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#2992 - 01/12/17 11:38 PM I am a gamer that has been suffering from relatively consistent lag while playing Rocket League
lmills.117 Offline


Registered: 01/11/17
Posts: 4
For the past few months I've been experiencing some frustrating moments while playing one of my favorite games, Rocket League.

During online gameplay, I will quite frequently (as in, several times per match) experience some kind of lag or stuttering in which the game will appear to skip ahead a second or so, making all of the players on the screen (as well as the ball) suddenly shift position.

Here is as video that demonstrates this. Watch the ball as it approaches the goal.

Last night I took my router of the equation (Netgear Nighthawk R7000) and plugged directly into the Mediacom modem. At first, I thought the problem was resolved but it manifested again after awhile.

So I'm kind of at a loss and hoping someone can point me in the right direction. Here is a pp2 file that shows data collected over the period of 3 hours just sitting on my desktop while browsing the web (plugged into router this time).

There are two things that concern my untrained eye. For one is the massive amount of packet loss that seems to be occurring, especially on the first hop (but also the second it seems). For two are the intermittent latency spikes of 150+ milliseconds. As best I can tell, when I'm playing Rocket League and I experience stuttering as seen in the video above, I will alt-tab and there is usually an associated latency spike in the 200-300ms range. Other friends don't complain of this happening so I don't think it's Rocket League's servers... Anyways, I assume those spikes aren't normal?


Edited by lmills.117 (01/12/17 11:41 PM)

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#2993 - 01/13/17 01:48 PM Re: I am a gamer that has been suffering from relatively consistent lag while playing Rocket League [Re: lmills.117]
Gary Offline
PingPlotter Staff


Registered: 10/30/13
Posts: 185
Hello,

Thanks for writing in - sorry to hear about your lag trouble.

It's tough to speculate on exactly what the culprit in your issue may be with the small amount of data we have here. The results we can see here don't point to any specific issue . That doesn't mean that you're *not* experiencing issues, though - it just means that a bit of additional work may need to be done to capture them.

The packet loss you're seeing at hops #1 and #2 isn't necessarily anything to worry about. Some devices down prioritize (or don't respond at all to) timed out ICMP requests. As long as the pattern of packet loss doesn't carry through to the next hop in the route (or through the whole route), then you usually don't won't want to factor it into your troubleshooting efforts. If you're interested, we cover this topic in more detail here:

http://www.pingman.com/kb/5

If you're experiencing lag during your games, your best bet is to use PingPlotter to trace to the game server you're playing on. You can let the program run in the background (continuously) while you're playing the game, and when you experience any issues - make a note of them in PingPlotter. You can then see if there are any "problem patterns" in your PingPlotter data that match up with the issues you've experienced in the game, and use that information to narrow down what your culprit may be.

We've got a great guide that goes over some best practices and strategies for troubleshooting network issues like this one using PingPlotter, which may prove helpful to you here:

http://pingplotter.com/netnirvana/

Hopefully this helps get you headed in the right direction! If you have any questions, or if you should find yourself needing any other guidance - please don't hesitate to let us know.

Best wishes,

-Gary

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#2996 - 01/17/17 12:35 AM Re: I am a gamer that has been suffering from relatively consistent lag while playing Rocket League [Re: Gary]
lmills.117 Offline


Registered: 01/11/17
Posts: 4
Hi -

As per your recommendation I pointed PingPlotter to the specific game server I was in while playing Rocket League. Here are some results:

RL 1.pp2
RL 2.pp2
RL 3.pp2
RL 4.pp2
RL 5.pp2

While playing, I would alt-tab and comment when I experienced (or thought I experienced) lag/stuttering. Sometimes when I thought I experienced lag I would alt-tab and not see an associated latency spike, so I would sometimes second-guess myself and not leave a comment. Sometimes I left a comment anyways. I think it's safe to say that the majority of the time I experienced lag there was an associated latency spike in PingPlotter.

Additionally, a couple friends were over at my apartment plugged into my router playing Rocket League with me. Usually, we would all experience lag at the same times. Sometimes one person would see it but not another, but there are potential reasons for that (such as not everyone was looking at the ball at the same time, etc.). I can remember one incidence in particular wherein my friend experienced lag but I don't remember seeing any.

So, does this additional information help narrow down the culprit whatsoever? It seems to be that I'm getting intermittent lag spikes. Is this something I need to call my ISP about and get someone out here? When I talked to them via online chat they said that everything looked fine on their end and the discussion ended with them recommending me to upgrade my computer components for a better gaming experience...

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#3004 - 02/14/17 12:36 PM Re: I am a gamer that has been suffering from relatively consistent lag while playing Rocket League [Re: lmills.117]
lmills.117 Offline


Registered: 01/11/17
Posts: 4
Thought I might provide an update:

I contacted my ISP, Mediacom, after monitoring my connection for awhile longer and gathering more data. They said that they saw some problems with both the downstream and upstream, so they scheduled an appointment with a technician.

Sadly, the tech that came out seemed incredibly incompetent. I'm not even sure if he used his cable signal monitoring tool or if he just looked at some stuff on his phone (while connected to my wifi). He complained about his job half the time and didn't care one iota about the data I had captured with PingPlotter. I think because he didn't understand its relevance. He himself said that he lives in the sticks and I quote "doesn't have internet". Great.

I posted on a local facebook computer hardware buy/sell/trade page about my issues and someone responded. Turned out that he works for Mediacom and is apparently a bit higher up than the techs that normally make visits to customer's homes (he works on the equipment outside). Much to my joy he offered to help troubleshoot my issue and today it seems that he may have fixed it. Here is a snapshot of PingPlotter of today from when he started working on it up until now:

http://i.imgur.com/sMZKlWu.png?1

As you can see, the consistent ping spikes have stopped and my ping is now much more reasonable.

The moral of the story is this: Try to get in touch with someone who works for your ISP. This guy was even on bereavement leave when he contacted me, I couldn't believe it. Suffice to say that I'm extremely thankful for his help.

If it's of any use, he said that the MER was dropping to 28-30. He sent me a picture of his tool before he started working on it: http://i.imgur.com/y8MU3pM.jpg. And here's a picture of his tool after he had replaced a couple mods: http://i.imgur.com/c3EHrXm.jpg. There is still a small drop occurring but the connection is already much better.

He also said that the MER was till dropping after he replaced some equipment (a mod, as he called it), but now it's dropping to 35-40. Google says that a higher MER is better, though the tech said it shouldn't be dropping at all. Anyways, there you go, problem solved. This is what PingPlotter can look like when the MER is dropping, and it manifests as shown in the original post.


Edited by lmills.117 (02/14/17 12:48 PM)

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