Ping

[TJ]

Recently ive been having problems with my internet after about 7 o clock, the speed sometimes drops but the biggest issue is the ping. When im raiding it will shoot up to 200+ from a normal 40 and causes my huge lag, i cant even think about playing games like counter strike source because its so ridiculous. Ive done numerous speed tests in the past week to check if its download speed, ping, or happening just at a certain time and its always after 7ish o clock whilst being fine throughout the day.

I gave my ISP a ring (bt in the uk) and they informed me that i wasnt getting the correct speed (was getting 2 meg with a 7.5 meg capable line), they proceeded to say the problem would be fixed (but i got the impression they thought i was complaining about the speed when it was clearly stated it was the ping) within 5 days, now 5 days later im getting tripple the speed yet still facing ping problems and plan to ring them again tommorow. Any ideas to whats causing the ping? i mean its fine throughout the day so somethings happening in the evening which im sure is on the ISPs side, im not entirely sure about ping myself so was hoping to get some help here. Before i give them a ring im hoping to get some decent advice into what could be causing it and not sound like a fool complaining about ping when im not entirely sure on it.
Any help is appreciated.

---------- Post added 2012-02-07 at 10:06 AM ----------

Any input here? :/ planning to ring them today.

[Chunkyman]

Sounds like they're capping your bandwidth in some way or another.

[Djinni]

Take some "http://www.pingtest.net/" tests once every 2 hours throughout the day. Record the results and post here AND email them to bt tech support.

It's long, boring and arduous but gathering evidence to support your case to a company which won't listen to what you are actually saying often is.

Remember, you are gathering evidence, so don't discard any results. Good or bad, they all help.

[Deleted]

Chances are you're being speedcapped in the evenings.

If you're on a limited bandwidth plan it could be you're downloading large chunks, using Sky's connect (which is just a cheap bt resale) and though the official limit is 40gb/month the hidden cap to trigger low peak time speeds is 1.3gb/day or 10gb/week (causing low peak time speed for same duration).

Ping may show up ok on a pingtest but once a raids bandwidth creeps up on you peak time maximum it will cause latency.

[Djinni]

ping isn't so important here as jitter. Which is what we are looking at on the pingtest.net results

It's quite easy to play WoW with 1,000ms if you have very little jitter.

The other way to do it is to open command prompt and type:

ping www.google.com -t

and leave it running for the day continuing to use the network as you normally would.
The trouble with this is it generates a huge log which people do not like looking over so it is entirely possible the ISP will accept it, but not pay it any attention.

[TJ]

Thanks for the responses, im doing ping tests every few hours and keeping the result, cant really show you anything until later on though when it goes bad.

Chances are you're being speedcapped in the evenings.

If you're on a limited bandwidth plan it could be you're downloading large chunks, using Sky's connect (which is just a cheap bt resale) and though the official limit is 40gb/month the hidden cap to trigger low peak time speeds is 1.3gb/day or 10gb/week (causing low peak time speed for same duration).

Ping may show up ok on a pingtest but once a raids bandwidth creeps up on you peak time maximum it will cause latency.

Thing is, the ping goes high no matter what, i mean yesterday i wasnt on the pc all day and logged on about 8 o clock and it was already poor, i did a speedtest as well before hand to see if it was high and it was. I know what you mean but it seems to me that its not what im doing, it seems to occur everyday without fail for a reason im not sure of. The cap would be an issue if my brother was home but thankfully he hasnt been in here for 2 monthsish, so im not sure if i would reach the hidden cap since i dont download movies or anything, i just play WoW/CSS and watch youtube/browse forums.

Im sure you know more than me though so would them things actually count as a big download? im also using an unlimited download package (although i know it doesnt truly mean unlimited).
Again thanks for the help.

[Djinni]

You'll have to forgive the Americans :P they are used to insanely low caps, and back handed ISP's pre-capping/throttling to ensure that their customers don't reach the cap in the first place.

