Odd Internet and Latency Issues

[Karkianman101]

Okay, throughout the summer I was at my Dad's house in Austin, and had an internet speed of about 2.5 Mbs on average. On most servers, both TG and non TG, I had an average ping of 10-30.

I moved back to Dallas for school, and had to have internet installed in my new apartment. It is Charter. Last night, this test (Internet Performance and Speed Test) told me I was about 1.7 Mbs a second.Today, I'm guessing to more total activity, its been going between .8 and 1.3 Mbs. However, I just looked at server listings (both TG and non TG), and saw that the once low pings were now from 150 (absolute low) to a more normal 200, to a high of 250. I even joined a game of NS to see of Steam itself was bugging, and saw everyone else with nice Ping, and me with 180-250.

I have no background programs running that use the internet, besides Steam (which I've checked, and isn't updating or anything). Does anyone know why I would be getting such bad latency? Or are there any tips to help it, besides calling Charter and not getting help?

[Lorian]

You should probably just call your ISP, it probably isn't your computer. But do you have any other computers in the house you can see if the problem is present on them?

[Karkianman101]

No other computers. But I had a similar problem with Charter last school year. Onn toast.net, I average 250 to 350 Kbs, and got ping from 200 to 800 on servers. Its the main reason my TG activity dropped significantly. The reason I'm reluctant to call Charter is because they have horrible customer service (I don't want to go into detail with my experiances).

EDIT: Just spoke with Charter, against my better judgement. And I really don't understand why they outsource the part of their company that deals with customers to a place where the workers can't speak clear english.

I learned that I either have the 256k, 1m, or 2m package. The lady kept switching between them, and seemed unable to distinguesh between them. If she can't articulate the speed I'm supposed to recieve, or understand me when I ask for clarification, I'm not going to even consider asking her why my not too slow service (with download speeds of up to 350kps) has horrible latency for online games.

[CingularDuality]

You might want to try PingPlotter to figure out where the problem is...

[Rincewind]

Or switch to COX...

[Karkianman101]

Only Charter is in this area. Not Comcast or COX. The reason is because they bought the sole rights to the area. The problem is, their network is only built to support about 1/4 of the population here. So everyone is forced to use a buggered service.

PingPlotter isn't doing too much to help, but I have noticed something else weird. When I look at Steam servers, I see the servers here often pinging at around 20-40, maybe up to 80. When I open up a game, say H:S, I see the servers all have 150-250+ ping. I close that, and open Steam servers again, and see that all of TG has leaped to similar levels.

[CingularDuality]

Originally Posted by Karkianman101

PingPlotter isn't doing too much to help...

Oh? You already knew where the lag was coming from?

Are you complaining about latency or bandwidth? Or both?

FWIW, I haven't had internet when I get home from work (2am-ish) for the past couple of days. Sunday and Monday night, I figured the storm knocked something out, but Tuesday at noon I had internet, then Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, I was without internet and now it's working again.

[Karkianman101]

I am complaining about latency. I can often download files at up to 350 kps, so bandwidth isn't an issue. It's odd latency. However, I think it's due to that whole Charter situation, as in the middle of a weekday (such as right now, when most students are at school), I get max of 20 ping (9 just now on Dystopia). Later in the day I suspect that kids in my area start hogging up some section of the bandwidth.

[Lorian]

For me I'd actually be using more in the middle of the day, I am usually downloading something on BT.

[Wolfseven]

Well I'm having the same issue with Adelphia out here in the sticks of the dessert. They say I have a package of 6mb but when I run the speed test it shows 1.5 mbs at night then during the day its more like 800kbs.

So;

I know what you’re going through. I have had tech support out here on numerous occasions and they say it’s my computer. Ha! I say. I then find out its not true broadband (cable) its DSL just been added an accelerator. Well If they say broadband to the company that means just faster service but when I asked them if it was cable they would say yes we transmit through cable I found out its actually DSL just speed up through the Cable lines.

So you might want to find out if they are receiving SAT service and transmitting DSL through your cable service this would explain the fluctuation.

[rudedog]

your best bet is to use tracert or ping plotter mentioned above. First don't be confused with bandwidth or shall we say overall download speed, when playing any type of on line game latency (delay) is more important. Downloading the large file may take several ms to start but once it starts you should see your total "speed" depending on the server your connecting too. Where an online FPS type game needs constant updated info sent and received from the server in a timely manner.

