Help with ping/latency issues

[RT123]

Hi,

Was wondering if anyone can help.

I have a 250mbps connection with Virgin Media. I am experiencing latency issues that are stopping me from playing games.

I've tried using both WiFi and Ethernet - both have the same issue, though ethernet is maybe a little more reliable.

A few questions:

• I have a Hub 3 - would buying/getting a new router help?
• Virgin (on X/Twitter) have tried to tell me that I need to upgrade the speed as there are 17 devices connected - would this help? (I don't think so - I tried this morning and only the device I was testing on was in use and it still happened). Wouldn't want to do it with Virgin anyway.
• Is VM just bad for latency - I recently got access to OpenReach FTTP if that would improve things?
• Anything I can do to fix/reduce the issue?

Thanks for any assistance.

 

[Rainmaker]

Hi,

Was wondering if anyone can help.

I have a 250mbps connection with Virgin Media. I am experiencing latency issues that are stopping me from playing games.

I've tried using both WiFi and Ethernet - both have the same issue, though ethernet is maybe a little more reliable.

Absolutely stick with Ethernet where at all possible - including when that means busting out the drill.

A few questions:

• I have a Hub 3 - would buying/getting a new router help?

Probably. The 3 is old now, but perfectly serviceable for your speed tier. I'm not 100% (@Avalon @ChrisD. ?) but I think VM are still reserving the Hub 5 for the gigabit tiers. The Hub 3 is subject to the Puma 6 chipset flaw, which affects latency. It was patched in a later firmware version, but only insomuch as they offloaded ICMP (ping) to the WiFi chipset to hide the issue, it didn't actually fix anything. A decent x86 router running OpenWrt or similar would be your best bet on VM, as it allows you to run SQM with Cake to address the bufferbloat and latency issues. Search this forum for those two terms for a *lot* more info.

• Virgin (on X/Twitter) have tried to tell me that I need to upgrade the speed as there are 17 devices connected - would this help? (I don't think so - I tried this morning and only the device I was testing on was in use and it still happened). Wouldn't want to do it with Virgin anyway.

Absolutely not. It's a lie, probably half sales pitch and half ignorance. If all 17 devices need access to a chunk of bandwidth simultaneously (and I mean at least a 4K video stream each, at the same time) then *maybe*. That still wouldn't affect latency, though.

• Is VM just bad for latency - I recently got access to OpenReach FTTP if that would improve things?

Yes - and absolutely, yes!

• Anything I can do to fix/reduce the issue?

Thanks for any assistance.

See previous answer. In your position I'd just jump to Openreach based FTTP. In fact, I recently did just that. Base latency went down from 22ms to 9ms, and no more bloat or jitter.

 

[Quartz]

You should make sure that none of your other devices have been compromised. One member here had a fridge (IIRC) that was spamming. Beyond that you should get yourself a router with VLAN support and bandwidth management. Then you can restrict the bandwidth used by all the devices, leaving more or you.

 

[Rainmaker]

You should make sure that none of your other devices have been compromised. One member here had a fridge (IIRC) that was spamming. Beyond that you should get yourself a router with VLAN support and bandwidth management. Then you can restrict the bandwidth used by all the devices, leaving more or you.

What does fair queuing have to do with it? Unless the OP has a machine filling the up and downstream with torrents 24/7, bandwidth allocation has little to nothing to do with the latency issues. Adding VLANs is immaterial.

 

[RT123]

Thanks so much for your reply Rainmaker.

I’m not at all surprised by what you’ve said - and I definitely don’t need a speed upgrade.

 

[KIA]

Create a BQM.

Broadband Quality Monitor | thinkbroadband

FREE Broadband Quality Monitor to keep track of latency & packet loss

www.thinkbroadband.com

 

[RT123]

Create a BQM.

Broadband Quality Monitor | thinkbroadband

FREE Broadband Quality Monitor to keep track of latency & packet loss

www.thinkbroadband.com

Latest BQM: https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broa...b9670131a59af3564adb71aba5a28b45a9-07-04-2024

 

[Avalon]

Absolutely stick with Ethernet where at all possible - including when that means busting out the drill.

