Recent online gaming ping spikes when streaming Netflix

[dubstepzombie]

I was getting someone yesterday but annoyingly my mobile disconnected and I couldn't face another 15 minute argument and going through all the BT ranks to eventually talk to someone that understood what I was talking about.

I would  certainly point out which I did that they are advertising "Perfect for streaming, gaming... ", clearly it isn't "Perfect". If they claim there's a fault then I'm going to want to know what they think it is and when it's going to be fixed. If there's no fault then it's false advertising, they are claiming it's perfect for gaming when it's easily seen that it's not perfect.

The original live chat with a fault  case number doesn't seem to be known about at BT and there was no engineer going to visit the exchange booked, so I have no idea what that was about, possibly hoping I'd get fobbed off and give up, lol that's not me, I'm a gamer - I don't give up. I think talking to someone on the phone is the best bet, although emails and live chats are good because you have a written record to refer to.

I reckon the route of the problem has to be packet buffering somewhere, generally if your network is overloaded you either drop packets or buffer them, dropping packets can make a conjested network worse because TCP will retry / retransmit. So buffering is good especially for streaming, you get good through put and consistent speed _but_ this is going to suck for gaming because you're getting delayed packets i.e. latency  -buffering is the worst thing you can do.  All the tuning you do such as disabling interrupt moderation on your NIC is done to remove latency, your mouse with a  1000Hz  poll rate is bought to remove latency, same for your keyboard, pushing your frame rate up above your monitor refresh rate is done to remove input latency and so on - all this is pointless if your network is delaying packets by 100+ ms.

I'm going to have another go today and see where I get, all I want is to switch ISP without fees, for BT that's going to be the sensible decision. Simply as is stands from my point of view BT broadband is not fit for online gaming / not fit for purpose.

[Reaps]

You were in the same situation as I was, I think they eventually sent so many engineers out (6 in total if I remember correctly) that it was cheaper for them to let me change ISP.

One way they helped me leave, was to start me on a new contract.

Once on a new contract, you are free to leave within 30 days without charge. The day they gave me a new contract, I contacted Zen and got an installation date of 10 days away. 10 days later, my pings were back to normal.

Perhaps, that's an option for you?

[dubstepzombie]

Interesting idea because they have "SUPERFAST FIBRE PLUS" which I find a complete joke in terms of benefits and extra cost.

Perhaps upgrading to this awesome package 🙂 and then starting a new contract which I can imagine BT will be very happy to do then using the cooling off period to switch to another provider - this might be the easiest option.

Certainly when they upgrade your package it would be worth confirming you get a cooling off period and the right to choose to switch to another ISP if you're not satisfied 😉

[dubstepzombie]

Having got through to the faults dept the latest is I have a BT engineer coming out next Monday based on a line check apparently indicating a fault but they had no idea what it is or where it is, even though other line tests indicated no fault. I rang up from the land line so I wonder if that messes up the tests. I think generally they only understand connection drops and line errors, I'll see if the engineers gets it, I'll have  nice demo setup so the engineer can see if he's fixed it 😉

I asked the question about starting a new contract on a upgraded package and switching ISP in the cooling off period, apparently the cooling off period would just revert me back onto the same contract I'm currently on.

[nemodog69]

same issues here started  a few weeks ago. thought it was my cable outside when windy the cable was hitting neighbouring electric cables. had them all changed and still got the problem. had engineers here few times this week they seem to think its upload. happens more when pausing and playing films on netflix. coming back on friday. glad i came across this post as i can show them it. 

[TurnerR0und]

Thought I'd throw my hat into the ring on this one. I currently live in a 6 person houseshare in which we all use the network at different times, netflix, streaming, gaming, the works and have never had an issue. 3 days ago it started. If anyone is watching netflix or twitch (which is literally all the time basically), this is how my pings to various IPs (game servers, bbc.co.uk) look.

https://imgur.com/a/TVvNYvz

I'm not the owner of this account unforunately but I thought I'd let all and all you BT engineers out there know: LOTS OF PEOPLE HAVING THIS ISSUE IT ISN'T ALL IN OUR HEADS

[nemodog69]

i had the engineer on the phone who swapped my line over in the cabinet and did something to my ports. still the same

[dubstepzombie]

I found a slightly better ping graphing application in terms of having some clear axis, it's from pinglogger .co .uk. 

Pinging the same Overwatch game server and pinging every 0.5 seconds, so 5 minutes worth of pings.

Virgin work connection, spamming the hell out of Tidal skipping tracks, 30+PC's as well.

BT connection "Perfect for streaming, gaming, watching and downloading in HD on multiple devices", playing 2 Tidal track and netflix on another PC - what a JOKE !!!!

[Reaps]

Did you say you got a case engineer yet?

Ask him for his email address, so you can send him some traffic analysis data.

[dubstepzombie]

The engineer is coming Monday, yeah great idea to email traffic data if he / she is willing - I hope a fault is found because if BT is this bad sooner or later they'll going to lose customers.

Here's another trace, this time using a high performance PCIe NIC, I was using a USB NIC because it seemed to help my gaming performance, I was spamming the next track on Tidal here, the last ~100 pings I stopped to show that if my network is quiet then I get a good ping.