Hello,

New to this forum. Was told by a friend of mine to resort to Pingmann both for the analysis software and the community help.

The past 3-4 weeks I have been experiencing loss of connection when playing games. This includes games such as:

Counter-strike GO
DOTA2
Star Wars - Battlefront
Hearthstone.

At first I thought it was temporary and didn't pay much attention to it. Now, however, I'm growing increasingly frustraded. I am experiencing the same problem with diferent computers (I have two, one laptop and one stationary). The problem occurs regardless of being connected by WIFI or ethernet cable.

The problem has a very clear pattern. It seems to happen at very set intervalls: around 5 minutes. During this time I can usually see what happens in the game around me in real time (as if the "rest of the game" isn't affected by my loss of connection), however I myself cannot move or control anything.

I am very new to troubleshooting network and internet connections on this "advanced" level. I have attached a screenshot of pingplotter that I let run in the background for around 30minutes whilest gaming Star Wars Battlefront. You can find the image attached along with the original Pingplotter-file.

Any help here is appreciated, as I am unsure how to interpret this result.

The router is a 3TB timecapsule from Apple if that has any relevance to the issue.

Hey skinkmacka,

Thanks for writing in to the forums - I'd be more than happy to help out with this.

After taking a look at your screenshot (thanks for that by the way!), it is very apparent that the issue can be narrowed down to *most likely* the device at hop 2 (10.254.65.1).

You can see that the packet loss starts at this hop, and carries through to the final target.

Quick question for you - is your time capsule device that second hop? This *may* explain the packet loss every 5 minutes, as time capsules don't necessarily have some of the built in capabilities necessary to handle lots of data effectively (like PingPlotter is throwing at - or even your online games). In other words, it is a networked external hard drive, that can also be used as a router - but it isn't a router.

You can quickly troubleshoot this to see if it is your Apple Time Capsule, by connecting your computer straight to your modem (and momentarily remove your Time Capsule), and then play your games and run a trace again in PingPlotter to see if you no longer experience these loss of connections.

If you still see the same results, the Time Capsule is most likely not the device at hop 2, and you should troubleshoot that device.

But if our suspicions are correct, and the issue stops, you know it was the Time Capsule. You can then put a true router in the time capsules place, and then connect the time capsule to the router via ethernet to keep it on your network (it just won't be routing anymore).

Hopefully this helps out! If you should find yourself with any other questions, or needing any other assistance - please don't hesitate to email us at any time at support@pingplotter.com. 

Cheers! 

-Phillip