Intermittent packet loss, have replaced all hardware. Techs have been out. Running out of options.

Hi I have had some pretty bad packet loss for the past month or so. Until recently the packet loss happened exclusively from about 7pm to 7 am. But now its all day. Ever piece of hardware under my control has been replaced. Everything from the network card to the pole outside. I just replaced my motherboard, ethernet cable, modem (3 times), router, ISP tech replaced all cable inside the house and to the pole. The packet loss is quite frequent, every minute, maybe less sometimes. And when im downloading it spikes like crazy. My speeds are good when there is no packet loss. ISP keeps saying my signal is good. Pingplotter shows a wildly different story. Most services aren't really affected much, because it happens only briefly. But I enjoy competitive games and it completely drops for a second or two, and that just ruins the entire experience. Ill post some of the pingplotter results.

Hello there,

Thanks for getting in touch with us! I'm sorry you're having such a terrible time nailing down the reason for your bad connection. I'm happy to help though

So I pulled in that sample file (thanks for uploading it) and I did find a clue at least...

- First off, you can discount the packet loss at hop #1 because this is just your router de-prioritizing ICMP Time Exceeded responses (it doesn't affect your connection and is perfectly normal).

- Second, hop #2 is not sending back ICMP Time Expired messages at all. This is also normal however, this can "mask" true packet loss (stuff that affects your connection).

- Third, I can confirm that the packet loss that's affecting your connection is as early as hop #3 - I've attached an image and annotated to demonstrate.

In conclusion, it's highly suspect that there's an issue at or between hop #2 and hop #3. You can try tracing directly to the IP address of hop #2 for a while to see if it shows the same pattern of packet loss. If that's not productive, then you can trace directly to hop #3.

I hope this helps! Please feel free to reach out if you've got any other questions.

Austin Berner
Quality Assurance Analyst | Pingman Tools
support@pingman.com | (208) 345-0030 ext.1062

Thank you so much for your response. When i ping hop 3, no issues. When i ping hop 4 is when it shows packet loss on both 3 and 4.

Oh, I lied looks like there is loss on hop 3 as well. Is hop 3 the node?

So, im not sure how to interpret this. Is this showing packet loss from both 3 and 4, or is the packet loss from 3 and just showing on 4.

In these sample files, most of the packet loss seems to be coming from hop #3. However, I'd highly recommend trying to trace directly to the IP address of hop #2 - the packet loss that's showing on hop #3 might be starting there.

You can compare the data from a direct trace to hop #2 and a direct trace to hop #3 to see where the packet loss really is starting.

If you're unable to get results from hop #2, I'd contact your ISP and tell them you're trying to consistently test ICMP Echo Replies from that device to gauge the level of packet loss. Ask them what port and protocol you need to configure to get a response from it. See Named Configurations for more info on this. (or, you can scan the IP with Nmap to find out for yourself).

Let me know if you have any other questions!

Austin Berner
Quality Assurance Analyst | Pingman Tools
support@pingman.com | (208) 345-0030 ext.1062