Topic Options
#3565 - 01/18/20 09:06 PM Hoping for help pinpointing problem
Ethan Offline


Registered: 01/18/20
Posts: 4
This is a bit of a long story, so, sorry. I'll try to be brief.

About a week ago, I started noticing that my internet was a little sluggish at times and I would get really annoying lag spikes every one to two minutes while playing online games. They typically last anywhere from five to ten seconds (just enough to get me killed). The rest of the time, everything is great: low latency and perfectly smooth. I've dealt with lag before, so I performed all the usual troubleshooting steps: checked for firmware updates for all network hardware, DNS flushing, resetting the modem and the router, etc. No change.

As I was searching online for ways to pinpoint where the problem was, I found PingPlotter. At first, I freaked out because I was seen anywhere from 30 to 50% PL on the first hop. From my internet reading, this suggested something was wrong in between my desktop, which was connected via Cat7 Ethernet cable to my 95 day old Netgear XR500 modem. I then had the idea to download PingPlotter to other computers on my network to determine if the problem was my desktop or the router. The results were exactly the same from my laptop over WiFi and from my iPhone. Suggested to me that the problem was my router. I have read that XR500 sometimes has problems after updating its firmware, which I had done around the time this issue started. I tried factory resetting the router and rolling back the firmware, but nothing fixed.

After talking to someone on reddit, I decided to buy a new router, because it seemed like my XR500 was beyond redemption. I bought an eero mesh network at Best Buy because I didn't want to go with Netgear again and I didn't want to deal with Amazon returns if it came to that. Honestly, the performance between the two routers has been exactly the same within a couple of ms latency at times. However, the lag spikes have continued just as before since changing out the router.

At one point, I read that it can be normal for there to be packet loss on the first hop because of low priority and timed out ICMP requests; what is important is packet loss that is sustained throughout the trace. I don't know if 50% is "normal", but I decided to go for it for the time being. I decided to play half an hour of so of Overwatch while I let PingPlotter take data pinging Google (I can't seem to make it work pinging whatever OW server I'm on and I haven't tried Destiny 2). I have figured out a little more of what to look for now, having read a bit more. Sometimes, it looked like the sustained packet loss was often occurring at the second hop. But that was usually low except for the one time I found where it was 6.6%. In all instances of lag that I've looked at on the graph, the %PL on the first hop is 100%.

Again, this behavior is seen on multiple devices from the network and on 2 different routers. Also, since I hate throwing money at a problem and seeing it not stick, I decided to give my XR500 to my brother-in-law today because he has been in desperate need of a new router for a while and can't really afford one at the moment. Anyway, I went over to his house and set up his new network, then ran PingPlotter over there for a few minutes once everything was set up. No packet loss except on one of the Google server hops. Same router, same xfinity, just a down the street from my house. I'm currently suspecting the modem, which is just some xfinity DOCSIS 3.1 thing that got installed about three months ago. Thing is, I'm not sure that a bad modem would cause PL on the first hop since it is after the router, where the first hop is recorded, right? I really don't know enough about networking to be sure.

So, yeah, I'm confused. Anyone have any ideas?

I've uploaded a few screenshots as well of the data from my OW session this morning. Thanks in advance.


Attachments
Google1.PNG (95 downloads)
Google2.PNG (75 downloads)
Google3.PNG (60 downloads)
Google4Full.PNG (76 downloads)


Top
#3566 - 01/19/20 02:58 PM Re: Hoping for help pinpointing problem [Re: Ethan]
Ethan Offline


Registered: 01/18/20
Posts: 4
I started pinging my phone to see if devices within the network were seeing the problem. I saw no indication that the problem is happening between devices on my network.