From a guide I wrote a while ago (pasted here because of the post url restriction), sorry some images are lost from the copy paste .

How to use tracrout (tracert) to help troubleshoot your client or server problems.

Tracert is a very useful too. It can be used to diagnose a, latency (high pings) problem with your game server.
By using this command you can see if the problem lies within, your provider's network, the Internet, or your game server's network.

Tracert is a command line utilities that is built into Windows and most other computer operating systems.

The basic tracert command syntax is " tracert hostname ". For example, " tracert 66.151.108.123 " and the output might look like:



tracert will return a list of routers or hops taken to get to our final destination. Along with all these hops, we will also get the latency (ping) to each router along the way.

Let get started. I will be using XP for this demonstration. But basically it's the same for all the Window's operating system's

To open a Command prompt.
start->run type: cmd press enter
You should get the following window:




Let's start by looking at the output from my tracert. This shows the path from my box to my Dedicated game
server.

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\jim>tracert 66.151.108.123

Tracing route to 66.151.108.123 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 28 ms 20 ms 17 ms 10.2.120.1
2 8 ms 7 ms 5 ms 68.9.8.85
3 43 ms 36 ms 34 ms 68.9.8.201
4 191 ms 15 ms 7 ms provdsrc02-gew0304.rd.ri.cox.net [68.9.14.17]
5 6 ms 57 ms 47 ms provbbrc02-pos0101.rd.ri.cox.net [68.1.0.48]
6 36 ms 87 ms 38 ms provdsrc02-gew03010999.rd.ri.cox.net [68.1.0.51]
7 66 ms 38 ms 36 ms so-6-0-0.gar2.wdc1.Level3.net [67.29.170.1]
8 56 ms 37 ms 36 ms so-7-0-0.edge1.Washington1.Level3.net [209.244.11.14]
9 37 ms 36 ms 37 ms POS1-1.BR1.IAD8.ALTER.NET [209.0.227.118]
10 37 ms 58 ms 36 ms 0.so-1-3-0.XR2.IAD8.ALTER.NET [152.63.32.118]
11 42 ms 53 ms 37 ms 0.so-0-0-0.CL2.IAD5.ALTER.NET [152.63.38.142]
12 60 ms 69 ms 39 ms 201.at-2-0-0.XR2.DCA6.ALTER.NET [152.63.35.49]
13 39 ms 111 ms 38 ms 0.so-1-3-0.XL2.DCA6.ALTER.NET [152.63.35.118]
14 40 ms 38 ms 66 ms POS7-0.GW4.DCA6.ALTER.NET [152.63.36.177]
15 211 ms 227 ms 57 ms internap1-gw.customer.alter.net [157.130.59.194]
16 44 ms 41 ms 96 ms border1.ge4-1-bbnet2.ext1.wdc.pnap.net [216.52.127.82]
17 437 ms 672 ms 423 ms netfire-2.border1.ext1.wdc.pnap.net [66.150.126.58]
18 44 ms 42 ms 41 ms 216.52.118.2
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 45 ms 44 ms 47 ms 66.151.108.123

Trace complete.

C:\Documents and Settings\jim>


Wow, we have some problems. We'll get to those in a minute.

1st some basic info. I live in RI. My game server is located in Washington, DC. My provider is Cox.net. From what
I can see. It takes 20 hops to reach my game server. My information or packets travel within my ISP's network
until it reaches Washington, DC. Normally Cox.net connects to the Internet in Atlanta, but with all the problems
with MCI, they have changed their backbone provider to one in the DC area.

Once my information exits the Cox network, it looks like it bounces around DC before entering, Netfire. My game server's ISP.
It then travels threw another router before ending at my game server, IP 66.151.108.123.

Lets look at some of the information provided for each hop. Let's look at hop 8
8 56 ms 37 ms 36 ms so-7-0-0.edge1.Washington1.Level3.net [209.244.11.14]

8 = The router or hop number

56ms 37ms 36 ms = The three ICMP (ping) times. ms=milliseconds. These are averaged when using the ping command.

so-7-0-0.edge1.Washington1.Level3.net = router name ( you can learn a lot from the router name ) This one is
located in Washington and is owned by Level 3. A major backbone provider.

