Recent online gaming ping spikes when streaming Netflix

[McGrath1982]

Ethernet to my iMac 

[dubstepzombie]

@McGrath1982 

Your images show packet loss, the packet loss at the 31.x.x.x address is almost certainly bogus, in fact 1 of your images shows packet loss at every hop which can mean only 1 thing, the packet loss is coming from your connection, either internal to your network, connection from your property to road side cabinet (assuming FTTC and not ADSL or FTTP) or from the road side cabinet to the exchange.

All you can do is be 100% sure it's not your internal network and it's not the connection to the road side cabinet, beyond that you've got to beat up BT to look into the problem i.e. what's going wrong after the road side cabinet.

If you've not done already I'd have a BT (openreach) engineer visit, they'll do the basic checks like ensure your master socket is to spec, check your physical wiring for any noise / problems. This would be my no.1 suspicion - that you've got bad telephone wiring / a noisy line, if your line is noisy then you may see speed changes as the DSL management tries to stabilize your connection.

Make sure your DSL modem is connected to your master telephone socket, don't connect it via telephone extension wiring and if you can get DSL statistics from your modem then check these for error counts, I'd expect to see error counts on your modem -  this would likely explain your packet loss.

[McGrath1982]

I had a openreach engineer out not so long ago 3 weeks ago if I can remember right. He checked my line and found no problems. I’m currently on FTTc and get 70Mbps and 19Mbps. Even looked over my setup at home when gaming and couldn’t see any problems. Was a really nice guy and tried to help a much as possible to get to the cause. I have a 10m cat 6 cable going to a Ethernet switch then PS4 Pro and iMac both hardwired. Nothing else is Ethernet in the house. All other devices are over WiFi. Sky Q box wife iPhone my iPhone my sons iPad etc. Plus I had a couple a switches around spare. So I’ve changed that and bought a new 10m cat6 cable but I still stuffer from packet loss. Funny thing is until about 3 months ago this wasn’t a problem at all so I haven’t a clue what’s going on tbh. But thanks for your advice I’ll look into it more. 

Product code:Smart Hub 2

Serial number:+091298+2027008209

Firmware version:v0.17.01.12312-BT

Firmware updated:Sat Sep 5 10:05:48 2020

Board version:R01

GUI version:1.56 15_02_2019

DSL uptime:0 days,09 Hours40 Mins27 Secs

Data rate:20 Mbps / 79.999 Mbps

Maximum data rate:26.526 Mbps / 91.520 Mbps

Noise margin:9.8 / 5.8

Line attenuation:6.8 / 13.5

Signal attenuation:6.7 / 16.1

VLAN id:101

Upstream error control:Off

Downstream error control:Off

Data sent / received:468.1 MB Uploaded / 13.8 GB Downloaded

Broadband username:bthomehub@btbroadband.com

[dubstepzombie]

@McGrath1982 

I've never used the BT equipment, I've always used third party products.

Your DSL uptime of 9 hours, does that tally with you power cycling / resetting your connection ? if not then that shows your connection dropped for some reason, not a great sign of a good / stable connection.

Is 'error control' something that can be set / configured ? that sounds like a good option to set on in terms of perhaps it may retry for an error rather than just dropping i.e. is this G.INP ? or something else ? that's the thing with 3rd party products, all these options / settings are clear and standard.

An easy test is to ping your home hub but looking at your ping plotter pictures I don't think that will show any problems, it would though prove your internal network to some extent. So just point ping plotter to 192.168.1.254, there you should see zero packet loss and next to zero latency.

Have you tried turning off Wifi if that's possible i.e. is some wireless device saturating your network, might be worth a shot to see if that changes anything and / or test with just 1 device - just your Mac connected.

For me I'd just get rid of all BT equipment and use a third party all in one router / modem e.g. Draytek, Billion,  FRITZ!Box

Note your home hub also creates a public Wifi hotspot - google for 'BT-FON', another reason to throw out the BT gear...

[McGrath1982]

The DSL resets every 14 days on the BT Hub so that correct with being in the early hours etc. Sadly I have to use the BT Smart Hub as I’m on that complete WiFi discs. I’ve done as you suggested in the past with turning everything off apart from my Mac/PS4 Pro and would still get packet loss. I will indeed do a ping plotter to 192.168.1.254 and see if anything comes back. Thanks again for your advice. 

[dubstepzombie]

I'd generally still be suspicious of your DSL connection as being the problem, I'd perhaps buy a cheap VDSL modem / router just for testing / a point of reference i.e. does a different modem give you the same results or different results.

Perhaps something like the 'TP Link TD-W9970' at £32, the WIFI won't set any speed records but the modem side of it should work. In fact you might still be able to use your home hub if it supports PPPoE login and with the TP Link or any other router / modem set to bridge mode. 

[cowo8]

I don’t consider it normal as I never had the problems previously and 20-60ms is a big jump, it goes higher occasionally. When no one is streaming it is stable but playing anything that requires good ping is impossible hence everyone complaining in the thread. My virgin router back when I was in uni was in a high demand area with 4 students streaming constantly, never had a single problem with ping. Meanwhile one person on Netflix or twitch ruins the day

[dubstepzombie]

@cowo8 

Well I've been with 2 other ISPs apart from BT and I see the same results when I saturate my connection and that's all streaming is doing -  saturating your connection when it's buffering data for short periods of time, unless you limit the load from buffering you'll get ping spikes.

What Netflix quality is being streamed ? just HD or could it be possibly 4K ?

What ping level do you get when you do a speed test ? I bet it's around 60 to 70 ms 

I don't think you can compare virgin to a FTTC connection - different technologies. Plus it's possible Netflix requests data more aggressively compared to some other streaming service such as you tube.

Also hardware has moved on over the years, it's also possible newer PCs can request data more aggressively compared to a PC some number of years ago i.e. more CPU horse power.

[cowo8]

I'm not here for a debate tbh, I'm just an unhappy customer. As soon as it is convenient for me, I will be moving to a provider, even if they are far more expensive

[dubstepzombie]

@cowo8 

Understood, just saying though watch who you switch to and expectations, I've looked at about every ISP in detail and emailed for ping results, for gaming there really isn't that many ISPs I could recommend for one reason or another.

No matter what ISP you switch to you'll still be limited by your FTTC bandwidth / connection, if you max it out you'll have ping issues, essentially your ping packets / gaming packets get stuck behind the buffering of your streaming. Same for my connection with no bandwidth management, I just tested Netflix and it's way worse than twitch for ping spikes (aggressive buffering). It's not an ISP issue it's an issue of how you carve up your available bandwidth.