Top
#3567 - 01/20/20 01:05 PM Re: Hoping for help pinpointing problem [Re: Ethan]
Ethan Offline


Registered: 01/18/20
Posts: 4
Lastly, can someone please explain to me why pingplotter says I'm get 100% PL on hop 1 so much of the time, yet I'm still getting ~45 ms latency except when hop 2's PL spikes? The lag spikes in game still correspond to those. All other times are fantastic, despite what pingplotter is saying about the first hop PL. I feel like convincing xfinity would be so much easier if I understood that one thing. This problem is also making it difficult to do my job since I work remotely. I've been disconnected from my remote session multiple times today. Please help, somebody. Thanks.


Attachments
Annotation 2020-01-20 105902.PNG.jpg (92 downloads)
Annotation 2020-01-20 105902_1stHop100PL.PNG.jpg (83 downloads)



Edited by Ethan (01/20/20 01:12 PM)

Top
#3568 - 01/20/20 02:23 PM Re: Hoping for help pinpointing problem [Re: Ethan]
Hayla Offline
Pingman Staff


Registered: 10/16/17
Posts: 90
Hey Ethan,

Thanks for getting in touch!

Wow, it looks like you've done a lot of research. AWESOME! It seems like you understand most of PingPlotter and how to read it - so kudos! I also play Overwatch and I'm a big fan - I'd love to help you figure out the issue so you can get back to OW!

I'm going to speak strictly to what I can see in PingPlotter - and from your results, I would have to agree with you on the hop 2 hypothesis. I would recommend contacting Xfinity to see if they know what device has the IP at hop 2 - and then they can begin figuring out the issues from there.

I understand that you have some concerns regarding the packet loss at hop 1. This is going to be the same concept as the "packet loss only matters if it carries through" idea. There's a level of complexity that's added when you have packet loss starting at hop 2 and you're trying to figure out if the packet loss at hop 1 is "real" or not.

The easiest way for you to decide if it's hop 1 or 2 is to use PingPlotter to trace directly to your router (the IP at hop 1). The pings sent when you're tracing directly to a device versus the pings sent when you're tracing *past* it are different packets and can be treated differently, and I think that's what's going on here. You can absolutely verify that by tracing directly to your router - and that might help prove your point to Xfinity that your router is A-OK.

However, you don't *have* to trace directly to your router - because in one of the screenshots you sent me, it looked like there was a clear period for hop 1 at the same time when packet loss occurred at hop 2 and carried through. This could be enough to eliminate hop 1 as the culprit, but again it may help even more if you want to trace to your router.

Now let's talk about what to do. I am pretty confident that this packet loss is all starting right at hop 2 and is carrying through (and if this is the case, it'll be the same for your Overwatch games since hop 2 is likely a hop that all your packets *have* to go through to route to the Internet). So, I would say to get in touch with Xfinity and ask them who's at hop 2. I'd bet it's an ISP demarcation - and your modem would probably sit in between hop 1 and 2 (modems operate on a different networking layer than routers, so most modems don't show up in PingPlotter). Since the issue seems to be with hop 2, that means that there's an issue either with the trip from your router to hop 2, with your modem, from the modem to the ISP, or with that device at hop 2 that belongs to the ISP.

Let us know if that helped - and maybe consider swapping your brother back for that super nice Nighthawk wink

Cheers!
_________________________
Regards,
Hayla

Top
#3569 - 01/20/20 02:53 PM Re: Hoping for help pinpointing problem [Re: Hayla]
Ethan Offline


Registered: 01/18/20
Posts: 4
Perfect. Thank you for confirming my suspicions and for helping understand the hop 1 PL. I did what you suggested and pinged my router for a few minutes (long enough that several lag spikes would have shown up), and I saw no packet loss. I should be able to convince Xfinity with this data.

Also, I think I will swap the Eero out for the XR500 from my brother-in-law. The latency in game is pretty similar, but I feel like the Nighthawk was a bit more consistent before all this happened. Thanks again.


Attachments
Annotation 2020-01-20 124243.jpg (50 downloads)


Top

Search

Who's Online
0 registered (), 12 Guests and 0 Spiders online.
Key: Admin, Global Mod, Mod