Probably. The 3 is old now, but perfectly serviceable for your speed tier. I'm not 100% (@Avalon @ChrisD. ?) but I think VM are still reserving the Hub 5 for the gigabit tiers. The Hub 3 is subject to the Puma 6 chipset flaw, which affects latency. It was patched in a later firmware version, but only insomuch as they offloaded ICMP (ping) to the WiFi chipset to hide the issue, it didn't actually fix anything. A decent x86 router running OpenWrt or similar would be your best bet on VM, as it allows you to run SQM with Cake to address the bufferbloat and latency issues. Search this forum for those two terms for a *lot* more info.

Absolutely not. It's a lie, probably half sales pitch and half ignorance. If all 17 devices need access to a chunk of bandwidth simultaneously (and I mean at least a 4K video stream each, at the same time) then *maybe*. That still wouldn't affect latency, though.

Yes - and absolutely, yes!

See previous answer. In your position I'd just jump to Openreach based FTTP. In fact, I recently did just that. Base latency went down from 22ms to 9ms, and no more bloat or jitter.

I haven't spoken to anyone who can confirm in a while, as many of the people I know have moved on (irony: two of my old team now work for Sky), but if you order Gig1, you are still likely to get a Hub4 in DOCSIS areas despite the profile being greater than gigabit, unless in an VM FTTP area where the 5x will be sent, obviously the Gig2 gets Hub5 or 5x depending on the area.

Latest BQM: https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broa...b9670131a59af3564adb71aba5a28b45a9-07-04-2024

BQM looks about right for a connection that's being used (larger spikes under load), latency actually looks OK, odd dot of red which isn't so great, but it's not awful.

 

[Quartz]

What does fair queuing have to do with it? Unless the OP has a machine filling the up and downstream with torrents 24/7,

Or some device is sending out a deluge of spam. As has happened to one member here.

bandwidth allocation has little to nothing to do with the latency issues. Adding VLANs is immaterial.

You are massively wrong. The point is to separate and control. And so make sure that there is bandwidth for your games.

 

[Rainmaker]

You are massively wrong. The point is to separate and control. And so make sure that there is bandwidth for your games.

Pray, elaborate...

 

[RT123]

Is the ping just good for Virgin? I’m getting spikes up to 150-200ms on Ethernet. Even when I’m not, the variations are having a significant impact on gameplay - I’m autistic so really struggle (it causes me a lot of stress) with game interruptions.

I’m also experiencing poor quality with the Internet itself - particularly when watching YouTube or a livestream? This has become more apparent in the last week or so. As are the regular dropouts, but that’s just a thing with them in general I think!

Sorry for all the questions - I know a little but not too much about networks

 

[RT123]

You are massively wrong. The point is to separate and control. And so make sure that there is bandwidth for your games.

My understanding is that gaming requires so little bandwidth - so I disagree.

 

[Rainmaker]

Is the ping just good for Virgin? I’m getting spikes up to 150-200ms on Ethernet. Even when I’m not, the variations are having a significant impact on gameplay - I’m autistic so really struggle (it causes me a lot of stress) with game interruptions.

I’m also experiencing poor quality with the Internet itself - particularly when watching YouTube or a livestream? This has become more apparent in the last week or so. As are the regular dropouts, but that’s just a thing with them in general I think!

Sorry for all the questions - I know a little but not too much about networks.

There are a fair few ND folks on here, so don't stress. Your BQM is decent overall, as Avalon said. You're showing utilisation spikes and some possible congestion, however. The chipset in the Hub 3 won't be helping, but by its nature VM's HFC/DOCSIS network is prone to latency and jitter. Your best bet for remediation (but not resolution, unfortunately) is to install a router and enable Cake SQM as I said before. What are the specs of the machine you're testing from and playing games on (over Ethernet)?

Please run the following and share the results:

Internet Speed Test - Measure Network Performance | Cloudflare

Test your Internet connection. Check your network performance with our Internet speed test. Powered by Cloudflare's global edge network.

speed.cloudflare.com

Bufferbloat and Internet Speed Test - Waveform

Is bufferbloat causing issues with your internet connection? Run this test to find out.

www.waveform.com

TestMy Latency

Test and graph your Internet latency across the world in seconds with a new type of connection speed test.

testmy.net

 

[Quartz]

My understanding is that gaming requires so little bandwidth - so I disagree.

