Dear all,
thank you for taking your time and going through this post. As you could tell from my caption, I am desperately looking for answers.
I have been experiencing packet loss for over half a year now and my ISP seems to be far away from resolving the issue.
I hope you can help me with interpreting the screenshots of my PingPlotter, because unfortunately I cannot fully understand the results (and obviously neither my ISP, eventough they recommended PingPlotter).
Referring to my screenshots:
- do I experience a packet loss of 0.9-1%?
- does every red bar indicate packet loss?
- in this case, could there be any other reasonable cause for rubberbanding (lag, pingspikes) in online games or puffering when watching videos?
- what could be the reason for this packet loss or what could i tell my ISP to check?

I have run PingPlotter on 2 PCs and 2 Laptops, via LAN or WIFI.
This issue occurs
- at every time (not related to capacity, e.g. at noon)
- on every device (smartphone, pc, laptop, tablet, console)
- WIFI and LAN

To my impression, the packet loss increases with higher internet usage (e.g. two PCs for online gaming -> Refer to 20:30 - 22:30 on my screenshots.)

Things that have already been done by my ISP:
- all standard checks like upstream, downstream, latency and so on. At least a dozen times, no sign of packet loss or any other issue according to them.
- sent 4 different technicians (they acknowledge the issues, but have no idea where they are coming from)
- replaced modem (5 times)
- replaced cable connection from my appartment to their junction/splitter
- checked their junctions, no issues visible
- connected my modem directly to their junction in my building (problem also occurs there, so it cannot be related to my appartment, right?)

I feel like they have done everything that comes to their minds, but ran out of ideas.

For those who are really interested in helping or sharing their thoughts I'll provide a more detailed description and history of the issue, but also try to keep it as short as possible:
I am from Austria, my ISP is UPC, which belongs to Liberty Global. The first 10 months of my contract were without any issues. Starting in May 2017, I experienced rubberbanding issues (lag) in several online games and an extraordinary amount of puffering with video streaming (e.g. facebook, youtube, netflix, amazon, twitch...) on a daily basis. I would say these symptoms occured approx. once every 5 minutes. The service hotline always runs their standard checks (upstream, downstream, latency) and tells me everything is fine. However, with the help of PingPlotter I was able to convince them of packet loss so they sent me a technician. Unfortunately this technician had no idea where the issue is rooted. I showed him the PingPlotter results and was even able to show him the symptoms (rubberbanding and puffering) live. He proceeded to check all cables in my appartment, then the connection to the junction in my building and even the connection to the junction in this district/region. He said he is sorry, but all checks were fine and there is nothing he could do. This time, I should send the PingPlotter screenshots to the second level support, who are supposed to be the experts and will take it from there. (Fun fact: one of them recommended to replace the cable to my PC even though I insisted that the issue is also occuring via WIFI). After looking at the screenshots the second level support said that all their tests were fine and they have no idea what could be causing the issue. However, they sent me another technician. The technician made the same tests as his collegue a few weeks ago, couldn't find the issue and forwarded me again to the second level support. Now, this keept going back and forth. In October, after the last technician was here, the issue was suddenly gone. The technician said he didn't do anything differently than his collegues and does not really know why it works now. However, since mid of December the issue has been reoccuring. Now, I am already close to resigning, not just from my contract, but also from faith in ISPs. Tomorrow the fifth technician will come over and most probably tell me to contact second level support.
I have found several threads on the internet which outline similiar or even the same symptoms, also with the same ISP. However, their is never a solution attached.

In case anybody is interested, I have exported the PingPlotter project and could upload it here.

I am very much looking forward to your suggestions.
Many thanks and best regards,
Dan

Hey there,

Thanks for getting in touch! It sounds like you've had a pretty crazy journey thus far. Thanks for the explanation of what's going on!

Currently, the data that I can see does point to some packet loss, but I don't have enough information to tell you from where it's originating. It looks like you've got about 1% packet loss consistently; to answer your question, the red bar does indicate packet loss. I can't quite say what the reason would be for your particular packet loss (there are literally thousands), but I definitely can confirm that it's there.

So, in order to find out what’s going on, you'll need to let these traces run for quite some time and investigate the results to be sure. Your goal here is going to be to correlate the issues you're having to PingPlotter patterns. You'll want to start a trace running to the service you're having troubles with (it seems like you're having troubles with most external services, so really any one will do), and leave that running while you're accessing the service. When you're experiencing poor service quality, make a note somewhere of what time it happened, and look back on your PingPlotter data to see if you can find a problem pattern that relates to when the undesired behavior first started.

To start you off on interpreting your results and investigating to full potential, I'd like to point toward a very powerful guide which will be able to guide you through your entire troubleshooting process. That can be found here:

https://www.pingplotter.com/fix-your-network

If you find yourself in need of some more help along the way, I'd be glad to offer any guidance I can. If you'd like a bit more of a direct channel, feel free to head to PingPlotter, hit File -> Export Sample Set, and send the file you've saved to support@pingman.com, as well as some of your notes on what times you experienced the most issues with these services.

Hey Hayla,

thanks for the many tips and fast reply.
You are right, it has really been a crazy journey so far and let me tell you, it is exhausting. I am very glad I came accross PingPlotter and have now the chance to talk with an expert
If I understood you correctly, I should play some videogames while PingPlotter is pinging the game server and note everytime I am experiencing rubberbanding. And then go back to PingPlotter and check if packet loss occured at the same time, right?

I have now went through your guide. I must say it is of great help, thank you
I am currently preparing to go nuclear

What kind of information would you need to better understand the origination of the issue?
I would be glad to provide it.

Do you have any idea what could be causing the described symptoms even though my ISP insists that my connection is totaly fine? What are they missing? I am certain that it is an outside problem, as described in your guide.

Another question: Is 1% packet loss common? What I mean is, would this be some kind of an acceptable tolerance or is it really supposed to be 0% and my 1% is a clear indicatior that something is wrong with my connection?

Many thanks and best regards,
Dan

Hey Dan,

No problem at all! Glad to help out.

You understood me perfectly! Play the video games, leave PingPlotter running in the background, and jot a quick note when you've got an issue. Then, head back to PingPlotter when you're done, and not only look for packet loss at those times, but check out what patterns might be happening, and what hop they're originating from. If you want a quick reference guide to some common patterns and reasons for symptoms, you can find that here:

https://www.pingplotter.com/fix-your-network/common-network-problems

In order to understand the origination and reason for the 1% packet loss (which seems kind of odd and uncommon to functioning networks), you're more than welcome to follow the instructions I gave on my former post about submitting some data to support@pingman.com, and I can check it out and see if I can offer some direction!

Hey Hayla,

I just wanted to thank you again for your help.
It seems like PingPlotter truely has superpowers
I almost can't believe it, but my ISP finally found the issue. As I understood it, my modem is connecting to one of their servers and said server was having timeouts, therefore, also my modem experienced timeouts. I am not really sure why it took them 7 months to figures this out, seems to me pretty obvious. However, I am glad it is fixed now.
Keep up the great work
Dan

Hey Dan,

Oh. My. Gosh. That's awesome! I'm so glad that your network was attended to properly, finally. This is the kind of awesome feedback we love and adore.

Let me know in the future if there's anything else I can help with!