i started to have problems in early January while gaming in BF2. before this time my ping was usually 40-60 on the servers i gamed on.

in early January i was still using the same servers but noiticed i would get severe lag and my ping would go up to over 800ms while in game. this problem has persisted and my isp, cox keeps telling me it is the game servers. i have tried over 100 gaming servers that, when i initially connect to them my ping is 40-60ms, but throughout the gaming it will go up to 400-500, even over 1000ms a couple of times.

it is continually sporadic, but i would say in 30mins of gaming, i will have 15-20 issues on a good day and on a bad day 30-60 issues or even just getting kicked off the server due to severe lag.

cox's tech support says they will not accept a ping plot screen shot and will only accept a ping or tracert from the cmd prompt. the problem is that these two ways show little or no problems but pingplotter does.

in the screen pic attached i have used unix style udp packets beause i was told by cox tech support that icmp packets were "not as important" and may give me a false indication of and issue. they said icmp packets are routinely dropped if the routers are in high demand, but not know wans i am not sure if they are just giving me lip service.

please explain the data i have given as i am not familiar with wans, but to me it looks like i am having sporadic, constant packet loss at ip 68.2.14.77 which is an ip owned by cox. my understanding is that when i have packet loss my machie needs to send the data over and over, thus creating lag. also, in this screenshot, my machine is connected directly to the modem, no lan interference at all.

thanks in advance,
bob