Pinging router, 2% packet loss. Pls Help!

Ace101 · 29 Jun 2009 at 00:16

I've been trying to figure out what is wrong my internet for a while. I used to think it was because i live in a rural area and the phonelines are just old and i am far from the exchange. The internet is fine for web browsing but is impossible to play any sort of FPS game online due to lag spikes every 40-60 seconds.

Today i pinged my router and found out the problem seems to be stemming from there. I roughly get a 1-2% packet loss, and really high returns of 2000ms or so every 40-60 seconds (hence the FPS lag).

Router is a wireless LiveBox-3100
Im pretty sure the firmware is up to date
I have tried other computers with their NICs on my network
I have tried my NIC on other networks (works fine)
When plugged directly into the router no packets are lost from what i can see
I have unplugged all the phones + sky boxes in the house

Before i buy a new router is there anything i should test?

sid · 29 Jun 2009 at 00:36

have you tried a different cable? or is it wireless

Ace101 · 29 Jun 2009 at 00:38

edited: moot post

Dist · 29 Jun 2009 at 02:02

Does this always happen at a regular interval, or is it random?

Caged · 29 Jun 2009 at 03:07

What's your DHCP lease time?

Mr Goat · 29 Jun 2009 at 11:42

Have you tried disconnecting the ADSL link on the router? Have you tried disabling the wireless on the router when wired to it (and you being the only device connected to it)?

These are probably the only 2 things I'd do in addition to what you've done already, but it's looking very much like the router is the problem. Have you got another router you can try on your ADSL line?

Ace101 · 29 Jun 2009 at 14:24

Dist said:
Does this always happen at a regular interval, or is it random?

Random intervals

Caged said:
What's your DHCP lease time?

My router has no option for DHCP from what i see, anyway i can check this further?

sid said:
have you tried a different cable? or is it wireless

Apologies, i thought i was origionally plugged in but it was using the wireless in preference to the cable connection

Mr Goat said:
Have you tried disabling the wireless on the router when wired to it?

I went back and plugged directly into the router and disabled the wireless connection in windows. I was getting constant 1ms delay and no lost packets from what i see. So the problem is with the wireless not the router itself...

Cheers for the help so far, any further ideas?

Mr Goat · 29 Jun 2009 at 14:37

Next I'd try changing the wireless channel on your router. See if that helps, if not, update your wireless drivers.

Caged · 29 Jun 2009 at 17:17

Disable the wireless, plug it back in. See what happens.

I'm betting it's Windows XP's wireless zeroconf thing scanning for other networks.

Ace101 · 29 Jun 2009 at 19:43

Mr Goat said:
Next I'd try changing the wireless channel on your router. See if that helps, if not, update your wireless drivers.

I have changed the channel before to no affect. the routers firmware or my NIC drivers? all my NIC drivers are up to date.

Caged said:
Disable the wireless, plug it back in. See what happens.

you mean reset the router by powering it off and powering it back on? already tried.

Caged said:
I'm betting it's Windows XP's wireless zeroconf thing scanning for other networks.

Im on windows vista, and i have the problem on all 3 computers on the wireless network

Phobia_mp3 · 29 Jun 2009 at 20:43

How far away from the router is your computer?
Is it beside things that could block the signal?
does it have to go through walls?

Mr Goat · 29 Jun 2009 at 22:12

I think Caged is suggesting that you disable wireless on your laptop. I suggested earlier that you disable wireless on the router and connect via a wired connection, however...

...both these suggestions seem to be potentially pointless, as from from what I can tell (it's getting quite confusing I have to say!) you've confirmed that you have no problems wired, only wireless, is this definitely the case?

HangTime · 29 Jun 2009 at 23:36

I agree with Caged, definitely looks symptomatic of wireless polling, which also happens on Vista.

Try using this: http://www.martin-majowski.de/wlanoptimizer/

Although obviously, if it's possible to use a wired connection then I'd always recommend that over wireless.

Ace101 · 29 Jun 2009 at 23:42

Mr Goat said:
...both these suggestions seem to be potentially pointless, as from from what I can tell (it's getting quite confusing I have to say!) you've confirmed that you have no problems wired, only wireless, is this definitely the case?

Yes i have tried on a wired connection with wireless disabled and there appears to be no packet loss. So origionally i was worng.

So there is packet loss over wireless but not on wired as far as i know

Phobia_mp3 · 29 Jun 2009 at 23:54

Phobia_mp3 said:
How far away from the router is your computer?
Is it beside things that could block the signal?
does it have to go through walls?

They are the main reasons for packet loss ...

Ace101 · 30 Jun 2009 at 01:13

HangTime said:
I agree with Caged, definitely looks symptomatic of wireless polling, which also happens on Vista.

Try using this: http://www.martin-majowski.de/wlanoptimizer/

Although obviously, if it's possible to use a wired connection then I'd always recommend that over wireless.

hmmm this is a tough one, at first i thought it was fixed, but it just appeared to be an illusion. :mad:

I might even go as far as saying it has removed the higher response times (2000ms) and evened out the connection but there are still packets dropped...

EDIT: having said that i ping for 5 mins and drop no packets at all, and then im dropping packets left right and centre.

would buying a 20m extension cable solve this or would the long cable create high response times?

Phobia_mp3 said:
How far away from the router is your computer?
Is it beside things that could block the signal?
does it have to go through walls?

There is one wooden panel wall between me and the router, about 15m distance

Ace101 · 30 Jun 2009 at 01:50

yeah it looks like the wireless polling was part of the problem, so the high ping times are fixed. The polling did appear to be at regular intervals but this wasnt apparent as i was i was lumping it in as part of the packet loss problem 1/2 the problem solved \o/

however there is still seems to be some packet loss

Mr Goat · 30 Jun 2009 at 09:38

Ace101 said:
would buying a 20m extension cable solve this or would the long cable create high response times?

A 20m cable would be fine and would give you the same performance as a shorter cable, the important thing is that you're wired not wireless which will always give you a faster and more stable connection (99.9% of the time anyway).

HangTime · 2 Jul 2009 at 22:34

20m cable is no problem at all, that should give you a steady <1ms response time.
Even a 100m cable should be better than wireless.

Bear in mind that with a wireless connection something as simple as tilting the router or adjusting the antennae on your PC can make a huge difference to latency and PL. What I normally do if using wireless is leave a constant -t ping running to the router and then play about until I get consistently good responses. To be honest anything which is more than a couple of milliseconds is generally bad news and could be indicative of a weak signal and potentially slower transfer speeds too.