i started to have problems in early January while gaming in BF2. before this time my ping was usually 40-60 on the servers i gamed on.

in early January i was still using the same servers but noiticed i would get severe lag and my ping would go up to over 800ms while in game. this problem has persisted and my isp, cox keeps telling me it is the game servers. i have tried over 100 gaming servers that, when i initially connect to them my ping is 40-60ms, but throughout the gaming it will go up to 400-500, even over 1000ms a couple of times.

it is continually sporadic, but i would say in 30mins of gaming, i will have 15-20 issues on a good day and on a bad day 30-60 issues or even just getting kicked off the server due to severe lag.

cox's tech support says they will not accept a ping plot screen shot and will only accept a ping or tracert from the cmd prompt. the problem is that these two ways show little or no problems but pingplotter does.

in the screen pic attached i have used unix style udp packets beause i was told by cox tech support that icmp packets were "not as important" and may give me a false indication of and issue. they said icmp packets are routinely dropped if the routers are in high demand, but not know wans i am not sure if they are just giving me lip service.

please explain the data i have given as i am not familiar with wans, but to me it looks like i am having sporadic, constant packet loss at ip 68.2.14.77 which is an ip owned by cox. my understanding is that when i have packet loss my machie needs to send the data over and over, thus creating lag. also, in this screenshot, my machine is connected directly to the modem, no lan interference at all.

thanks in advance,
bob

Hi, Bob.

The hop you're looking at there, even though it's showing packet loss, isn't the problem.

The way to use PingPlotter is to look at the final destination. If you're seeing packet loss at the final destination, then look back at the first hop that *doesn't* show those same problems. That's the first "good" hop. Any hops prior to that, even if they show packet loss, aren't contributing to the downstream packet loss, so it's just an artifact of the configuration for that router.

We talk about this in a lot more detail here:

http://www.nessoft.com/kb/24

and also here:

http://www.nessoft.com/kb/2

Since there are no lost packets on hop 23, the packet loss you see at hop 8 is not affecting your performance.

It would be more interesting to look at the time graph for hop 23 (or for your final destination, if that's reachable).

Feel free to post back here with another picture and additional , after you've read through the articles above.

- Pete

i read the information and want to stress that my issue is strictly latency. in my setup i could have all the latency in the world an wouldn't care except for when i game. i have noticed that quite a few "final destinations" don't respond to upd packets, or many to icmp packets so i pinged ww.google.com with icmp packets for 6hrs and have attached the screenhot below.

Hi, Bob.

Your focus on hop 8 is not helping you at all. Hop 11 has no packet loss. All packets to hop 11 are going through hop 8. If that router was affecting your overall experience, you'd be getting 16% loss at hop 11 and hop 16. You have to look for problems at the final destination (or as close to the final destination as possible, if it's not responding). Once you see an issue with that hop (16 in this case), you can look back at any prior hops to see which hop is causing the problem.

Let me repeat this. Ignore hop 8. It looks bad, but it's lying to you.

Also, the packet loss in hop 8 is making it diffiucult to look for any latency problems. If you were looking at another hop (like the final destination) that didn't have the packet loss problems, the latency peaks would be a lot easier to see.

You might want to have a look at our VoIP troubleshooting guide (gaming and VoIP have many similarities). We talk in some depth about why intermediate hops might not matter. The only time an intermediate hop matters is if you see the same symptoms at hops further down the route.

http://www.pingplotter.com/tutorial/VoipTroubleshooting.html

Since you're not showing the final destination in this screenshot, I can't really do any analysis for you. If you want to save off the .pp2 you're looking at and email it to support@pingplotter.com, we'll have a look and see if we can see anything that's useful.

- Pete

thanks for the reply. i will send you the file.

i am just so frustrated because it has been ruled out that my home networking is excellent, the signal i get from my isp is excellent but it wasn't until cox started to offer their premier 9/1 service that i started to have issues. friends of mine that are on cox but don't go through the 68.2.14.77 ip don't have the issues i am having when gaming, and all of our machines are equal, mine being a opteron 144 @ 2.5GHz(and also tried it at stock speed) that is prime95 stable for 12hrs or more, x800xtpe gpu, 1GB ram (i keep my graphics settings so they do not exceed 1GB) and have used onboard nics along with my trusty 3com 905b nics, and also 15k and 10k u320 scsi hdds.

on my home lan there is no issue when gaming, nor is there a problem when i game on a server that does not go through 68.2.14.77(which are far and few between), that is why i have thought it was the problem. i know the latest patch of bf2 created many issues and maybe it has to do with that, so i am installing bf1942 as i gamed it for years with no issues to test it out.

i have tried different mtu settings from 1300 to 1500 but with no difference...

and also, i could understand lag occassionally, just not 90%+ of the time i game.

email sent from dubob4432@yahoo.com

thanks in advance for your time and knowledge,
bob