In England unless otherwise stated in your contract, BT's unlimited package IS unlimited. meaning they don't cap you (regardless of weather you use 10gb a month or 2,000gb a month). IF you are in a high contention area though they may throttle you to ensure that everyone in the area can still use the service.

Peak times are considered to be when most people in your area are using the service. This is typically between 5-6pm and 10pm, when parents and children are home from work, and have some time to browse the internet. (Also why most MMO group events, ebay end time listings etc... are between these times)


Also note the size of the download doesn't count so much as the frequency. (for example it's unlikely many people make a habit of downloading a 40gb file, more likely they download several files between 1mb and 20mb totalling 40gb.)

[Deleted]

You'll have to forgive the Americans :P they are used to insanely low caps, and back handed ISP's pre-capping/throttling to ensure that their customers don't reach the cap in the first place.

In England BT's unlimited package IS unlimited. meaning they don't cap you (regardless of weather you use 10gb a month or 2,000gb a month). IF you are in a high contention area though they may throttle you to ensure that everyone in the area can still use the service.

Pff, I'm from England

Area sucks for ISP's and 40gb/month with the hidden trigger was the most I could get. Think BT actually do the unlimited plan around here now so all I have to do is stop being lazy and get my MAC code...

Stop being lazy, right

Off-peak is still full speed.

[Milkshake86]

ping isn't so important here as jitter. Which is what we are looking at on the pingtest.net results

It's quite easy to play WoW with 1,000ms if you have very little jitter.

The other way to do it is to open command prompt and type:

ping www.google.com -t

and leave it running for the day continuing to use the network as you normally would.
The trouble with this is it generates a huge log which people do not like looking over so it is entirely possible the ISP will accept it, but not pay it any attention.

So playing wow nearly a second behind is easy to you? Do you have precognition? Also your wrong and should really think about doing some research. Im sitting here in a networking class and were all literally laughing at you.

You may have seen ping jitter while doing an internet speed test. Ping Jitter is is a measure of how much a ping varies over a period of time. Lower jitter is better because it means your pings and connection are more stable. Lower pings are preferred because it takes less time to reach the server. Lower pings will significantly help VOIP and online gaming (especially in first person shooter games). If your pings are high you can lower them by considering fastpath on your connection (this is also called turning off interleaving for your connection).

@ 1000ms Id be praying for some jitter to signify I might have less of ping to the server than 1000ms every so often. Constantly that far behind would be so painful.

Clearly ping will be even more effective in FPS than anywhere else as if i pull the trigger first I could still die before the opposition ever takes damage. Now in wow sure you could likely quest and be fine sorta kinda, but in a dungeon or raid your deadweight and likely going to die.

[Djinni]

So playing wow nearly a second behind is easy to you? Do you have precognition? Also your wrong and should really think about doing some research. Im sitting here in a networking class and were all literally laughing at you.

@ 1000ms Id be praying for some jitter to signify I might have less of ping to the server than 1000ms every so often. Constantly that far behind would be so painful.

Your quote is correct ;-) So I ask why exactly you are laughing?
I'd also like to know what exactly you think I'm wrong about?

You don't need pre-cognition. Certainly being 1000ms behind everyone else won't help you get out of the fire on the floor. But it sure does help not to have lots of jitter when casting spells ;-) Hence why addon's like Quartz" are so helpful to those who do have more than 200ms latency.

You will also notice especially at 50-300ms its the JITTER that creates the problems for you, NOT that you have 300ms. (Back in BC I had a friend in Hong Kong who used o play on the EU servers, She consistently had the best DPS in raids and averaged between 1,000 and 1,300ms latency.)

For most people latency is only an issue because they can see what it is. (Which incedently is part of the reason Blizzard removed the indicator from the main UI a while ago.)

[finnachta]

You'll have to forgive the Americans :P they are used to insanely low caps, and back handed ISP's pre-capping/throttling to ensure that their customers don't reach the cap in the first place.

In England unless otherwise stated in your contract, BT's unlimited package IS unlimited. meaning they don't cap you (regardless of weather you use 10gb a month or 2,000gb a month). IF you are in a high contention area though they may throttle you to ensure that everyone in the area can still use the service.

