Hi all,

I am trying to indentify the reason for a regular ping spike. Having recently changed ISPs and modems, I am baffled as to what is causing the problem (if it is indeed a problem, or just some reporting anomaly).

The facts:
- about every minute, the ping to my 2nd hop (1 hop past my gateway) spikes rapidly up from the normal 10ms or so up to 400-700ms then subsides to normal, over the course of 5 seconds

- this occured with my previous ISP (SBC/PacBell) and still occurs with my current ISP (DSLExtreme, which still uses SBC lines)

- this occured with my previous modem (Alcatel ADSL 1000) as well as my new modem (Westell WireSpeed)

- this occurs whether I test from my PC or my Mac, using PingPlotter, or any other ping/traceroute tool

- I connect directly to the DSL modem when testing, no LAN router involved

- speeds are good, about 2090 up / 345 down

- the only device on my side of the connection that remains the same is the Siecor DSL splitter, originally installed several years ago with my SBC installation.

I'm baffled. Anyone have any idea what is causing this, and whether it affects my connection at all? I am attaching a PingPlotter graph.

Thank you!

Bernie