| [Connectivity] Amarillo Packet Loss Is anyone else having troubles with packet loss lately? I just noticed it last week. I've been playing SWTOR and everything was going along fine till last week when I started experiencing huge lag spikes (9,000ms) and disconnects. This last Friday night was the worst with disconnects about every 20 minutes.
I started pinging in the background to see what was going on noticed packet loss at the same time as the lag spikes. If I got 3 or 4 packets lost in a row, then I would get disconnected. The worst set showed 5% loss. I called and they sent a tech out today that replaced my cable modem since it was an older model. Of course everything worked fine for the few minutes after that he was here. Unfortunately it's back again tonight. I was able to play fine till 7:30 then the lag came back and so did the disconnects. It seems like it's better with only 1% loss, but that's still enough to make gaming horrible.
Is anyone else experiencing this issue lately? I was pinging my modem and my modem's gateway. No loss to the modem, but loss to the gateway (74.196.44.1). I hate to complain about 1% loss since it's still better than my parents satellite, but it makes gaming horrible. I don't know what the loss was before I had these issues since I only started checking afterwards. I can definitely notice the lag and disconnects in SWTOR and BF3 on my Xbox. |
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| If you're seeing high latency and packet-loss to your gateway IP then it is usually 1 of 3 things.
1) Problem: You are using all of your bw, usually upstream. Since most cable modem packages have low upstream it is very easy to use it all up. Once it is capped, you will have no more room for new traffic and both upstream and downstream will suffer miserably.
Solution: Isolate the computer that is hogging up all your bandwidth by shutting them down one by one and watching the pings on on of the active ones. If all else fails, connect directly to the cable modem and make sure no programs are running. Also, lock down your wireless network. I suggest using MAC filters to make it extremely difficult for people to piggy back on it.
2) Problem: The upstream or downstream of the node you are on is saturated and will have the same effect as #1.
Solution: A service call will not help you. Only contacting Suddenlink until they escalate it to someone who knows where to look will be productive. Talking to the local Head End tech or Field manager may also be fruitful.
3) Problem: Noise or signal problems on the Node you are on. This does not usually cause high latency, just packet loss.
Solution: Depending on where the problem is, a service call may fix this if it is in your home or drop. Again, talking to the local Head End tech or Field manager may also be fruitful especially if the noise is not localized to your home and is affecting the entire node.
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Also, download pingplotter. It is a great tool that will graph your packet-loss and latency. It will let you export the data in a form that Suddenlink can see and will also let you save the graphs as an image. |
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| Sorry for the delay in replying. Thanks for the info Moostang. I am guessing the problem is number 2. I downloaded pingplotter and have had it going for 36 hours now running on a computer plugged in directly to the modem. I about gave up and decided it was my router yesterday since all morning it was fine with very few packets lost and really spread out. Then that afternoon around 3pm the packet loss started showing up again. Using smokeping also I showed a 5% packet loss between 6 and 7. There was also bad packet loss again between 10 and 11. These are the times I would normally be gaming and get lag and disconnects.
There is another tech coming out today that I will show all this info to. Hopefully I can get them to escalate it to the Field manager you are talking about. The most annoying part to me is that when I asked the tech support on the phone if they could monitor my connection for 24 hours they said they couldn't. I know very well the ISPs we use for my works businesses can monitor connections to verify there is a problem. Maybe it's true they can't do it for residential, but I find that highly unlikely.
Thanks for the advice. |
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| Well a tech came out yesterday afternoon to fix the problem. He was very nice and changed on the line so that I am getting what he said is perfect signal to my modem end now. Unfortunately I still got disconnected four times last night within two hours while playing games. He also said that basically if the techs can't see a problem with their line tester while they are there then they can't escalate the problem any higher. He was still really nice about it and trying to think of anything else that could be the problem.
I've decided to give them another three weeks to see if the problem gets resolved by other people complaining. If not, then I figure that Suddenlink just doesn't want my $50 a month and give it to another company (if I can). I've got to check and see what DSL options I have here. I stinks because Suddenlink was the best in my area and it still has great speeds, but I can't keep getting kicked out of games all night long. |
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1 edit | reply to muaddib
Can you paste the image of the pingplotter? Also, please PM me your cable modem's MAC address or your public IP (easily found at »whatismyip.com ) and I'll be happy to look into this for you. |
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6pm to 7pm | 
6pm to 12am | 
24 hr | 
zoomed in just before 7 |
Overall the internet really works fine except for games. I wouldn't really think anything of it, except I know I used to only get server disconnects like once every couple of weeks. One of my friends I am playing with also has Suddenlink, but in a different part of town. He will be on the same server and still be in the game. After the third disconnect last night I tried another router I borrowed from work and still got disconnected again. I'm not a networking expert so I don't know if the packet loss for sure is the problem. I just know that if I am pinging while playing and see lag or a disconnect I will see packet loss of one or three to four in a row (for disconnect).
Thanks again. |
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| I've also noticed a lot of packet loss in Lubbock for the last week or two. When running a ping test, it has varied between 4-9% loss with ping around 60ms and jitter around 80ms. Pretty bad when compared to the 0%/18ms/1ms that I was getting before. |
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| reply to muaddib
This is more like it. |
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| I believe this problem may be a little more widespread than one node. Some friends and I were also playing SWTOR tonight and all of us were having idential problems: Packet loss, latency spikes, and disconnects both from the game and from a voice chat (Mumble) server. I did not run any pingplotter graphs, but I started several pings back to my work and google and whatnot and all were behaving similarly to the graphs posted above. We are all on Suddenlink, but we are in different parts of town and so would be on at least three different nodes (likely four).
For what it's worth, I have noticed over my time as a TCA/Cox/Suddenlink subscriber the latency of my connection always slowly creeping up. It is too the point now where is very rare to see RTT 100ms to anything. Several years ago 20ms was routine. I am positive this is not a customer equipment issue as I have seen it over many brands of routers/modems (both docsis 2 and 3) and even on directly connected equipment from multiple locations within Amarillo. Minimum RTT of around 100ms to the hosts one AS away from Suddenlink's network is starting to edge into the zone of "really pushing it" for a lot of applications. I am curious as to what could cause such an impressive delay within in an ISP network other than to have some very circuitous routing, poor performing or overloaded equipment, etc. What gives?
The latency thing really bugs me because it's not something one can really call into tech support about and get an answer. After all, there are no advertised latency rates, and 100ms is perfectly great for a ton of applications... Just one more thing to add to the increasingly lengthy list of important things that we will all lose out on because nobody cares enough to demand better... |
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