CenturyLink → Constant Ping Spikes - Online gaming impossible - SLC, UT

When I'm not lagging, I get a decent 60~ ping on west coast servers. The problem is I get constant ping spikes that go up, linearly, from my normal 60 to 900, eg. 60 > 110 > 230 > 350 > 500 > 660 > 750 > 900. Then it will suddenly drop back down to normal. The spikes last anywhere from 5 to 30 seconds and happen once or twice per minute, even at 5 a.m. During peak hours it's max 1500 ping spikes and its just all over the place. 60 > 830 > 312 > 570 > 600 > 250 > 1200 > 1500 > 90 > 470 > 750 type of stuff. The ping spikes are constant, and amazingly pretty consistent in how they spike. 90% of the time, it's a linear spike with a sudden drop off back to normal~ pings.

I'm a competitive gamer (League of Legends, Starcraft 2, etc) and these spikes are.. they suck. This has been going on for almost a year now, and has progressively gotten worse. Tonight, I got home from work and am trying to game with some friends, and the lag is the worst it's ever been. It's become unacceptable.

I 99.9% confident this problem has nothing to do with anything on my end. I've ran innumerable tests: replaced outlets, tested lines, tested multiple modems/routers. The fact that these spikes get worse during peak hours has a logical conclusion that the network is just too congested in my neighborhood.

Is there anything that can be done? Can I find the DSLAM I'm connected to and throw money at it? Or should I just keep sacrificing livestock to the internet Gods for Google fiber to roll out beyond their test market?

sounds like what was going on around here recently. All the terminals that serve my areas are fed by T1 and i guess CenturyLink's marketing had paid off and gotten more people on it despite the fact that they couldnt get more than 1.5 out here.

There are three terminals, each with capacity for 8 T1 cards. a T1 line only operates at 1.5Mbits, and only one of the terminals had all 8 T1s installed. It had 139 users on it. I can understand router aggregation, but if you have more than 8 people streaming youtube, everyone is going to have a problem.......

They seem to have gotten it fixed for my area, for now.
The best thing do to would be to find your terminal and see if you can catch one of the techs working on it, as they can usually tell you if theres a problem or look into it.

Edit: I too play Leage, and was getting ping spikes over 2000 on a regular basis, often causing me to get stuck at the worst possible times and die

Here's an example of what I'm talking about:

Thanks Nemesis. Good to know.

I feel your pain. Time to team fight? Oh here's a lag spike. Everyone dies. Lose the game. Everyone blames you. GG

Yes, that, EXACTLY

I play League as well. Not to mention I feel your pain connection wise. For me, took 18 months of non stop calling/e-mailing/chatting w/ live support to finally get them to admit and explain there has been an extreme bandwidth exhaustion in my area and that they have no intentions of correctly the problem because it wouldn't be cost effective. Best part is, was manageable till they started to offer Prism TV service. Went to hell afterwards. Here is an example of my connection for roughly 16 hours every day:

C:\Users\xxxxx>tracert google.com

Tracing route to google.com [74.125.225.41]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms Home.lan [xxx.xxx.xx.x]
2 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms [xx.x.x.x]
3 752 ms 750 ms 776 ms in-184-1-96-1.dhcp.embarqhsd.net [184.1.96.1]
4 711 ms 661 ms 716 ms in-67-237-47-141.sta.embarqhsd.net [67.237.47.14
1]
5 800 ms 730 ms 620 ms 208-110-248-225.centurylink.net [208.110.248.225
]
6 559 ms 751 ms 785 ms bb-chcgildt-jx9-01-ae1.0.core.centurytel.net [20
8.110.248.14]
7 521 ms 617 ms 760 ms 208-110-240-26.centurylink.net [208.110.240.26]

8 900 ms 805 ms 855 ms 209.85.254.122
9 605 ms 527 ms 503 ms 209.85.250.28
10 724 ms 676 ms 580 ms ord08s06-in-f9.1e100.net [74.125.225.41]

Trace complete.

C:\Users

If theyre offering tv service in your area (specifically through the terminal that serves your house/neighborhood) then it is 99% likely Fiber fed.
If it's fiber fed, then the "not-cost-effective" excuse is a load of BS.

If they are running tv service on anything less than that, they've made some very poor decisions (your local CenturyLink management team, not CenturyLink directly)

Either way, If i were you i'd lodge a complaint to the FCC and get together with your neighbors (who are also likely experiencing issues) and petition centurylink to do something about it.

Neighbors have all switched to MediaCom recently due to the problem. Found out MediaCom here finished upgrading to Fiber a couple weeks ago. As for CenturyLink fiber fed, local service tech told us nothing has been upgraded to Fiber yet. Took them 2 weeks to replace a bad card that our connection happened to go through and went nearly a week without phone/internet and they refused to credit our account. Which is what pushed me over the edge. MediaCom will be here next week to hook everything up. Will be so glad to be done with CenturyLink.

at least you can switch. I live in an area thats only 5miles away from a major city, but there was only ever one provider here, Qwest.
Since there wasnt anyone else operating in the area, they just allocated T1 out of the existing copper bundle and called it good.

xoob,

Our team is happy to assist with service issues. Please send account & contact info via the link »t.co/lm5JYoPO or send us an email to talktous@centurylink.com Please include something about the post here so we may identify you properly.

Regards,
Patti
CenturyLink Help Team

I'm with you - I experience lag spikes like these, but I also have the charming issue of my connection just straight up DROPPING every 15-20 minutes, which means that I will have to exit any game I'm running and log back in. This is such a massive inconvenience and it's gotten progressively more frustrating.

The oddest thing is that for about a week in the middle of all this I had crystal clear service - zero drops at all, great speeds, no lag whatsoever. Then it left as quickly as it came. It was even worse to have connection like that and then go back to this mess.

lemme guess.....you have a PK5001Z?