Packet loss effecting gaming

[#1]

Hello

We have had plusnet for a number of years, had the telephone line replaced between the house and the telephone pole outside and have the unlimited fibre option.

Recorded speeds are good (download circa 70mbps) but are suffering from packet loss and ping spikes which are having a significant impact on my two son's gaming experience. They have ethernet connection with the router which is the latest plusnet hub (installed last year).

My son has used the foilowing tests

https://www.speedtest.net/ showed a lot of download, and particularly upload latency

https://packetlosstest.com/ showed upload packet loss (this reached 10.7% in an earlier test) and some ping spikes:

https://ping.canbeuseful.com/ showed ping spikes, and higher average ping than he has experienced in the past:

Any ideas on what we can do to improve performance?

[#2]

You've probably got bufferbloat on your router.

You can test for bufferbloat here - https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat 

For gaming you should be aiming for a 'Bufferbloat Grade" of  A  or  A+

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@ChrisBe wrote:

Any ideas on what we can do to improve performance?

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Read the 'Frequently Asked Questions" below the bufferbloat test result

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[#3]

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@ChrisBe wrote:

... ... the router which is the latest plusnet hub (installed last year).

Do you happen to have an old Plusnet "Hub One" stored away somewhere ?

as there was a recent topic on here where the gaming ping problem with a "Hub Two" was solved by fitting an old "Hub One"

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[#4]

We do have an older hub1 but to be honest it was getting a bit knackered. Prior to getting the most recent router we had gone the 2nd hand BT hub route.,

The test on the'bufferboat' website said the current system is rated as a 'C' - which it says means great for everything except the gaming.

Thanks for the links -I'll take a look.

[#5]

Yikes !  a  C  grade in that test is a ping latency increase between 60ms and 200ms

whereas for gaming you'd probably want to be consistently better than say 20ms.

However using a router with anti-bufferbloat features does work to eliminate ping spikes.

Here's my typical test result -

[#6]

@ChrisBe want me to run a speed test for you?

[#7]

Hello yes that would be useful.

I would say that running speed tests at this end show decent upload+ download, but that is not where the problem seems to be.

Regards

[#8]

Hi @ChrisBe 

I've tested your line and I can't see anything wrong that would cause this.

At the risk of checking the obvious they're not connected to the fourth ethernet port on the Hub 2 are they? This port is designed for WAN connections and I believe won't fully work if it's being used as a normal port

[#9]

No  - ethernet plugged into ports 1 and 2. Thankyou for checking.

[#10]

Has anyone checked that the Plusnet "Current Line Speed" is  LESS THAN  BT Wholesale "IP Profile"  ?

It certainly makes a measurable difference on my connection when the "Current Line Speed" is set too high,

although I can't remember whether this only applies to connections using a static IP address (as mine is)

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[#11]

Current plan is that we are updating the connection to full fibre in a couple of weeks. If the increased bandwidth doesn't help we'll look at a third party router with the hub 2 as a bridge.

Thanks tor all the replies. It has helped us learn a lot very quickly.

[#12]

Other than for really old ADSL connections, increasing the internet connection bandwidth is unlikely to make much difference to ping spikes - because speed isn't the problem.  For gaming the issue is more about the correct prioritisation of small data packets when ANYTHING else is happening on your home network. Having said that, full fibre will probably reduce your overall latency by a couple of milliseconds compared to FTTC.

Good luck with your upgrade.

[#13]

Current line speed only affects those of us on fixed IPs (or those with “broadband firewall” switched “on”/not off).
Speaking of BT test, Additional diagnostic is not working for me currently so can’t even check against our “line speed” (always returns an error retrieving additional data)!

[#14]

It hasn't work for me using Firefox for months now, however I can usually get through <Additional diagnostic> using Chromium browser but then the <Download Report> button doesn't respond.

I just tested it in Chromium, and got my IP profiles etc. -

[#15]

Sadly no good with anything I’ve tried. Multiple browsers and devices, all come back with an error from the BT database. Some open retch foul up I would guess. All I can do is wait for it to clear.

Anyway enough of that. We await your news update @ChrisBe, whenever you have some that is, not trying to rush you or anything.