Packet loss and variable latency

[IH]

Hi

For the last week or so, I've started to experience packet loss whilst gaming, latency that varies wildly between 11ms and 300ms and occasionally download speed drops to less than 1Mbps.  I have tried every troubleshooter I can possibly find - have restarted all the equipment but still the issue persists.  I currently have a BT Smart Hub - Type A and have 4 whole home (white) discs connected.  

As an example, I tried EAs UOTrace utility and this reported packet loss on several IPs of between 4% & 7%.

Is there anything else I can do to try and clear this issue?

Thanks

[Laelri2]

Hi,

Have you tried an Ethernet connection? 

[IH]

Yes, no better. Spoke to BT today, new router arrives tomorrow. Will have to see if that resolves.

[Pale91]

Hello there,

Having similar problems, let me know if anything works for you. New router actually made the problem worse for me.

Thanks for any info!

[stedman11111]

Also having this issue - just started getting awful packet loss. Fine when console turned off. No idea what to do 

[CloudGamer]

Can you check what NAT type is for console connectivity?

Is IPv6 enabled?

Do you have UPnP enabled?

Do you have ports forwarded for teredo tunnelling for xbox networking?

Is this the most under rated post on BT Community of all time?  i.e. do you just need to ask for "super stable" option to be applied to your connection!?

https://community.bt.com/t5/BT-Fibre-broadband/Horrible-ping-spikes-and-packet-loss/m-p/1916928/high...

Have just returned to BT after having persistent packet loss issues, i left BT because of jitter and packet loss issues more than a year ago but got worse with other ISP.     now have a healthy connection but not sure if i have "standard", "stable" or "super stable"  connection - not sure how to check.

I pinged and tracerted easo.ea.com using Ultima Online Trace Utility and get zero packet loss on the hops that are configured to reply to ICMP (ping) requests.  Get massive jitter of about 340 ms at hop 9 (ae15.mpr1.lhr15.uk.above.net) - looks like EA could maybe help with that if BT cant.  

As a sanity check try using GeForce Now's native network test to see if it detects issues with packet loss or latency with your connection.

And check out thinkbroadbands speedtest as it measures single thread download as well as multiple thread download, and gives info on bufferbloat in "analysis" , it a great way to check health of connection

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest

EAs guide is pretty impressive

https://help.ea.com/en/help/faq/connection-troubleshooting-basic/

Another way to help show if BT can help or not is try using a VPN to ping/tracert same EA server using different VPN servers and protocols.  TCP will likely give best looking results.  If changing route using VPN fixes the packet loss BT should be able to help more than by just giving you new router.  Though new router helps remove possible causes and it just part of the process of elimination.

[IH · Accepted solution]

Finally appear to have this sorted.

1) New hub sent out by BT - no improvement.

2) 2 days later, complete loss of broadband. Line fault identified, engineer visited, tested line, reset everything and left it working.

3) Less than 24 hours later, loss of broadband again. Different (actual BT) engineer, found faults on line and possible internal wiring issue.  Left it working okay.

4) 2 hours later, lost broadband again.  3rd engineer visited, found noise on the line and other issues. Did a full fault trace from cabinet (1km away) back to house. Switched connection to spare pair. Still showed issues. Replaced wiring from external connection to master socket, and finally fixed the issue. This guy really knew his stuff and went the extra mile to resolve the problem.

5) Connection has been stable for 2 weeks now, still get some higher latency in online games but nothing like before and doesn't interfere, and no packet loss. I've also connected the Xbox to the router via a BT powerline-type extender I had a few years ago - this works well too, have had speed up to 48Mbps, but usually comfortably around 25Mbps which is more than adequate for the kids online games.

So, in summary, I believe the issues I had were indicative of at least one fault, possibly more, which with the appropriate amount of investigation by BT - at the 3rd attempt - has now been resolved. 

My advice is to keep on (and on and on) at BT.

[CloudGamer]

Glad you got sorted.

QOTD

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@IHwrote:

My advice is to keep on (and on and on) at BT.

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LOL, it always good to have a sense of humour.