Gaming ping spikes all of a sudden when Netflix is being used.

[Syner9y]

Hi Flac,

"Unfortunately I think most of the stock firmware QOS options are both behind current state of the art, and don't give you the level of customisation needed to address the issue. I am not sure where the issue lies, however it seems streaming services can work fine without causing jitter when restricted, but seem to be overly greedy when given free reign over the bandwidth."

100% what is happening with me also, I have since restricted the devices DOWNLOAD to 2Mbit/s, I know some advice on this forum is to cap the upload - i have had no issues with the upload causing the latency spikes, for me it is when they try to download.

I do observe that uploads can spike with netflix (up to 5Mbit) but for me that doesn't give me latency spikes (19Mbit upload).

Using Netlimiter 4, I run netflix and a continuous ping to google, if I throttle netflix to 5Mbit I get latency spikes up to 150ms (on my 78Mbit line...) - if I cap it at 2Mbit/s I get no latency spikes. This is reflected also when I telnet to the router and run a continuous ping to google from there.

[EDIT] This is most definately a BT issue as I didn't have this until 3-4 weeks ago and our usage habbits have not changed.

I used to be able to have two tv's streaming netflix in HD and game with 10ms - I will be leaving BT as they are evidently doing something fishy.

[barryniceone]

Hi all,

Sorry I have been a bit quiet, but have an update. As mentioned before I have been in close contact with a senior engineer at BT who has said the following:

"So I am going to believe that Netlix have recently changed something in their stream to collect data which is impacting some other services on our BT Hub related to QoS, I've just had one of our Hub Development guys replicate the issue with some low level testing and can see the different levels of impact between Netflix and other streaming services".

I have a lot of faith in this guy, but I doubt it's going to be an immediate fix by the sounds of it. Funnily enough I had a call from the Indian call cente who simply suggested I didn't game and watch Netflix at the same time!

Will update when I have more info.

[GazzaLFC]

Hi Barry, do you get this problem with just Netflix?

I get ping spikes when most streaming services are used, Twitch, Prime and Netflix. 

More info below:

I  have limited both Amazon firesticks that use the above streaming services to 3MB down and 2MB up yet I still get this issue now and then.

I still have around 80%  to 90% of my bandwidth free when the issues arises to.

At first I thought it was bufferbloat/jitter causing the isse but I have great bufferbloat now since this new router (QoS) so its not just that.

Thanks Gazza

[barryniceone]

Hi Gazza,

I've narrowed it down to Twitch, Netflix and ITV player. Everything else is ok.

Cheers

Barry

[internetuser01]

@barryniceone 

It's definitely not something Netflix have changed. I get ping spikes from YouTube, Amazon, Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Twitch... even my partner scrolling through Facebook/Twitter on her phone will cause ping spikes when videos start auto-playing. 

I've been getting this since December and have completely given up trying to talk to any BT employees or support. Every single one runs through the diagnostics, line checks, router settings.. reaches the end of their script and says "well we dont gaurantee ping anyway, just upload and download speeds and they're fine" and then stops helping.

My only option at this point is to move to Virgin to avoid openreach but Virgin are just as bad in my area unfortunately. 

[ozzler]

I have a suspicion openreach via another isp will be fine. I'm swapping isp on Monday and have been suffering the exact same issues as you. I will update this thread to tell you if that resolves the issues. 

If you want a short term **bleep**ty fix, cap all your devices to 5 meg download. This worked for me on my third party router. But that means waiting a bit for video streams to buffer initially. 

While monitoring my network traffic - whenever video content is streamed, I get large download traffic spikes which correlate to my latency spikes. It's like BT have changed a policy recently in how video content is streamed to be more efficient. So instead of consistent buffering, we get super large traffic spikes which cause latency issues. 

[CAI_007]

I posted my own thread but I can see this issue has been raised multiple times on the forums. 

A couple of friends were able to recommend me some 3rd party router/modem combos that allow me to control the bandwidth or QoS options. 

Modem: HG612 (Can be found on ebay for about £25)

Router (Linksys E900-n300) for about £30 on Amazon 

The only issue is you need to flash the firmware on the linksy router with freshtomato

Now, I can probably tweak this further but i've restricted all other devices on my network to the following bandwidth controls:

DLrate: 10000kbps DLCeil: 10000kbps ULrate: 1400kbps ULCeil:1400kbps Priority: Low TCP Limit: 30 UDP Limit 30/s

As I say, this can be tweaked further but the immediate results have already been impressive. The gf is able to watch netflix and I can play some online games without lagging all over the place. 

Cost effective solution but I realise this isn't for everyone, if they are not comforable configuring routers etc. 

[PeterR]

I am on a copper ADSL line getting 3.5Mbps download and 0.75Mbps upload (poor speed because I am 4km from the fibre-enabled box).

I am suffering consistent latency of 1400ms measured by the BT Wholesale speed test.

During the test (connected directly to the router by ethernet) there is no other activity going on.

So my steady state latency is way too high.  I haven't tried measuring when I am streaming BBC iPlayer although I can stream mostly without interruption.

The line has been checked and given a clean bill of health both by the visiting BT Engineer and the Helpdesk.

I see that I am not alone in having latency issues although I've never seen anybody on this forum with such high latency.

Any ideas?

[Keith_Beddoe]

@PeterR 

Is there any noise on your phone calls? Dial 17070 and select option 2, there should be no noise between the announcements.

[PeterR]

No noise.  As I said the BT engineer who came out  could fing no errors on the line.  He saw the high latency and just scratched his head and said he had no idea.  He spoke to the engineers' helpdesk who sent me 2 links both with helpful tips on how to increase speed but nothing about latency!!!!