Hi, I really don't know much at all about networking. However, I have been having on and off Internet problems since July 2016. I am currently using a 2Wire 2701HG-B with a Netgear router. We have DSL Internet that we get through a small, local company that uses AT&T lines and equipment.

At the time that we started having problems, our Internet provider separated themselves from another local Internet company, and moved buildings. I don't know the specifics of what changed on their end, but it seems like something did, because before that our Internet seemed to be running fine.

Internet pages seemed to take forever to load. I started looking up Internet speed tests to run, and I ran them several times a day, especially when we were experiencing a lot of problems. It would show speeds of close to 0.00 mbps for both download and upload, but especially for upload. I downloaded the free version of ping plotter to look at it. It showed a lot of latency and red lines at the second hop.

After 2 months of that, our ISP fixed some things on their end, and our Internet started working better. I checked ping plotter, and the second hop did not show the problems it had earlier.

Well, recently, within the last few weeks, things seem to be getting bad again. This time, though, the speed tests results are more normal to what we normally get. (1.00 Mbps download, and 0.32 Mbps upload). There is quite a bit of variation, though. I will run a speed test at one moment, then run the exact same one the next, and my numbers will be quite different.

The thing, though, is that we do get a lot of latency, especially at that second hop. We get latency as soon as we do something on the Internet -- anything on the Internet. I can type something into google, and as soon as I hit enter, my latency will spike at the second hop. When not doing something on the Internet, the latency at hop to is about 50ms. As soon as I do something, it spikes somewhere from 200-2000 ms, usually around 500-1000 ms. I don't know that this is normal. I doubt that it is, but please let me know for sure.

My 2Wire calls hop #2 the "default gateway" in the "View Broadband Link Details."

I looked up the 2Wire manual online, and this is what it says about the default gateway:
Part of the Internet address settings. The default gateway is a device your 2Wire gateway communicates with directly to give you access to the Internet. If you receive your Internet address settings automatically, the subnet mask has been set for you. If you manually set your Internet address (Static IP), this is the information that was provided to you by your ISP and entered by you during the system installation.

I think that there could be a problem with this "default gateway," but I am not sure what is going on.

Hop 2 is 108.73.171.254

There is a lot of red that shows in the charts due to the high latency.

Hello,

Thanks for writing in - sorry to hear about your internet issues.

Without being able to see the results you're getting in PingPlotter, it's honestly pretty difficult for us to speculate on what the culprit in your issue may be. If you'd like, feel free to send over some of your trace results (via the "File" -> "Share" option in program), and we'd be happy to take a closer look and offer any guidance we can!

In the meantime, is the packet loss/higher latency you're seeing at hop #2 carrying through to the hop directly after it (hop #3) - or through the entire route to your final destination? If not, then it may not be something you want to factor into your troubleshooting efforts. We cover this topic in more detail here:

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

We've also got a great guide that goes over how to use PingPlotter to troubleshoot issues like the one you've got here, which may prove helpful to you:

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

If you have any other questions - please let us know.

Best wishes,

-Gary

Thank you. I have included three of them. Let me know if you need any more.

And to answer your question, yes, the high latency and packet loss are carrying through all the way. I have looked at some of the pictures on your site, and none of them look exactly like what I am seeing.

Another thing that just started today is a new e-mail problem. When we tried to send out some e-mail messages today, we get them returned to us with a message that says something like "glis.cc has reached the maximum number of e-mails per hour (2/1 200%). I know that is probably unrelated.

The files included are from my iPad. I will send you some from my laptop as well.

Files from my laptop:

Thanks so much.

I talked to someone who knows much more about this than I do, and that person told me that what I was seeing was normal. I was on my iPad and my computer at the same time. While running pingplotter, I would visit a website (such as google and search for "bunny" or "skunk" or "chipmunk" etc, and that would be when the latency would spike.

There's probably nothing to solve then.

Thanks for sending over all the additional info here - we appreciate it.

Based on the results you've got, and your description of the issue (seeing the latency spike when you visit a website) - this honestly looks *very* reminiscent of bandwidth saturation. If you're interested, we cover the topic of bandwidth saturation in quite a bit more detail here:

http://www.pingplotter.com/wisdom/article/bandwidth-saturation.html

Hopefully this helps out. If you have any questions, or if there's anything else we can do to try and be of assistance - just let us know!

Best wishes,

-Gary

Yes, I am interested. Would the saturation be on my ISP's end or on mine, or both?

I still would like to know about the hop I asked about earlier. It still spikes at that location when we do anything at all online -- visit another page on the Internet. Last night it showed 1117ms at that hop. (It showed 4ms at the hop before it).

Since our ISP does not own the phone lines, we had put a ticket in with AT&T to look at the lines. They replaced all the filters on our phones and did something with the box down the street. These things seemed to fix our inconsistent speeds. Now we are consistently getting what we should be getting -- 1.0Mbps download speed and 0.30Mbps upload speed.

The latency spikes have not changed a bit, though.

AT&T apparently owns the address at the second hop, but they also own my own IP address when I look it up on the online tools, so I am not sure that that says a whole lot.

What I would like to know is where is this bandwidth saturation likely to be?
1.) My own network?
2.) My ISP's network?
3.) AT&T's network?

There was a problem a couple weeks ago on my ISP's end. Our Internet light was off on our modem, but all other lights were green. Since we were not the only ones to call in about that issue, our ISP had that problem fixed on their end, and they got the Internet back up a few hours later.

I don't know what caused that problem, but might they still have a long standing bandwidth saturation issue?

In most of the results that you've provided, the spikes in latency start right at hop #2 - which would imply that the issue is originating somewhere between hop #1 (likely your router/modem), and hop #2 (the first step out to your ISP). This information, paired with your description (the spikes occurring whenever you do anything online) would imply that the cause of the saturation is from your own network.

Bandwidth saturation happens when you use more bandwidth than is available on your network. With a 1Mbps connection, it may be a bit more easy to run into a situation like this. We've got a section of our manual that goes over this topic in a bit more detail:

http://www.pingplotter.com/manual/scenariosaturatedpipe.html

If you have any other questions - please let us know!

Best wishes,

-Gary

Thanks.

So going to google to do a simple search and pressing "enter/return" is enough to saturate my network?

So basically I can't do anything online at all without my network becoming completely saturated?

Is this because web pages now require more than 1Mbps connection speed?

Hey FoxSquirrel,

With a 1 Mbps down connection, this is *totally* possible. We set up a test environment here in our office this morning where we were able to emulate your connection speed - and just navigating to Google (or running a search once there) produced results in PingPlotter that were *very* similar to yours. A 1 Mbps connection is honestly pretty constrained, and it doesn't seem to take much to saturate it.

If you have any other questions - please let us know!

Best wishes,

-Gary

Okay, thanks so much for testing it out for me. I really, really appreciate it. That just confirms for me that we will have to get another kind of Internet service. With DSL, 1Mbps is the fastest we can get due to our distance from the central office.

We're going to try to switch providers at the end of the month.