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New Contributor II
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Latency Spikes
Hello, everyone.
I posted here awhile back, talking about a latency issue I had, but a few days after I posted, the problem fixed itself. Supposedly somewhere in the world, a bad router or switch was replaced and service went back to normal, which lasted about a couple weeks.
I have this same problem again now, and initially I waited to see if it would go away on its own like it did last time, but it's taking much longer. I'm worried that the problem may not be getting investigated by whoever is responsible.
Some background:
- The "latency issue" I have is that my latency will spike to 800+ ms every ~10 seconds when communicating with any server, making online gaming and phone calling over the internet very frustrating. I've had weeks with good service, and weeks with bad service mixed with each other in recent months.
- I'm living in Escambia County, Florida.
- I'm running 5 computers in this apartment. All of them experience this latency issue. Some are on wireless connections (802.11n) and some are on Ethernet.
- Before posting the first time about this problem, I changed my gateway out in case it was defective. This second gateway does not solve the problem.
- Upon doing a tracert test with google.com, I often see latency spikes. Normal response times varied from 10-100 ms, but on 1 or 2 hops, the latency spikes to at least 500. The location of these problem hops appear in different places with each test.
- Ping is usually reported to be around 55 ms on Speedtest.net, slightly higher than average, but this is the same number I get when service is normal.
- Bandwidth is normal. I still get my promised 50 Mbps. (Big thanks to COX for the free increase from 25 Mbps!)
Is there any known problem about this area with its service? Is there something I can to to fix this problem?
Thank you,
Shiromage
MichaelJ
Moderator
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Hi Shiromage, run another Trace route and post it here so we can take a look at the results.
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Shiromage
New Contributor II
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Hi, Michaelj. Here's a recent tracert test:
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\Users\Chase>tracert google.com
Tracing route to google.com [74.125.227.168]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 3 ms 3 ms 3 ms 192.168.0.1
2 12 ms 10 ms 10 ms 10.17.128.1
3 871 ms 11 ms 11 ms ip68-1-11-14.at.at.cox.net [68.1.11.14]
4 55 ms 56 ms 54 ms 68.1.4.133
5 428 ms 55 ms 53 ms 68.105.30.118
6 439 ms 53 ms 55 ms 209.85.252.80
7 50 ms 49 ms 65 ms 216.239.50.203
8 60 ms 64 ms 54 ms 72.14.235.12
9 238 ms 69 ms 70 ms 72.14.238.88
10 79 ms 81 ms 83 ms 209.85.254.103
11 80 ms 80 ms 79 ms 72.14.237.218
12 80 ms 79 ms 79 ms 64.233.174.137
13 81 ms 79 ms 79 ms dfw06s32-in-f8.1e100.net [74.125.227.168]
Trace complete.
C:\Users\Chase>
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EdwardH
Valued Contributor
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Shiromage
New Contributor II
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Hi, EdwardH. Here's a test to cox.com:
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\Users\Chase>tracert cox.com
Tracing route to cox.com [68.99.123.161]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 3 ms 3 ms 3 ms 192.168.0.1
2 10 ms 13 ms 11 ms 10.17.128.1
3 12 ms 14 ms 9 ms ip68-1-11-14.at.at.cox.net [68.1.11.14]
4 32 ms 31 ms 33 ms dukedsrj02-ge210.0.rd.at.cox.net [68.1.1.123]
5 753 ms 30 ms 35 ms 68.1.15.238
6 36 ms 31 ms 31 ms 68.99.123.4
7 31 ms 31 ms 32 ms ww2.cox.com [68.99.123.161]
Trace complete.
