House share - What are they doing?

[Kenjiin]

Hey all,

I live in a house share with 5 other people unfortunately. Everyone keeps themselves to themselves pretty much. Nobody is overly 'techy'.

Over the last few days the internet has been shot to pieces constantly. I have ran so many CMD Pings to FFXIV/WoW/Google and got back silly results without fail. I won't spam them here, but they would consistently fluctuate between 200-1000, up and down, all over place and never steady.

This obviously makes playing anything impossible. When I play FFXIV online everyone is rubberbanding all over the place and dungeons will completely freeze all together, only to unfreeze and everyone be in a different location.

I have control over the router settings, and for the sake of trial and error, tried blacklisting a few of the devices (though listed as unknown) on the wifi and had another go. Everything is now smooth as butter.

I'll show you the difference - These were obviously ran for a lot longer.

Before
Reply from 209.130.141.243: bytes=32 time=159ms TTL=52
Reply from 209.130.141.243: bytes=32 time=109ms TTL=52
Request timed out.
Reply from 209.130.141.243: bytes=32 time=151ms TTL=52
Reply from 209.130.141.243: bytes=32 time=202ms TTL=52
Reply from 209.130.141.243: bytes=32 time=177ms TTL=52
Reply from 209.130.141.243: bytes=32 time=869ms TTL=52
Reply from 209.130.141.243: bytes=32 time=1225ms TTL=52
Reply from 209.130.141.243: bytes=32 time=868ms TTL=52
Reply from 209.130.141.243: bytes=32 time=678ms TTL=52
Reply from 209.130.141.243: bytes=32 time=540ms TTL=52
Reply from 209.130.141.243: bytes=32 time=302ms TTL=52
Reply from 209.130.141.243: bytes=32 time=235ms TTL=52
Reply from 209.130.141.243: bytes=32 time=334ms TTL=52
After
Reply from 209.130.141.243: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=52
Reply from 209.130.141.243: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=52
Reply from 209.130.141.243: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=52
Reply from 209.130.141.243: bytes=32 time=11ms TTL=52
Reply from 209.130.141.243: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=52
Reply from 209.130.141.243: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=52
Reply from 209.130.141.243: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=52
Reply from 209.130.141.243: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=52
Reply from 209.130.141.243: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=52
Reply from 209.130.141.243: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=52
Reply from 209.130.141.243: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=52
Reply from 209.130.141.243: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=52

Simply put, what could someone be doing to cause this? Aside from downloading, because I just cant see what someone could have been downloading for days on end as nobody else is a gamer. Download speeds are decent at 100mbps so nothing takes long. I should also point out this happens are all times of day, I've been up all night going through it (coming off night shifts) and it was happening at 3-4am when the house is dead. Just trying to get some incite into what potentially someone may be doing or running to cause such an unstable connection to every server!

Edit: Just to add! Using a Virgin Superhub 3.0

 

[peige]

My initial thought is seeding torrants. If you have access to the router i'd buy a decent router and put the hub in modem mode.. then get some traffic shaping going.

 

[Quartz]

I'll echo @peige. However, it may also be time to have a word with your housemates. "Hey guys, I'm sure you've noticed that the internet's been screwy. It seems someone may have hacked our internet so I want to lock it down to just our stuff..." Then whitelist everything by MAC address.

Also, is this over wifi or on a wired connection? Because if it's the former you might try switching to a different channel.

 

[Deleted member 77746]

Ah the good old house share and issues with the internet. If I had £1 for every time I have heard this I would be super rich.

 

[alec]

90% sure its torrent uploads not being capped
Leave a note with advice to cap uploads to 100kb because it is affecting everyone

 

[~Divine~Wind~]

yup deffo be uploads there mate, checked in router settings to show connected devices?
Sometimes they'll show DL/UL data transmitted, be easy to find ya culprit

 

[EssexBoy]

.

 

[BigT]

Got to echo it'll be the uploads spiking your ping even if there's plenty of downstream bandwidth available - and upload saturation 90% of the time has torrents as the culprit. Seen this so often.

 

[Avalon]

99% of the time you have an ‘abbreviated Richard’ for a housemate who thinks it’s OK to run uncapped torrent uploads and screw everyone over. Either implement bandwidth restrictions at a router level or rely on them to not be a ....

 

[Haze]

Get yourself 4g broadband, and then have sole use of it, and then there Internet problems are not yours

 

[Kenjiin]

Thanks for taking the time to reply everyone! I'm sort of glad everyone has come go the same conclusion lol.

I've always wondered about 4G internet. I've always assumed it would be rubbish and not suitable, but I've never truly looked into it. It would definitely benefit having my own connection and not worrying about others. Any suggestions on provider? Though I assuming it's more coverage and area based when it comes to 4G

 

[Terminal_Boy]

Yup, you need to have really good service on 4G to get the best speeds.

 

[Caged]

What other broadband services are available? If gaming is what you want to do then you could get an FTTC service installed for around the same cost as 4G.

 

[Avalon]

It would be cheaper and easier to just ask whoever it is to play nicely for everyone’s benefit, it may be a simple lack of awareness, so at least try talking to your house mates first. Failing that get them to agree to a router swap and rate limiting/QoS are your friends. Another line being installed is generally something you need to run by a landlord and if it’s only a short tenancy, you have to consider the contract and if you can move it to your next property.

 

[Haze]

Thanks for taking the time to reply everyone! I'm sort of glad everyone has come go the same conclusion lol.

I've always wondered about 4G internet. I've always assumed it would be rubbish and not suitable, but I've never truly looked into it. It would definitely benefit having my own connection and not worrying about others. Any suggestions on provider? Though I assuming it's more coverage and area based when it comes to 4G

I am on Three and live out in the sticks, connection is better than BT, BT was 4mb down, which worked out 500k download speed on steam, 4g I get 14/20mb, which works out 1.5/2.5mb on steam, pay £25 unlimited with 3,and was paying & £45 with BT

 

[JasonM]

What happens with saturated uploads is the download acknowledgement packets are delayed effecting overall download speed.

My Draytek has an acknowledgement packet priority setting that helps alleviate this, does your router have anything similar?

 

[Rroff]

It is possible someone's PC is infested with malware that is using it as a host for torrents and other botnet type activity, etc. but as often as not it is just someone who is torrenting and doesn't give a **** about anyone else using the connection.

 

[tribz]

I have control over the router settings, and for the sake of trial and error, tried blacklisting a few of the devices (though listed as unknown) on the wifi and had another go. Everything is now smooth as butter.

If you can see MAC addresses, you can look up the manufacturer. Icloud iphone / ipad backups are good for swamping lower speed connections. A good router with QOS should sort this.

 

[Andy_82]

Another good option is to get a router compatible with openwrt. the FQ-Codel or cake is very good at reducing ping times on a saturated connection. pfSense or opnsense can also run FQ-Codel although it's a bit more complex to setup. Ubiquiti routers also implement fq-codel in an easy to use manner.

Much easier to setup than other QOS systems, all you need is enter is you're upload and download rates -10% or so. Look up bufferbloat for more details but essentially the buffers in the router become full which leeds to higher latency, really is a solution that should be intergrated into every router as unlike other methods it is very easy to setup.

I've been using fq-codel on pfsense for a while now and even with both upload and download saturated pings stay below 50 ms versus 12 ms on an idle connection.