New Customer with large ping spikes, help please.

[Warren2435]

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Hi,

I had FTTP installed this week and the speeds are great and so is the ping, overall. But when gaming, I'm getting large spikes in ping making games unplayable. I have run ping plotter and I'm getting a lot of packet loss on a couple of IP addresses.

I have tried to factory reset the smart hub, tried different devices and changing between wireless and Ethernet with no change in packet loss.

Please see the image below.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Warren

[Warren2435]

Additionally, I didn't have this problem with my previous ISP so this isn't a problem with any of my devices.

[Keith_Beddoe]

As your actual FTTP connection speed is fine, then it has to be an issue with either your network, the BT network routing, or latency on the core Internet itself. BT do not guarantee a very low ping, as it depend on how many other users are connected to the same fibre node as yours, as you all share the same backhaul connection.

If you have other devices on your own network which are streaming video, then that can affect your latency.

Another thing to bear in mind, is that intermediate nodes do not always respond to a ping request right away, as its not a priority. Pinging was only ever intended as a test to see if a host is active.

[Warren2435]

I turned all other devices off and still have the same issue. And it doesn't seem to matter what time of day it is, I have the same issue.

I didn't realise BT doesn't guarantee a low ping, I would have expected this as standard. I also didn't expect such high packet loss either. 

I will have to cancel the contract and go back to my previous ISP.

Thanks for the quick reply anyway!

Warren

[Keith_Beddoe]

I will have to cancel the contract and go back to my previous ISP.

That might be difficult if your last ISP does not offer FTTP, and even if they did, you would still be connected to the same FTTP node.

[licquorice]

I doubt there is any packet loss, just the intermediate nodes not responding. If there is no packet loss at the final destination, there is no packet loss.

[Warren2435]

Ahh ok, what's the best way to find out of there is no packet loss? And it's still strange that I'm getting these lag spikes, it's happening every 10 to 20 seconds. The ping goes from 20 to 250 and then back to 20. It's frustrating when I haven't had this issue before and it's making it unusable to be honest.

I don't want to leave BT, the speeds are great and it doesn't affect other uses, only gaming seems to be the problem.

If there's a solution I can try I will be happy to give it a go, or if BT can look into this? But it sounds as though BT doesn't guarantee low ping.

[Warren2435]

FTTP isn't an issue, the speeds of previous ISP are the same as what BT are offering but I was at the end of my contract and thought I would try BT because of the price.

Like I said in a previous reply, I don't want to have to cancel but at the moment the connection isn't stable enough. I'm still in the 14 day cool down period so it's probably better to cancel now rather than be stuck for 2 years.

[pippincp]

Without being able to read your pingplotter image on my 32" screen I can tell you that you have 0 packet loss until you get to the final destination and you have obviously chosen a router that is configured no to respond to icmp (packet) requests.

When looking at Pingplotter or even a tracert you always start from the destination and work back. In your case the router immediately before reported no packet loss therefore all the packets were passed on to the destination.

Your first three hops just show routers that were not responding in the time allocated as they were doing their main job and routing the traffic in a timely manner, icmp requests are always treated as low priorty or totally refused.

The hops after the first 3 got all the packets, passed them on and replied in a timely manner so no packet loss.

In conclusion, if you have packet loss it will show at the destionation so you go to the next router. If there is no packet loss there then your destination is configured not to respond and anything previous can be disgarded. Think, how can a router later in the chain report no packet loss if those earlier did? Just means those earlier were to busy to reply in time but passed the packets on anyway which is their main job.

It is always more informative if testing to the server you are experiencing packet loss from as it may show peering issues which do exist with quite a few gaming sites.

[Warren2435]

Ok thanks very much for the answer, I'll try to find the IP's of the servers and test them. Cheers!