Ping greatly increases around the same time every day.

[Madvillain]

What's up. I have had a problem with my ping skyrocketing in the early to late afternoon hours for months. My in-game ping is typically around 50 to 60 but when this happens it goes up to 200+ and stays that way for hours at times.


When this happens it renders online gaming near impossible and I'm getting EXTREMELY frustrated. I have spoken to Verizon, my ISP about this like 8 times and I'm done with talking to their mostly horrific "tech support".


I myself suspect that my bandwidth is being exceeded and I would probably have to increase my internet package but I'm not really sure. When this occurs it is usually when others in my house are online.. 2, sometimes 3 or 4 other connections.


Same time of the day from about 1PM to like 5 or 6PM. It lasts for hours. I've tried to trouble shoot it many times and it just keeps on happening.



Any ideas or suggestions on what I should do next?


-Thanks, Ill.

 

[Madvillain]

After a bit of googling I have found a Yahoo Questions question that seemed to be greatly similar to my issues. I also read a post containing potential fix or at least a potential diagnosis and decided to check it out.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120429123315AAaWJ9W

Best Answer - Chosen by Voters
Newer routers have expanded 'buffer' sizes, which actually works against the TCP protocol.
Because they hold many more packets, and don't 'tell' the ISP servers to slow down the feed of packets until they get full, it just creates more problems in terms of latency...despite having large sizes of feeds (Mbps) to and from the ISP.
Test all your relevant network stats, but pay particular attention to "network buffer measurements" to see what it is:
ICSI Netalyzr: http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/
Requires Java, NoScript users can 'temporarily allow berkley...'

The results will give the entire Network, which includes your ISP, so although your router may be just fine, it could be the ISP config's that are mis-adjusted or could be tweaked. Many's the time a person complains to the ISP, and they flatly deny any responsibility, without actually examining their configs.

Portions of this podcast explain 'buffer bloat' and it sounds a bit like what you have.
Using the "Find" function (ctrl + F) with this phrase "the effect of the buffer bloat" will take you to the question/answer containing the explanation.
https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-348.htm

There's a couple of methods suggested to alleviate it, but I've not tried them.

I ran the scan detailed above and found some interesting end results which I'll post in the screen shot below.

Hmm. I'm a bit confused now though. Are the above fire-walled or not forwarded? It seems I have some steam ports up on here.. Something is blocking them apparently.


Hope this info helped some.. Now help a dude out.

 

[Naku_vamp]

are you using like school internet like internet provided by a university or something? if so it might just be trying to support to many things at once as they use a collective bandwidth

 

[Madvillain]

Nah I'm connected to internet at home. Verizion internet. only 1 to 4 others using at any time.. 4 is really rare though. usually just 2 people.

 

[Snipeye]

Verizon internet? So do you mean T1, Cable, Satellite, 4G, etc?

Based on what you said on how Internet becomes so slow during regular, consistent hours, makes me think of two, maybe three things:

1) You are exceeding your Internet package. Easiest way to find out: download some tool to record how much MB of data you're downloading/uploading. Your ISP sometimes may have a tool that can assist with this if you don't want to find your own.

2) Your connection is a Cable/DSL line. Upsides is faster internet connection than wireless and 4G, but the problem is depending on the ISP, the line itself may be setup to serve individual households, OR (this is what I was thinking) the line itself may be set to serve multiple households/homes within an area. What this ends up doing is that the line serves all of the households at once, and if each household is accessing the Internet, downloading music, streaming video, Internet access slows to a crawl because its being overused.

3) Very unlikely and really would only apply if you're setup for wireless. No password = open access to anyone within range. Make sure you put in a good encrypted password to limit your Wifi access to only you and your roommates/family.

 

[Madvillain]

Hey snipeye. I appreciate yours and all others replies.


I certainly agree with the first assumption you made. I do believe i am exceeding my internet package.

I have decided this happens when there are multiple connections on at once. We have 2 LAN lines and a few other devices connected to the router at any time which includes a laptop and 2 WIFI connected phones.

It seems when there are more than 3 devices or just 3 devices connected my ping starts to increase to a point where online gaming isn't possible.


As for the type if of connection Verizon provides I'm not really sure. It's called Verizon Fios (Fiber optic).. I'm certain it isn't cable or DSL.

 

[Snipeye]

Got it. You're one of the lucky jerks who got FIOS. Jealous of you (grandparents have it, but they cannot appreciate how good it is). And yes, it sounds like a simple case of overloading your router with too many demanding systems at once. You will need to (as you pointed out) limit access to it so only two systems are in use at a time, or increase the connectivity (for which Verizon will charge you a pretty penny for).