Ping spikes December 2023

[Davosi]

Hi, 

For about two weeks now I have been experiencing ping spikes, I play games online which is how I noticed it. I’ve had Bt broadband for 2.5 years with no issues and generally the ping was running at about 7-10ms on ping testing cmd on my Mac. I have FFTC

I’ve had three engineers out, including an openreach one. They all say the same thing, the connection into my property is perfect, no issues. 

I have tried everything to fix this issue. New router, new cables, try with everything disconnected. Same result. 

The only two things which coincide with my issues are digital voice was a new service which was turned on. Im not sure if this could cause an issue for ping? 

The other thing is I have seen that there was new firmware for the router this month, possibly a bug with that?

Otherwise I am totally stuck and bt support don’t seem to be able to help or offer any useful information. 

Are there any other gamers out there with similar issues,  or anyone who knows what is happening? 

Thanks. 

[FIZZYLP]

Hello,

does this happen at the same time everyday?

does this effect your wired or WiFi connection or both?

High ping doesn’t necessarily mean fault on the line and it’s completely possible to have a perfect line.

could be WiFi congestion because other routers from other internet providers use the same frequency and channels this can effect your WiFi performance as well.

way to fix this would be either finding a quiet channel and fix your hub to that channel or enable automatic channel scanning where it finds a less congested channel itself both can be done in the hub manager settings.

If it happens at peak time everyday (sametime) this is what’s known as over subscribing where too many customers are being served from the cabinet then what it can handle using slow speeds to all customers connected to the cabinet, this isn’t classified as a fault and would require Civil’s and not SFI engineers to attend.

When you experience this dropping in connection does the hub light drop to orange or remain blue?

digital voice won’t effect your broadband service as it’s not run from the hub it’s run from a server (cloud) and not from the hardware of the hub just requires internet to connect to the digital voice IPEX network.

Have you tried using the test socket behind the face plate of your master socket?

some faults are hard to find by engineers or BT due to his complex they are, to see a drop in connection which isn’t a network drop can be very hard to provide support.

hope this helps.

[Davosi]

Hi Liam, 

Thanks for your reply. 

The connection is effected all day, I haven’t noticed any particular patterns, however it’s not necessarily really bad all the time, it’s gets worse but this seems random to me. It’s been very bad in the morning and also very late at night when you would expect the less congestion. 

This issue is the on both a wired and a wifi connection.

When the ping is spiking, the router stays blue. However about a week or two ago the router was completely losing signal and going orange, however this has now stopped. 

I will try the test socket, not something  I knew was there. Thanks 

[Davosi]

Can’t see a test socket. The only other connection I can see is one where I would have to split the internet cable down to three separate cables. 

[countrypaul]

Could it be related to the time of year with any other gamers playing over the holiday period? I it possible that your location has more gamers on the same shared link (before distribution to individual premises) than average?

Have you updated any software on you machine that could, for example, be running checks for updates when you are playing?

What servers are you running ping checks against, and how are you running ping?

My son had similar symptoms, the ping time checked from within one game suggested around 200ms, but from the command line gave 10ms, problem was traced to a PC at home carrying out cloud updates.

[Davosi]

Hi thanks for the reply! 

yes I also thought there being more gamers using the internet could be the issue, but that’s never been a problem in the last 2.5 years I’ve been here. Most of the people in the flats I live in are in their 20s-30s and head back to parents for Christmas so I would have thought it would be less congested. 

I ran tests with a brand new router before connecting all the devices to make sure it wasn’t being caused by something doing updates or similar. I use my Mac book to test using command prompts. I ping Google.co.uk or bbc.co.uk

its very odd, and I can’t find any sort of pattern for this. I’m doing tests now and it’s been happily chugging along between 6-12ms for  10 minute or so  and then suddenly flys up to 50ms for about 5 seconds before going up to 450ms and then coming back down to 7-12ms. It does this throughout the day. Basically makes playing any sort online of game unplayable.  

Any sort of update or upload would cause the ping to be consistently high, rather than spiking randomly throughout the day. 

Im totally stuck and don’t know what to do. 

[gg30340]

Has the problem by any chance coincided with any Christmas lights being put up in your property or lights nearby out side?

[Davosi]

We’ve had huge Christmas lights put right out front of our window. We’ve also put some of our own up, nothing major. Could this really be the issue? 

[Davosi]

We are talking about high street level Christmas lights as we are right on the Main Street and they plugged them in outside our window. 

not sure how this could effect cable connection though 

[gg30340]

They could be causing REIN interference. This generally would only be an issue with your wireless connections.

If you now suspect that it could be the cause of the problem you could try turning all the Christmas lights off and unplugging them to see if it helps.

Obviously there would be nothing you can do about the out side lights unless you put them there but you could try moving your BT hub as far away from them as possible.