C:\Users\Chase>
And here's a test to yahoo.com:
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\Users\Chase>tracert yahoo.com
Tracing route to yahoo.com [98.139.183.24]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 5 ms 3 ms 3 ms 192.168.0.1
2 11 ms 10 ms 10 ms 10.17.128.1
3 10 ms 12 ms 21 ms ip68-1-11-12.at.at.cox.net [68.1.11.12]
4 245 ms 50 ms 43 ms 68.1.2.109
5 39 ms 39 ms 40 ms dalsbprj01-ae1-204.rd.dl.cox.net [68.105.30.49]
6 378 ms 49 ms 47 ms ae-5.pat1.che.yahoo.com [216.115.96.99]
7 72 ms 62 ms 71 ms ae-8.pat1.bfz.yahoo.com [216.115.101.231]
8 824 ms 65 ms 63 ms ae-4.msr1.bf1.yahoo.com [216.115.100.25]
9 62 ms 63 ms 65 ms xe-10-2-1.clr1-a-gdc.bf1.yahoo.com [98.139.232.8
9]
10 674 ms 62 ms 60 ms et17-1.fab5-1-sat.bf1.yahoo.com [98.139.128.85]
11 70 ms 69 ms 69 ms po-10.bas2-7-prd.bf1.yahoo.com [98.139.129.163]
12 70 ms 71 ms 71 ms ir2.fp.vip.bf1.yahoo.com [98.139.183.24]
Trace complete.
C:\Users\Chase>
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EdwardH
Valued Contributor
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You can run that command by typing "ping 68.1.11.14 -t" without the quotes, to stop the test you can hit ctrl+c on the keyboard.
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Shiromage
New Contributor II
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That's actually a neat tool. I knew about the ping command, but I didn't know about the "-t" modifier.
I ran that test on several IP addresses, including google.com, and the problem was not visible. I did about 10 trace route tests to see that my connection is now pretty healthy. They all looked similar to this, with no big spikes:
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\Users\Chase>tracert google.com
Tracing route to google.com [173.194.115.0]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 3 ms 3 ms 3 ms 192.168.0.1
2 10 ms 9 ms 13 ms 10.17.128.1
3 11 ms 20 ms 9 ms ip68-1-11-14.at.at.cox.net [68.1.11.14]
4 48 ms 45 ms 45 ms 68.1.0.254
5 53 ms 53 ms 55 ms ip70-167-150-18.at.at.cox.net [70.167.150.18]
6 46 ms 48 ms 51 ms 216.239.46.248
7 47 ms 48 ms 47 ms 209.85.250.141
8 65 ms 55 ms 55 ms 64.233.174.9
9 61 ms 61 ms 62 ms 72.14.239.64
10 87 ms 89 ms 87 ms 209.85.246.205
11 79 ms 79 ms 79 ms 66.249.95.199
12 88 ms 87 ms 87 ms 209.85.254.127
13 80 ms 79 ms 83 ms dfw06s39-in-f0.1e100.net [173.194.115.0]
Trace complete.
C:\Users\Chase>
When pinging to Google (about 150 total packets), I got a maximum round trip of 106 ms, which looks pretty normal. So I suppose that once again, the issue has fixed itself with time, although this time it took longer.
History tends to repeat itself, so it would not surprise me if this problem came back in about a week or two. If the problem re-surfaces, should I create a new thread or add to this one? Regardless, I'll remember to post testing with not only tracert but also ping with the "-t" modifier. I'd like to eventually figure out what causes my service to go slow every now and then so the applicable engineers can identify the problem and fix it. Edit: Problem came back quickly; see next post.
Thank you all for your help, I really appreciate it.
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Shiromage
New Contributor II
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Alright, as quickly as the problem went away, it came back.
A ping test to Google (121 packets) yielded the following results:
Packet Loss: 0%
Minimum round trip: 78 ms
Average round trip: 155 ms
Maximum round trip: 940 ms
A ping test to 68.105.30.118 (165 packets, address of 5th hop to google.com) yielded the following results:
Packet loss: 0%
Minimum round trip: 53 ms
Average round trip: 137 ms
Maximum round trip: 1020 ms
The latency spikes seemed to occur without a pattern.
Edit:
It seems the problem may be located closer to me than what was originally thought. When I ping my own address, (192.168.0.1, the LAN's address of my gateway) I get the lag spikes. Oddly, this never shows up on the tracert tests. I was able to replicate these results on the 3 computers available to me at the time (One ethernet, one ethernet over powerline technology, and one wireless 802.11n):
Packet loss: 0% (179 packets)
Minimum round trip: 3 ms
Average round trip: 12 ms
Maximum round trip: 216 ms
What's really strange is that this is the second gateway I've tried out in an effort to rid of the problem.
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