Hi

We live in South Africa and we are struggling with our ADSL line. Our exchanges are congested and the wiring is old and damaged. The odds that it would be replaced is zero. We live 4.8km from our exchange which is considered far

I used to have working ADSL but one day all went pear shaped. Latency started spiking. I don't have any line drops.

Remedies that I have tried

1) Tried three different routers
2) Changed pots filters. Also bought new ones
3) Tried without pots filters
4) Virus scan
5) Formatted computer
6) Tested from different computers
7) Used different Isp
8) Changed network cables
9) Connected router directly in to computer without any other computers attached
10) Connected router to different points in the house
11) Wireless switched off
12) Reduced line sync speed down from 4mb to 2mb (Made no difference in the latency)
13) Used Tcp-view to confirm there no established connections
14) Confirmed all my drivers are up to date
15) Changed my DNS to googles DNS after using results from Namebench(Optimal DNS tester)
16) They plugged me into a different port at our exchange
17)I use to have 5 telephone points in our house and they reduced it to 2
18)Flushed DNS
19) Resetted ports at our exchange
20) Switched off geysers
21)Technicians have come to test the lines at the house said the line is fine but unfortunately the qualification level here are sub standard. The guys had no idea what latency or jitter is.

Attached is some tracerts,pings and speed tests.

Here is also some Pingplotter results
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B27yQAqatDdybjJmZWFmdUVJTW8/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B27yQAqatDdyZEhzUGNJZWNkTXM/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B27yQAqatDdycWdGaFhjY0Y4a2M/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B27yQAqatDdyQTFSQkNHcFdIbjA/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B27yQAqatDdyNU5TeUFRdkNTQjQ/view?usp=sharing

If anyone can come up with some ideas or suggestions it would be greatly appreciated.

I used to have a ping on local servers during online gaming of about 34ms but now its around 70ms and spikes to 1000ms.

Mweb and Webafrica are two Isp's here in South Africa

Skype calls also break up badly.

Thx in advance

Hey Gavin,

First and foremost - it looks like you've done a fantastic job of eliminating the possible variables in your troubleshooting efforts here. Thanks for sending over all the details and pp2 files - we appreciate it!

From what we can see in the results you've attached here - this issue *appears* to be a load-based problem. If this is the case... then your ISP *would* need to be involved in any potential solution on this one. I'm sure this is something you were probably hoping to avoid, however, there are some additional things you can try to get things working in your favor here.

In the few days worth of data you've got, things seem to be at their worst across all of your targets between 12am and 8am - so this issue *looks* to be a time-based pattern.

Your next goal should be to correlate those problem times with something that could be causing a heavy load on the network during those times. It sounds like you've ruled out anything in your home network - but could there be a nearby business using a large amount of data between these hours? Or maybe some neighbors online during these times? If you can tie this pattern to something that could be occurring nightly and affecting the network - it would be much easier to communicate to your ISP to try and get a solution.

If the technicians are coming out during the day (and *not* between 12am-8am), then it's possible that they don't see any issues with the line (because there may not be any issues during that time). We'd recommend continuing to run PingPlotter (and saving your results!) to see if this pattern persists - and so you've got information to forward on to your ISP as well.

We've got a guide that goes over the process of troubleshooting a network issue, as well as communicating the issue to a provider to try and reach a solution. It looks like you've managed to already get through most of the steps in this guide on your own - but some of the information here may still prove useful to your situation here:

http://www.pingplotter.com/netnirvana/

Please let us know where this leaves you! If you have any questions, or need any further guidance - we're always happy to help out.

Best wishes,

-Gary