Fantasy XIV, Spectrum is not even doing the "heavy lifting" on this route.

    Your packets leave their networks pretty early on... handed off to a peer (gtt.net) before leaving New York. They connect to SE's peering/hosting partner (ntt.net) to carry your packets across Illinois, all the way over and down California, through Sacramento to get to SE's networks.

  • Zhain
    Zhain Posts: 20 Contributor

    Hi again, thank you for the replies!

    @Jaleesa_F I tested again hard-wired into modem and this time the issue didn't happen. It also looks like that when I plug back into the router, it's fine for a while, but eventually the issue crops up again. I don't know what sort of router settings could be causing this.

    @RAIST515O In terms of the general ~80 ms ish ping, that's totally fine, I have no issues with that, latency to the west coast is what it is. It's more the occasional spikes to ~300ms or more for 5-10 seconds at a time that are a problem. The graph doesn't seem to indicate the real issue, unfortunately.

  • William_M
    William_M Posts: 1,327 ✅ Verified Employee Moderator

    After you reconnect to the router, how long of a while is it fine for? If you leave your device connected straight to the modem for that long or longer, does it stay fine?

    Will you please run a ping test? To do this on Windows press the Windows key on your keyboard, type "cmd" in the search bar, and press Enter. This will open the Command Prompt. In the Command Prompt window, type "ping -t 8.8.8.8" and press Enter. This command will send ping requests to the IP 8.8.8.8 until you press Control+C to to end the test. Leave it running as long as possible, ideally let it just run in the background while you play and check to see if it is showing dropped packets or ping spikes when you notice game issues.

  • Zhain
    Zhain Posts: 20 Contributor
    edited May 10

    @William_M Admittedly I didn't test hard-wired into the model for more than 3-4 hours, and when wired into the router it could take potentially that long to start showing up again, but typically within the same evening.

    Left the ping up as requested for a while, and the issue happened a few times during. A smattering of requests timed out; otherwise is as below:

  • Zhain
    Zhain Posts: 20 Contributor

    Are there any further steps I should take with this? @William_M ? Still having the issues, same sort of deal where on average, latency is fine, but with occasional huge spikes, like in the ping above.

  • James_M
    James_M Posts: 5,130 ✅ Verified Employee Moderator

    The ping test from 5/10 shows 0% packet loss and average pings of 19ms. Anything less than 100ms on average is usually considered acceptable.

    On May 9th you mentioned that when hardwired into the modem, the issue resolved (or didn't occur), but returned when you re-added the router, so it sounds like issue is most likely the router.

    Do you have a different router to test?