Gaming Issues Latency/Ping

[#1]

All quite on the quite line test both at idle and max throughput.

Something is not right i know that much and i will definately be opening a fault ticket. I just want to gather as much info i can before anyone is called out to my property. Reason being last time i went down this road, when i was with BT i had openreach out 10 times before the section of line was replaced and after all that they had the audacitity to charge me for the callout, presumably to stop me complaining. Luckily i got the BT forum team involved and it was quickly resolved but i havent complained for 2 years since so their fear tactics worked.
I dont know if a similar forum team is involved on PN but i would hope something is in place incase they do try this again. The area i am in is very low priority on their list and they will do everything in their power to make sure they dont spend money replacing lines etc; so if i'm going to get anywhere with raising a fault i expect i'm going to need all the help i can get.

[#2]

the plusnet customer care team are very good in my experience, although it can take them a few days between responses if one of them has taken on the case the others generally steer clear and what with working hours and numbers of people to deal with that can lead to the odd delay or two.

I know what you mean about BT's dodgy practices many years ago I moved into a property they had blacklisted due to the previous tenant and I was forced to fork out £380 quid to get my phone and broadband connected despite them knowing I had been a customer in good standing with them for nearly a decade, then when the faults started they charged the call out fees up front and I had a terrible job getting refunded, one of the many reasons why when I stopped moving about I was quick to find an alternative supplier as soon as my existing contract period ended.

[#3]

Thanks thats good to know, i have a feeling i will be needing all the help i can get. It doesnt help that the area i have moved to everyone is their uncle or close kin and they dont like outsiders (me) and ofcourse the engineer that comes is local so its not off to a great start already .

I have requested interleaving be turned on once again (https://community.plus.net/t5/Broadband/Interleaving-request-to-be-turned-ON/td-p/1352618) so it will be interesting to see how the latency changes this time.

[#4]

so your likely to be in either Bridgwater Cornwall or wales then

[#5]

This is a strange issue - maybe there is something funny going on at the exchange or beyond. If it were a line fault between you and the exchange I would expect to see packet loss rather than latency.

I don't know whether filezilla limiting is any good, if it's burst than back off,  then that could still cause spikes.

Plusnet QOS won't help at all with upload, you'd need to set that up on your router if possible.

Downstream it should help, but the rate on the link I gave earlier would need to be somewhat below your sync rate (I don't know what it should be for *meg sync). If pings go wild when downloading then it's apparently not working too well.

Do you get good games with absolutely no other traffic like with your ping tests, or is it still always bad whatever?

[#6]

@legume - I have tried FileZilla with burst limit on and off, it doesnt change latency or the spikes at all from my monitoring. I have also watched pings similarly while using torrents to limit the bandwidth and have the same latency variables and spikes. The same can be said for monitoring normal WWW traffic so from what i can gather its a problem with all traffic types.
FYI i also have my own QOS in place, i use tomato on my asus n66u router although i have tried other flavours including DD-WRT and Open-WRT. Unfortunately even QOS cant help me here as it seems my idle pings are wild, varying and spiking all the time. So if i cant control latency at idle there is not much QOS can do for me in regards to ping.
Honestly i can say i have not had a good game where the connection has stayed stable since i moved into this property roughly 2 years ago. Even with absolutely no other traffic i am getting lantecy variation and spikes of around 20-150ms.

I personally suspect either a bad degraded line or a problem a long the way, possibly even beyond the exchange. One thing i am certain of is that my equipment and setup is all fine so what ever the issue has to beyond my property.

[#7]

Hi @markb5000, appreciate this is an old thread, but I was curious to know if you ever found a resolution, as I am experiencing EXACTLY the same problem that you have listed here for the past 4 weeks.
Same router, same ping issues only when gaming at any given time, every game literally unplayable! Praying you have a result for me..many thanks.

[#8]

Hi @cmlcoughlin91, i'm sorry to dissapoint but i never did get to find a solution to my problem and its still ongoing. I never even bothered to open a ticket or to pursue this any further with BT/PN simply because i cant get together any evidence to show there is a problem- its only affecting online gameplay and i dont want to have to pay out for the engineer call out charge only to have them come and tell me all there tests are showing up fine which is what i already know.

The only bit of advice i can give that has made the issue more bareable for me is to get rid of the PN router and move to something that supports Tomato custom firmware and QOS. I use an Asus RTN66 with a tomato build called "advanced tomato v132" and i have limited my throughput using the advanced QOS to approximately 60%. Dont get me wrong i still have severe issues playing games but this has made it much more bareable to the point where i'm getting 5-10ms jitter instead of the previous 100ms-500ms i was getting with the PN router.

[#9]

Great, thanks for your advice. I did fear that there would not be a direct fix, but your answer fills me with some hope.
Sorry for my naivitity, but is jitter the same as ping? If not, what kind of ping can you expect to see now in game? Thanks.

Will keep you posted if PN come back with anymore. So far they've told me everything looks fine...

[#10]

No problem. I fear if you indeed have the same problem you will not find a fix although i would recommend running your own tests to see if you can identify any problems. PN can only do so much from their end so you really need to run everything you can to the best of your knowledge. I would also strongly recommend opening a post on the forums to get the forum team involved as they can be very helpful at giving advice and not only that if you do identify a problem they will help get it fixed. Unfortunately in my case i was unable to find anything so have been unable to proceed with getting it fixed.

All fails you can try a new router as i suggested with the tomato firmware. Its made my problem less severe although i do still have problems with certain online games others are now perfectly within acceptance levels and playable but keep in mind i have had to limit my speeds to 60% so i'm losing almost half of my speed there just to keep it stable.

As for the jitter its the rate at which your ping fluctuates, ideally it should be no more than 1ms as anything higher will cause significant lag in game but being realistic on old copper lines this is rarely going to be possible. I currently average at 5-10ms jitter which is bad but previously i was getting 100-500ms variance so for me this has been a major improvement.

My current rate of ping averages at 30ms with 5-10ms jitter variation so ingame that can be anything from 20ms-40ms.

Good luck in getting it fixed hopefully you will have more luck than me

[#11]

"for the past 4 weeks"  Does that mean it was fine beforehand and has turned bad?

[#12]

Hi @Kelly, thanks for your response. Yes, I have been with Plusnet since February'16 and this had never been issue before mid-December. I have had multiple members of your team look at this now and I still have no resolution. I really do not want to leave Plusnet as I think the customer service is fantastic, regardless of if I have no resolution this time round. There are constant tweaks being made to my connection (by Plusnet) that I feel will make no significant difference as this is not just a minor ping issue, but one that has had me go from a perfect gaming experience to an unplayable one, literally overnight.

I am looking to move to BT before the end of the week, but I'm aware that this may not fix the issue. If there is anything you can do in the meantime, it would be amazing. 

Thanks, Chris.

[#13]

Is it ALWAYS bad?  Or just most of the time?  (i.e. do you sometimes have no issues?)

[#14]

Thanks @Kelly. The connection is always terrible. I've had one occasion where one of your colleagues 'Jamie' tweaked with the settings on your end and the problem seemed to be fixed for ~15 minutes (50ms in-game) and then reverted back to the standard 300-500ms+. 

But when I say one occasion in the past month, it literally was that one 15 minute slot that I thought the issue was resolved. That was on Sunday evening.

[#15]

Hey cmlcoughlin91, 

Can you disconnect and reconnect and let us know how it is behaving?