Peak times are considered to be when most people in your area are using the service. This is typically between 5-6pm and 10pm, when parents and children are home from work, and have some time to browse the internet. (Also why most MMO group events, ebay end time listings etc... are between these times)

/sigh ... The OP nor any of the original few who replied are American. Not a single ISP I have ever had has imposed these "caps". The real stringent caps are in American are via cellular (GSM, CDMA, iDEN) networks. Here's some help getting off that soapbox.

This may be absolutely nothing related to a bandwidth cap at all where some providers. The OP looks like he tried to convey that to his ISP (Speed != Latency != Jitter). Since it is happening in peak times it would suggest that your ISP has possibly oversold your local area. Residential and low-cost business internet is usually deployed using a Spoke and Wheel model where the ISP will delivery a large capacity line to a local box/building then each end point (ie, house, apartment, etc.) is then connected to it. It could be then point to point or more broadcast such with some cable service since those can filtered by hardware at each endpoint. This allows for rapid and cheap deployment. I would just ask them directly if they oversold the area. This has happened to me a couple of times but usually with persistence you can get them to resolve it; just keep in mind it isn't immediate. If you have any friends or family in your local neighborhood experiencing the same problem make sure they call in.

[conceit2]

ping isn't so important here as jitter. Which is what we are looking at on the pingtest.net results

It's quite easy to play WoW with 1,000ms if you have very little jitter.

The other way to do it is to open command prompt and type:

ping www.google.com -t

and leave it running for the day continuing to use the network as you normally would.
The trouble with this is it generates a huge log which people do not like looking over so it is entirely possible the ISP will accept it, but not pay it any attention.

Or

tracert google.com

in cmd or .bat works fine too to find the exact bottleneck.

(Or instead of "google.com" you can try the IP of your realm: (US) -- (EU) )

[Milkshake86]

When did blizzard remove the Latency from the main UI? It is still shown just fine 26ms world 26ms home. Also in bc nearly everyclass pressed 1 button for dps. Noone on a 1000ms ping is topping any dps meters ever, and healing rofl yea your dead. How you even believe someone with 1k ping is capable of casting any coherent chain of spells is beyond me. An insanely high jitter would likely DC you from the game, people to this day create latency and artificial jitter to cheat most games notably FPS will disconnect you from host quickly. When big name guilds move realms because of latency issue's I assure you they arent going well my ping is 200ms but my jitter is way to high we need to move they are going im behind I cannot play properly and you would need precognition in todays proc age to do anything decent on the meters.

[ComputerNerd]

Maybe try tracing the latency or ping at various points along the route, to see if there is any hop where the problem consistently occurs.
I use Ping Plotter Free for that.

Basically does what a traceroute does, but repeats it at timed interval, and records the average over time to better display an intermittent or spiking latency that the single might not pick up.

[Deleted]

is this still an issue? i live in wales and i'm also on BT having the exact same problem, been having it for weeks now. Please let me know if you got it resolved/how

[Deleted]

You'll have to forgive the Americans :P they are used to insanely low caps, and back handed ISP's pre-capping/throttling to ensure that their customers don't reach the cap in the first place.

In England unless otherwise stated in your contract, BT's unlimited package IS unlimited. meaning they don't cap you (regardless of weather you use 10gb a month or 2,000gb a month). IF you are in a high contention area though they may throttle you to ensure that everyone in the area can still use the service.

Peak times are considered to be when most people in your area are using the service. This is typically between 5-6pm and 10pm, when parents and children are home from work, and have some time to browse the internet. (Also why most MMO group events, ebay end time listings etc... are between these times)


Also note the size of the download doesn't count so much as the frequency. (for example it's unlikely many people make a habit of downloading a 40gb file, more likely they download several files between 1mb and 20mb totalling 40gb.)

Re-read your contract. Virgin, Sky, BT etc all have this fair usage bollocks they use to cap your speeds.

As mentioned, pingest is good. Also try speedtest.net to see how your bandwidth looks.