I have been having packet loss issues for a few weeks now. I have not changed anything on my end but cant seem to figure it out. Already had the cable company replace the line into my house, and they will be replacing the underground line from the utility pole in a few weeks. Ran a test for a few hours with ping plotter and noticed loss on several hops but do not know where to even start. Any help would be appreciated.

The packet loss you're seeing across the board on all hops is visible in hop 2. Since you didn't show the time graph for hop 1, I assume you're not seeing the same packet loss there, but the latency variability in hop 1 looks like there might be problems there too.

Do you know what devices the different hops are here? Is hop 1 inside your network (the IP address makes me think so)? Is it showing this same packet loss? If so, then this packet loss might be happening inside your own network.

Since hop 2 is showing similar packet loss characteristics to ho 16, you can pretty much rule out everything past hop 2 as the source of your problem. This limits it to something inside your network, or the first hop inside your ISP. You'll want to eliminate your own network as the source of the problem if possible. If you're using a wireless network (the packet loss characteristics look a little bit like you're using a wireless network, but I can't say for sure), try going with a direct cable connection.

You might try posting another shot with hop 1 turned on and "Samples to include" set to 250 instead of 10. Also, if you can tell us which hops are which devices, and if you have a router / wireless device / similar inside your network, talk about that a bit. This will help us narrow it down a bit more.

- Pete

Hop 1 is my router ( Linksys WRT54G) and I am plugged in and not using the wireless. I disconncted the router and I am currently directly connected to my cable modem (Motorola SB4100). Running a new test with the specs you listed and will send results in a few hours.Thank you .

same ip w/o router:

imageshack


different ip destination w/o router:

imageshack

Interestingly, you had no packet loss at the final destination on either of those. There was some intermediate hop packet loss, but we can't say much about that until we see it at the final destination too.

With only 2% packet loss, though, you don't have enough data here to say for sure if the packet loss problem is still happening or not. It could be that collecting 1000 samples will show some loss.

Change your trace interval to 2.5 seconds and run it for an hour. Set you graph time (lower time graphs) to 1 hour, then try posting another picture.

Anecdotally, it looks like removing your WRT54 did impact your packet loss. It could be that you just need to collect more data, though, or maybe it's a time-of-day problem. If it's a time-of-day problem, you'll probably have to wait until a weekday to collect the sample set.

- Pete

Ran another test last night when I was having problems. Here are the results with no router and all firewalls turned off.

The packet loss here is much better than it was in the first picture you posted. You can say with some certainty, though, that this problem is between your computer and hop 1 (or possibly at hop 1). It looks (based on latency) like hop 1 is actually inside your cable provider.

Since you eliminated most of the possible culprits from your network, then you start to have to look pretty strongly at the cable provider as the problem. This could be your cable modem, or it could be anything between your cable modem and the device at hop 1. There is probably a lot of infrastructure here owned by the cable company, and the problem probably exists there someplace.

I think you need to continue pushing at your cable provider to solve this problem for you.

The packet loss you're seeing isn't too bad, though, and it could be dismissed by some as not a problem. If possible, I'd recommend that you continue to run PingPlotter continuously, and look and see if evening weekday hours get worse. This is a classic time for cable connections to have problems. The most compelling kind of evidence is time-of-day based, where you get > 2% packet loss during the worst times (7pm to 10pm, weekdays, usually).

Keep track of where you experience problems in whatever application you're using. It's very important, when complaining of problems, to not just have PingPlotter results. You need to be having problems with something that uses your bandwidth - a VoIP connection, gaming, stock streaming, video streaming (or something similar). Keep track of problems you have and note them in PingPlotter. Then, when you create graphs of problems, you have real-world problems correlated with PingPlotter data, which is hard to refute.

- Pete

Unfortunately The main problem occurs when gaming and using Teamspeak. Not able to ping or run a tracert to the destination because it blocks these functions. Teamspeak alone packet loss is average of 10% PL and will go as high as 60%. Not sure about the main game I have problems with Battlefield 2. I can run that fine for up to an hour max, then ping starts to increase dramatically with major lag, then I have to quit. Benn trying to get my cable company to do something about it, but Everytime I get them on the phone, they run a few pings and no problems are found. Probably just have to cancel and go to dsl if the problem persists. I will continue to run the pingplotter tests and capture screenshots of my application packet loss and hope for the best. Thank you for taking the time to help.

You should be able to use the TCP packet type with PingPlotter to trace to the Teamspeak server. Most teamspeak servers listen for TCP packets on both port 14534 (for the web interface) and port 51234 (for the TCP Query interface). Try changing to the TCP packet type and targeting one of those ports and see what you get. For more details on configuring the TCP engine, see here:

http://www.nessoft.com/kb/51

- Pete