[209.244.11.14] = routers IP address.

Now looking over the data returned form my tracert. I see that my provider is having some problems, at my hop 4.
provdsrc02-gew0304.rd.ri.cox.net [68.9.14.17] . which is my ISP cox.net. I also notice that hop15 is having some
major ping issues. But this router lies outside both my provider and my game server's provider. Good luck getting
that fixed soon. Now hop17 netfire-2.border1.ext1.wdc.pnap.net [66.150.126.58] is having major latency problems.
also hop 19 is timing out. An * means a particular segment did not return any information and could be
experiencing major congestion. Hops 17 -20 fall under my game server provider.

so from this tracert I can see several problems. Two of which I have some control over as I am a customer within,
that particular network.

Hop 15 is outside my ISP's and game server's network. I hope they realize there problem and fix it soon. Basically we
are at the mercy of the internet as we share this world wide network.

Remember this tracert was only done once. I would want to run several tracerts to get an overview of the
situation. As luck would have it. Soon after, I was done with this guide, I ran another tracert and everythign
was back to normal.

What did we learn from this. You can do some basic network trouble shooting and find out exactly where your high pings
are coming from. If they fall within your network then you can complain to your ISP. Hopefully they can fix the
problem ASAP.

Good luck and hopefully this document helps you understand what is between you and your game server.

[TheBigC]

Here is a trick I used that sped up performance:

"WINDOWS XP INTERNET TWEAK: Now this step will enable you to change the Internet Bandwidth limit in windows to make surfing the web just that little faster. First of all go to ''Run'' and then type ''gpedit.msc''. Once you have done that locate the ''LOCAL COMPUTER POLICY'' branch and expand it, Then under that locate the ''ADMINISTRATIVE TEMPLATES'' branch and expand that also. Then under that locate the ''NETWORK'' branch and expand that also. Then under that locate ''QOS PACKET SCHEDULER'' and highlight it in the left window, Then in the right window locate ''LIMIT RESERVABLE BANDWITH SETTING'' and double click on it and then on the settings box check the ''Enable Item'' and where it says ''Bandwidth limit %'' change it to 0. "

Not my idea, I just copied it from a web site. The site has some great tweks for enhancing performance that really work.

XP Tweaks

[Spyder]

It also might fix itself over the course of a month or so. The first month of my newly installed cable service was at craptacular speeds with all kinds of latency issues. after about a month it cleared up and I've had steady rated speeds ever since.


As for outsourcing CS, that's common with most major companies. Most of the time they just tell you to call your local office anyway, and then your local office tells you they can't do anything without a ticket from the CS office....fun stuff.

[SmokingTarpan]

I go through this kind of crap twice a year at least with Insight Cable over here in Urbana, Illinois. My pings go from 30-100 to 400-4000 (no joke, I had a ping of 4000+ to google.com last night) at around 4pm. Every time I call to complain, they send a tech out.

The tech first tries to blame my problem on the fact that I use a 9-way splitter to split my cable between the tv and the computer (the cable company put the 9-way on themselves because I was receiving too much signal). Then when I tell them that's not it, they try to blame the fact that I run three cat-5 cables via cable extenders to my computer (it's the only way the modem will reach my desk, I have only one coax jack). When I tell them that's not it, they suddenly decide that I'm in a saturated area and blame it on the students coming back into town (nevermind the fact that it happens in the middle of a semester when the students haven't even been gone). The literal translation I believe is "our network sucks and we're too cheap to fix it". A week or two and another complaint or two later, and the problem is miraculously gone and my speeds are back to normal. Amazing.

I'm currently in week two of this problem right now, and I've got a tech coming out Monday. Yippee. So I feel your pain. Best advice I can give is to complain at least once a week until it's fixed, and ask to speak to a supervisor or Tier 2 tech support person instead of the minimum-wage phone jockey that you get right away. Be vocal, and your problem tends to go away faster just because they want to shut you up.

[Karkianman101]

I just finished the Mage Guild quests in Oblivion, and decided to test my Staff of Worms on this thread... :P

I got AT&T DSL internet, and just finished up a session of CS:S. And it really feels good to have stable internet back. So hopefully I should be popping into some of the servers again.