Different games require different amounts of bandwidth but if there’s little bandwidth left then the game is going to get squeezed regardless.

I am, of course, speaking from experience: that time the bandwidth hog was my niece who was watching YouTube.

 

[Rainmaker]

Different games require different amounts of bandwidth but if there’s little bandwidth left then the game is going to get squeezed regardless.

I am, of course, speaking from experience: that time the bandwidth hog was my niece who was watching YouTube.

If you're on anything much above dial-up and a simple YT stream is impacting gaming on a different device, then you seriously need to look either a terribly faulty WAN or at upgrading your router. Bandwidth fair queueing is certainly applicable on a low speed connection, or where one client may (eg) be saturating up and downstream with torrents all the time. It still has low to no impact on latency and jitter unless, again, your router is woeful. With a 250Mbps WAN even a 4K YT stream is only going to take, at most, 1/10 of that. No game I know of requires >200Mbps... Upstream is a different matter, and with ~20Mbps one does have to consider contemporaneous uploads and ACKs, but again it's just clouding the issue here, which is VM being VM.

As I said, the OP's issue stems from the inherent nature of HFC/DOCSIS and will be salved by proper SQM. Adding VLANs and capping and/or allocating bandwidth shares isn't really going to help. As I requested earlier, if you can please elaborate on how (lack of) capping or sharing bandwidth on the LAN will impact the ring buffers on the router NICs or introduce higher latency upstream on the WAN then I'm all ears.

 

[GregI]

Unfortunately just seems to be one of the problems with Virgin Media. I do think it's much better if Nexfibre have rolled out in your area (they wholesale to Virgin Media) but yes Openreach FTTP will help. How long is left on the contract?

 

[RT123]

Thanks Rainmaker.

That really helped me understand the problem. I’ve had to test it with a laptop with an i5 12th gen (1235U) and 16GB RAM because I can’t test it with my main computer (I also have a physical disability - so can’t really be drilling holes - even if I had one!) - that's the device I had massive spikes that I didn't have on WiFi! Was trying to test it to see if a Powerline adapter would make a difference - but the Ethernet was almost as bad!

Bufferbloat: https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat?test-id=c2aa5434-f53f-4845-aca2-e485a5363895

TestMyLatency: https://testmy.net/latency?gID=zhfsojfqpq

Can't find a link for the Cloudflare - what would you need from that?

 

[RT123]

Unfortunately just seems to be one of the problems with Virgin Media. I do think it's much better if Nexfibre have rolled out in your area (they wholesale to Virgin Media) but yes Openreach FTTP will help. How long is left on the contract?

4 months (i'm trying to get them to fix it or release me). But I'm happy to have the OR running alongside it if it would help. Unfortunately I'm on the older HFS or whatever connection and my area doesn't have the newer Nexfibre infrastructure for Virgin.

 

[Rainmaker]

Thanks Rainmaker.

That really helped me understand the problem. I’ve had to test it with a laptop with an i5 12th gen (1235U) and 16GB RAM because I can’t test it with my main computer (I also have a physical disability - so can’t really be drilling holes - even if I had one!) - that's the device I had massive spikes that I didn't have on WiFi! Was trying to test it to see if a Powerline adapter would make a difference - but the Ethernet was almost as bad!

Bufferbloat: https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat?test-id=c2aa5434-f53f-4845-aca2-e485a5363895

TestMyLatency: https://testmy.net/latency?gID=zhfsojfqpq

Can't find a link for the Cloudflare - what would you need from that?

Don't worry about the Cloudflare one, those two are already pretty informative. It's as I said, you're seeing bufferbloat and your 75 and 95 percentile results are very high. The jitter and high latency is more than enough to impact your daily experience, but it's also a fairly easy fix - just not free, or without a learning curve. An x86 box running OpenWrt, IPFire or VyOS (much more difficult, CLI only) would fix that in a snap. Honestly though, switch to FTTP first and then see how you get on. It'll solve 99% of your issues overnight.

 

[RT123]

Thanks again for your help Rainmaker - with the router for the OR FTTP, should I stick with the provided one or change it?