Regular lag spikes in distinctive pattern

Does this look at all familiar to anyone? I've searched everywhere and can't find anyone with a similar looking chart, but this renders games unplayable. For those that don't want to open the picture, it's regularly (20 sec or so) spaced lags that slowly decrease from about 1,100 Ms to zero over eight repetitons and then go back up to 1,100 Ms again.

Weird.

Hey Junkflap,

Thanks for getting in touch!

From what we can see in this screenshot - this pattern looks *fairly* reminiscent of bandwidth saturation (https://www.pingplotter.com/fix-your-network/common-network-problems/#bandwidthsat) - but it's honestly tough to tell for certain with the limited view we have.

If you'd like, feel free to send over some of your results (via the "File" -> "Share" option in PingPlotter), along with a description of your issue, and we'd be happy to offer any guidance we can from there!

Best wishes,

-Gary

Hi Gary,

Thanks for the reply. Here's the share link: https://share.pingplotter.com/bwKqJGB974J

It looks like my third hop is dodgy, though I read in the notes that packet loss doesn't matter unless it persists to the ultimate web page, which this doesn't seem to. So maybe its the very first step that's the problem as that does seem to have a max latency of roughly what the peak on the graph is showing... I'm no expert, but hoping you are

I think I've got it - it's something on my wi-fi network; if I choose hop 1 the lag spikes are there already. So I can stop cursing British Telecom at least. Now to find what's buzzing my network! It's none of the devices that the router lists as connected...

Let me know if I'm misinterpreting, but if not, thanks for listening - sometimes it's easier to sort out a problem when you're not feeling all on your own

Problem solved - got an old laptop up and running which seemed to be having no problems, so I figured it must be something in my PC. Began uninstalling programs that I'd installed around when the problem started and it was this stupid bit of software to update my daughters V-Tech toy! Gaming is now fun again.

It feels like popping a particularly troubles zit. Very satisfying...

I'd never have done it without Pingman and his super powers!