Terrible Ping When Gaming

[#1]

Hello;

Whenever I play online games or use voip software; my ping constantly spikes to upwards of 200 - this is a frequent occurence, happening several times a minute and making gaming impossible and my £4000 PC feel like a great waste of money.

I am on a hard wired connection to the router and my ping to it is 2 - it does not appear to be a problem on my end - but this inconsistent ping happens no matter the game. 

We have had a plusnet engineer round, who seemed to change some wiring in our ADSL line (or something) - however, nothing has been fixed? 

I need help.

[#2]

PS. We have spoken to customer support - who were unable to help or resolve the problem - is it possible to escalate this matter to someone who is able to actually help? like an engineer.

[#3]

What is your ADSL upload speed and BufferBloat score ?

Use DSLReports speedtest and click on the green [DSL] button to run the test.

If your upload speed is less than around 650Kbps then there isn't much you can do to improve ping spikes, instead you should concentrate on improving your phone and modem wiring to maximise the upload speed. A good start would be seeing if your modem speeds improve if you plug the modem ADSL cable in to the TEST SOCKET located behind the screw-on faceplate of the master telephone socket.

If your upload speed is >650Kbps, then using a router with upstream QoS (Quality Of Service) control, or a "Bufferbloat" setting might help, but will require a lot of patience and repeated speed testing to optimise your line to tame your ping spikes - I successfully managed to minimise ping times when I was on ADSL2+ uploading at 690Kbps.

Have you checked Broadband Availability Checker to see whether you can upgrade your ADSL to FTTC or FTTP ?

If no VDSL is available, is "WBC ADSL2+ Annex M" available ? - as that can increase your ADSL upload speed to near 1.5Mbps on a good phone line.