Experiencing Packet Loss?

Posted by: DominoMišo

Experiencing Packet Loss? - 11/22/20 05:05 PM

Hello, this month I have been experiencing what I think to be a packet loss. Last month I moved from one block of flats to another and I even upgraded my internet (the provider is the same). I have never experienced a packet loss at my old flat. The router is the same and I am connected via Ethernet Cable. I tried to use other Ethernet cables for my PC or router but nothing changed. My provider says that they cannot see any packet loss at their end so I thought that the router might be the problem because he is quite old. They switched the router but still, nothing changed at all. I have all my drivers updated to the latest version so that cannot be an issue too. I like to play multiplayer games and I play League of Legends or Counter Strike Global Offensive quite alot. At my old flat in CS:GO I got 5 to 20 ping and in League I got 25 to 50 ping. Here now I got at CS:GO average ping 130 and in League 150. Its not only that because the Ping spikes every second to different number. From 70 to 200 to 150 to 430 and so on. But its not only games, I am studying at Univerzity and when I am in a call at Google Meet or Discord I cannot hear half the thing that were said because audio is so disorted.
My ISP is not cooperating at all with me, its like they doesnt believe me that there is a problem.
I even made some videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0-RCkSlfqE
In this one you can see that I am playing League and in the right corner you can see my ping spiking like crazy while I am in a call with friends and you can hear the disorted audio.

https://youtu.be/q7eOXapbj7w?t=19
In this one I am watching a stream at discord while being in a call discusing our last game while they are laggy for some reason.
And in a file posted here I have run a PingPlotter to a 8.8.8.8 IP but I dont know exactly what it says, heck I dont even know if I used good IP for this. What concerns me the most is that Max pings are reaching almost 3K for some IPs there.
Posted by: Poe

Re: Experiencing Packet Loss? - 11/23/20 05:08 PM

Hi DominoMišo,

Thanks for getting in touch!

After taking a look at your pp2 file I see that hop #1 (192.168.0.1 - your router most likely) is great with almost no packet loss and very low latency (avg 0.6ms). The final hop actually looks pretty similar to the 2nd hop and is overall actually quite good with only 0.4% PL and an average latency of 34.5ms. I do see 1 or 2 latency spikes that could adversely affect game play (650ms spike at 12:37 pm starting at hop #2) but I'm not seeing what you're describing with consistent 130 - 150ms avg ping. That said, it could be that this data didn't capture the issues with your game or that you need to trace to the actual game servers to capture it.

In order to find the exact IP address of your game server, you could try this on PC:

1. Close all other applications, leaving only your game running
2. Run Command Prompt as Administrator and use the **netstat -b** command. Copy/paste the output to a text editor (i.e. notepad)
2. Then, run the command a second time after closing down your game.
3. Cross-reference your results. The address that displays in the first result, but not the second, **should** be your game server.

Or if you're interested, you could contact your game's support team and ask for the IP of your server. Community forums for the game are also a great place to search for this information.

Once you've nailed down the IP you're connected to, try out a trace! If you don't get a response (100% loss), then you'd just need to adjust your packet type and port number settings accordingly by creating a [New Named Configuration](https://www.pingplotter.com/manual/named_configurations.html). [Nmap](https://nmap.org/download.html) is a great tool we use frequently to help find open ports/protocols for servers.

Here's a [Youtube video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Raj7tX0TUQ) which talks a little more about isolating the problem.

For more details about interpreting results for gaming, you can check out these articles:

- [Interpreting Graphs - Gaming](https://www.pingplotter.com/manual/interpretgraphsgamer.html)

- [Beat Game Lag](https://www.pingplotter.com/wisdom/article/beat-game-lag.html)

Once you find your game server IP try tracing to that while you play your game and note times when you are experiencing issues. Then you can look back at PingPlotter to see if it shows anything at those times and if so where the issue is.

Once you have captured a good chunk of data tracing to your game server post another pp2 and we'll be happy to take a look at it.

Thanks,

-Poe