High ping during games

[Ariffk]

I keep getting high ping during some games.
I use my own router - Nano PI R4S (running OpenWRT). I have SQM enabled and get A+ on bufferbloat tests.

Bufferbloat Test Results 

Using a VPN seems to help lower the ping so to me this indicates an ISP routing issue or some sort of node congestion?
It's been giving me bother since August 2022. I used to get 20ms ping to PUBG game servers but since then I keep getting average of 50-70ms.

I've contacted PUBG (the game I'm playing) who advise that this is an ISP routing issue.

Using a VPN I get 20ms to the game servers. Game servers are located in Frankfurt. So VPN is obviously picking a better route to server to lower ping.

I've FTTP (fibre 900)

Setup: ONT > 0.5m CAT 6 > Nano PI R4S > 0.5m CAT 6 > PC.

LAN drivers are up to date.

I'm not using BT routers because they're garbage and latency under load sky rockets.

I have other friends on BT and other ISP's in the UK who are experiencing the same issue.

Some friends outside of UK are not experiencing this issue, so it leads me to believe there's a shared node somewhere that's messing about OR it's Azure (even though game support tells me it's nothing to do with them).

Anyone able to help? It's extremely frustrating.

Thanks.

[Ariffk]

Anyone?

[ptrduffy]

If it is an ISP routing issue (and the evidence seems to support that) then there's nothing you can do - maybe keep using the VPN if that's giving you better results?

You could change ISP, but you'd have no guarantee that the new one would be any better.  Also, routes change in both the short and long term - for obvious reasons like faults and congestion, and less obvious ones such as peering and transit agreements between network operators (which may be the source of your change in August 2022).

[Ariffk]

Thanks for the reply.

I don't really want to use a VPN as it costs money. Alsoz I shouldn't need to use a VPN to connect to European game servers to get a lower latency.

Getting 200ms ping to EU based game servers due to poor ISP routing is not a service that I signed up to. They can hardly advertise their fibre product as suitable for gaming with pings of that magnitude. That's ridiculous.

The problem is that phoning tech support is mostly useless as they don't have troubleshooting steps for these things. All they ever say is that my speeds are fine and try to take me through wireless troubleshooting (when I'm not even wireless).

Is there any escalation process for this at all? Surely they should be able to do something about it?

[ptrduffy]

Your initial post said 50-70 ms, now it's 200 ms?

Regardless, there's no ISP that I'm aware of that's going to give you a latency guarantee, for the simple reason that they can't control the end-to-end route across the public Internet.

[Ariffk]

Sorry to clarify:

50-70 what I've been getting since last August.

The past 2 weeks or so it's been going up to 200ms (as per the pingplotter picture I attached).

[countrypaul]

Looking at your pingplotter screen shot it would appear that you get through the BT routers fine and the first router on the MSN network fine but by the time you are routed through the third MSN router the ping time jump considerably.  Looks to me that it is an MSN problem rather than a BT problem - though it might be, as mentioned earlier, some agreement that means BT has to route through a certain MSN router that slows things down.

Have you tried contacting MSN with a copy of your screen shot?

[Crimliar]

Have you tried using the supplied BT router?  I'm using a FriendlyElec NanoPc-T6 (RK3588) as for cloud-based game streaming, and I'm not impressed with their pre-packed images!  I know the NanoPiR4S has an RK3399 CPU but I'd probably prefer a router that performs more of its functions in hardware than routed through a general-purpose CPU!