Recent online gaming ping spikes when streaming Netflix

[CAI_007]

Those ping plotter graphs really show the problem nicely. There is no way this is just over subscribtion to the cabinet etc. I sware they are testing some sort of throttling or a way of managing packets that will allow them to advertise higher speeds without saturating their network. Except it's absolutely destoying game performance. 

I have a friend that I play dota / Apex with from another part of Scotland. He is pretty much on the same BT package and doesn't have the issues we are having. I've had him throw up 3 twitch streams while pinging google / bbc and he shows next to no latency. Me on the otherhand cannot play a single video streaming service without my ping spiking into the 200-300ms every second or so. 

[nemodog69]

what provider are you with now ? is your gaming and streaming fine now ?

[bardeh]

I've been having this problem for months. As soon as anyone on the network starts streaming a video, I'll get intermittent ping spikes up to 300 or so, every few seconds. It makes playing games pretty much impossible. I recently moved house, and had hoped that it was something to do with my old place - but nope, same exact thing is happening here. It's BT's network, some sort of traffic shaping or throttling, and it's absolutely unacceptable. BT say they can't see anything wrong, and want to send an engineer, but I'm just going to cancel the service and go with a competitor. Total joke.

The first graph is with one Youtube video playing on another device, the second is once I stop that video:

[dubstepzombie]

I think the problem is BT only raally understands 'speed', that's what they focus on and try to guarantee, the concept of having plenty of 'speed' but there being a problem with online gaming doesn't compute for them. That's the difficult thing to get across, plus when you press anyone in BT about this their knee jerk reaction is 'oh there must be a fault then'.

To my mind where this all falls apart for BT is they are advertising their connection is perfect for gaming, which it definitely isn't.

[sunshine12]

even vodafone and talktalk has same issue.

ive since moved on to virgin media and when someone is watching netflix doesnt effect me.

virgin media give  me for £42 a month for 350mbps and 35 mbps up.

bt is  not good and i reccomend leaving if you can.

[Mighten82]

It is 100 percent correct that all bt and its advisors focus on is the "speed" that they apparently guarantee. However it is completely misleading as they advertise the average download and upload speed you can get and give you a guaranteed minimum speed which is actually the sync speed between your router and the exchange which will rarely ever change unless there is a physical fault such as a broken wire etc. I can safely say no test I have ever done has got past 49Mbps on my guaranteed 54Mbps minimum. Trying to get them to understand that speed is irrelevant if the throughput sucks. I have agreed to give them one last chance so engineer number 4 coming Monday afternoon.

[Mighten82]

Bt's misleading gaurantee

[bardeh]

The thing is, I don't particularly care that much about speed. Of course it's nice, but if I'm a few meg under what's advertised I'm not particularly fussed. What I can't deal with are these bloody latency spikes just because someone's streaming a video. In a household of five, the times when people aren't streaming something in the evenings are vanishingly rare. There is no reason streaming a Youtube video should cause 200+ ping spikes on a 50 meg connection. Yet it's been going on for months and BT seemingly have no idea what's causing it. So playing any online game at all is pretty much just not possible on my BT line. Ridiculous.

[Mighten82]

Ping reaches 4 figures while streaming in low quality. My recent results

[dubstepzombie]

Annoyingly we have virigin in our area but living on a new estate they didn't expand their network onto the estate, otherwise I'd switch to virgin, seeing as I have virgin at work and it works perfectly in terms of ping.

I reckon BT has invested that much in their sport offering they've designed their networking for TV, so no packet loss but buffering network packets. I think I've been having this problem for a long time, something has never felt 'right' while gaming - subtle delays happening, can't wait to switch to something else.  I'm expecting though this is going to be a long battle, BT won't make it easy to get out of their contract. Worst case I think I'll wait a few months and pay the exit fees just to get out of the absolutely uselsss for gaming junk of a network connection.