BT Infinity Latency mainly on PS4 gaming

[AntonyScerri]

Hi

Looking for some advice on best route to either diagnosing possible cause or best in road to contacting BT directly for assistance. Basically had BT Infinity for many years and speed is not an issue. The line quality (since having ADSL) was always great, until they messed with a neighbours line (which they replaced as well as moving it around on the pole which is outside my house).  My line noise margin on the downside used to be reported at above 12 before this, and immediately after it was down to 9. They ended up coming back and moving it all around again, and they disconnected my neighbours line and while disconnected my line noise went back to its original level, which also reflected the max download data rate being over 100Mbps. As of today my noise margin on the download end is sitting at 7.8 as reported by the Smart Hub 2. This was a couple years ago now, and speed still hit the 79.99Mbps connection speed (max now shows as 88.9Mbps). Everything uses WiFi (as i have for 20 years+ for work and its not been an issue, PS4 has always been on wifi).

However for some time now (at since early last year) my son complained about the ping and latency in gaming on a PS4 (various games) will be fine and then suddenly drop to the point he cannot play online with his friends. I've just said its the "internet" but it has gotten a lot worse recently. I'm also piecing together a correspondence with issues whilst working, to the point i will loose the ability to type characters into an SSH session and get timely responses (at times it will take several seconds before i see the character echo back). 

Running a speed test typically shows the usual speeds (70Mbps+) and where a ping is shown will typically be around 8-9ms. Today we had a similar blip, and speed tests are floating around 55Mbps and ping around 9ms (this is from speedtest.net results). Doing a ping from a terminal against www.google.com i'm seeing:

64 bytes from 172.217.169.36: icmp_seq=1226 ttl=116 time=48.906 ms
64 bytes from 172.217.169.36: icmp_seq=1227 ttl=116 time=52.741 ms
64 bytes from 172.217.169.36: icmp_seq=1228 ttl=116 time=13.749 ms
64 bytes from 172.217.169.36: icmp_seq=1229 ttl=116 time=53.870 ms
64 bytes from 172.217.169.36: icmp_seq=1230 ttl=116 time=58.721 ms
64 bytes from 172.217.169.36: icmp_seq=1231 ttl=116 time=58.308 ms
64 bytes from 172.217.169.36: icmp_seq=1232 ttl=116 time=22.871 ms

There are the occasional periods closer to :

64 bytes from 172.217.169.36: icmp_seq=1142 ttl=116 time=7.215 ms
64 bytes from 172.217.169.36: icmp_seq=1143 ttl=116 time=9.983 ms
64 bytes from 172.217.169.36: icmp_seq=1144 ttl=116 time=7.632 ms

I've seen a few packets timeout or reports times over 100ms.

So really wondering what to do (if anything) last thing i want is some setting being changes on my line and getting worse speeds as that's never been an issue, but it would be really handy to get some kind of fix. I know there was some issue a year or two ago where people reported lots of issues with latency on BT but that seems to have gone quiet over the last year. Looking for suggestions and recommendations.

Thanks

T

[Checked2013]

Comparing what you did on wifi 20 years ago isn't much help. These days gaming is much better on a wired connection. Have you not tried testing wired?

In regards to your ping tests, you should do them on a wired connection, otherwise all you are doing is testing the quality of your WiFi, as a non wired connection can add a lot of latency

[NigelB72]

The WiFi card in the PS4 has always been pretty poor by comparison to the rest of the hardware, it maxes out at around 35mbps and sometimes we saw as low as 20mbps on a 160mbps connection. Try connecting it directly to the hub via ethernet and you will see a significant improvement.

With regards to latency, it's entirely possible that your child was unaware of latency until last year and then started saying it's an issue and disrupting his gameplay. This would also be around the time the Ps5 came out so he/she could be trying to play you 😉

[AntonyScerri]

So my comment re using wifi, includes working from home doing intensive stuff leverage networking etc, and its not been an issue except for the odd BT network issue. I've notice more in the last weeks re SSH etc. The PS4 has always been the PS4 and used to be fine, speed is not the issue. In general these things get better over time, not worse. We use Wifi because we have devices all over the home, and therefore don't want to be running cables everywhere. 

Ideally i'd like some advice on pinpointing whether it really is the wifi now (given i know more people use it including neighbours, more devices in general etc which could cause possible problems let alone some other interference). 

As it was later yesterday i decided to scan to check if we had other wifi operating on the same channels etc as our router, again there were not. However I noticed the BT hub was not broadcasting on 5Ghz and my machine was in fact using 2.4GHz. So i ended up rebooting it and the 5Ghz came back. So this is suggesting its a Hub issue once again 🙂

[Checked2013]

You've already been given advice and that is to try a wired connection and see if it makes a difference. It is of course your choice, but you can't really complain if you choose not to take that advice