US Telco Support > Frontier Communications > [FiOS] Xbox lag

[FiOS] Xbox lag

Are you having issues with the performance of other things away from Xbox? Essentially, are your speeds dipping, latency increasing, and packet loss increasing or is it a case of blind lag?

It's worth noting out that some people on FiOS with Verizon have noticed a decrease in performance for Xbox Live as well. I'm not aware of anything affecting PSN or PC gaming yet...

Yes I am noticing on my laptop. I run ping test and I definitely show some packet loss and higher pings

Is the loss and higher latency correlating with specific times of day or is it always there?

During higher volume times I notice it more such as 7-10. I even upgraded to 25/25 for the same price trying to figure this out. I can use my laptop during these high volume times and it works just fine. It's my Xbox though that's drives me crazy

I live in Fort Wayne as well and have been experiencing this off and on for a few months now. You are not crazy, and it is in fact Frontier's service to blame. I would play Xbox Live with the 25/25mbps plan and get 2-3 barred all the time and lag at night, occasionally red barring. I used to get 20ms ping and 25+mbps download with 15+upload at speedtest.net, but when it starts lagging, I test my connection and my ping is 100-120+ms and my upload rate is tanked to just 2-3mbps! My download speed usually stays pretty good, but as everyone who knows anything about online gaming will tell you, it is the PING that is the most important factor.

A log ping and 5mbps internet connection will win out over a high ping and 20+mpbs internet connection any day.

I tried calling every few days for weeks and the technicians never had a solution. I restarted everything countless times, had my router replaced by a technician, etc. Then I finally found that Frontier has been doing maintenance on North Indiana infrastructure for quite some time now and is routing all of our traffic through Chicago! That's why when I did thorough speedtests throughout the day, the mornings were fine, but it got worse and worse throughout the day.

I called and complained and got a large credit to my bill, but unfortunately they had no time frame for when this maintenance will be complete. I have been avoiding playing MW3 online because it is intolerable at night (I work all day until about 6-7PM when the internet reaches it's worst state). I have been highly considering switching to Comcast, but I don't want to pay early cancellation fees and have had issues with Comcast in the past as well.

So hopefully this at least helps you know what is going on, even if it doesn't offer any solution anytime soon.

You just answer my questions and match what I have been researching. When I called Frontier they finally realized they never internally switched me to 25/25 and when they did my ping got better. However I noticed that my ping goes down at the same time frame as you. I am going to do some research and try changing I believe DNS servers. I think you can reroute your connection that way. I am noob at this network thing but I have been reading a lot of forums so I will hopefully figure out something. I dont want to cancel and pay the term fee too!

Changing DNS Servers only helps with CDNs and other distributed types of hosting. You won't find gaming performance improved with a change of DNS servers.

One thing I have found to help a little bit, was to go into the QoS settings of our router and make my xbox the highest priority for traffic/packets. That instantly shortened my Netflix/Hulu load times quite a bit, and I am sure it lowered my perceivable lag on Xbox Live a tad. Once the maintenance is done, it may actually help me become host again more often.

Awesome I will try that! I just hate how Frontier cannot give you a deadline on anything. They need to stop messing stuff up. It was working just fine 3 weeks ago. Leave it alone