Can decent PING still cause lag/net stuttering?

Zeebedy · 30 Aug 2017 at 19:20

Hey guys,

Just played a game of CS, and man..it would lag like crazy, but my PING is sitting around 40-50. Can it still spike a lot even with a low ping?

Im kinda guessing its at peak times isnt helping? True?

Rroff · 30 Aug 2017 at 19:22

Things like packet loss and latency fluctuation/jitter can still cause undesirable results even with a low average latency.

Are you sharing the connection with anyone else? things like torrent clients for instance even when idle the high connection cycling can have quite an impact on gaming potentially flooding out game packets.

Also is it a wired or wireless connection and landline/cable or 3/4G?

Zeebedy · 30 Aug 2017 at 19:25

Rroff said:
Things like packet loss and latency fluctuation/jitter can still cause undesirable results even with a low average latency.

Are you sharing the connection with anyone else? things like torrent clients for instance even when idle the high connection cycling can have quite an impact on gaming potentially flooding out game packets.

Also is it a wired or wireless connection and landline/cable or 3/4G?

Thanks for the quick reply dude!

I am on standard broadband, not sharing just me in the household. I dont have any torrents/DL on the go when playing? It is wireless, but im near the router and went this route as was having trouble with my powerline adapters..

But I played a game first thing this morning and was great? I dont understand it fully tbh?

Rroff · 30 Aug 2017 at 19:35

Sounds most likely contention either congested wifi or the internet connection itself - you can use tool called inssider to see if you are sharing wifi chanels with a neighbour, etc. which can have some impact. Things like pinging a server from a command prompt with something like "ping bbc.co.uk -n 30" might show some latency issues but its a bit too crude to show low level issues with packet loss, etc.

Zeebedy · 30 Aug 2017 at 21:39

I just finished watching a mate playing a comp of CS GO and there was no lag, stutter etc..surely if it was a GPU / Frame problem, it would still stutter while watching someone else play a match??

Rroff · 30 Aug 2017 at 21:45

Ingame spectator will mask some issues though packet loss should still cause noticeable hitching, etc. streaming video will mask even more issues unless you are getting buffering.

bledd · 31 Aug 2017 at 07:59

What connection are you on? How are you connected to the router?

ChrisD. · 31 Aug 2017 at 08:07

Who is your isp and try and use wired as wireless is pants for gaming.

r7slayer · 31 Aug 2017 at 08:59

Rroff said:
Things like packet loss and latency fluctuation/jitter can still cause undesirable results even with a low average latency.

Are you sharing the connection with anyone else? things like torrent clients for instance even when idle the high connection cycling can have quite an impact on gaming potentially flooding out game packets.

Also is it a wired or wireless connection and landline/cable or 3/4G?

This, packet loss may only be brief and you may not see your ping change as many in game ping stats tend to show average ping or even in real time (1 second update) you wont see packet loss normally, so it looks like your ping is nice and low but brief packet loss can look horrendous in game looks like stuttering like you mentioned.

lsg1r · 31 Aug 2017 at 13:05

Does CS use a client/host set up or server which you all link up with?

If it's the former the host pc being underpowered can also cause lag/stutter, it's a far too common occurrence on warframe (a game I play that uses p2p setup), because basically their pc can't keep up (for some reason they've set min requirements to 10 year old hardware...).

As said there could be numerous little issues that you don't see between you and the game host/server which can be amplified during peak times.