Random stuttering issue

Robbo · 5 Feb 2019 at 23:01

Hi

Recently my BT Home Hub 5 has had an issue.

If you have something playing on another device (for example a Twitch stream on the iPad), it causes periodic lag and stuttering in online games on the PS4 (every few seconds).

It was fine until a few days ago, any thoughts on what may be the main cause of this, could it be the ports? Why didn't it happen before? The internet speed is ok. I tried an old router and that doesn't do it.

Cheers.

Avalon · 6 Feb 2019 at 00:32

Is the PS4 wired? If Wi-fi 2.4Ghz or 5? It could be something as simple as one of the neighbours jumping on an overlapping channel etc.

Haze · 6 Feb 2019 at 06:23

BT routers are crap, probably needs replacing

Steveocee · 6 Feb 2019 at 07:26

What are your broadband speeds? Sounds like saturation.

Robbo · 6 Feb 2019 at 16:11

Avalon said:
Is the PS4 wired? If Wi-fi 2.4Ghz or 5? It could be something as simple as one of the neighbours jumping on an overlapping channel etc.

Yes it's wired, iPad could be 2.4 or 5ghz.

Haze said:
BT routers are crap, probably needs replacing

I have a new SmartHub2 on the way, hopefully that sorts it.

Steveocee said:
What are your broadband speeds? Sounds like saturation.

This is what it feels like, however it's been fine until recently.

Anyway, new router should sort it, hopefully. The old router I have solved the issue but has other problems of its own.

Haze · 6 Feb 2019 at 16:27

I dont even use my the Wifi on my Hub, i got a separate box

Robbo · 11 Feb 2019 at 22:26

Got the SmartHub2 set up now (along with the magical disc things

), it's a little better but still doing it.

If I set the quality of said stream/video to the lowest, it does stop the game lag completely, so it seems like a bandwidth issue, but 50mb~ down and 20mb~ up should be more than enough, and as mentioned it was fine before.

Could it be something to do with the line? I wonder if I should get BT to look into it. Tried another router - totally different brand etc - and that does it too.

BigT · 12 Feb 2019 at 09:16

I'd rule out a few other possibilities first before getting BT involved. Things not mentioned that I've seen create this effect before include saturation of upstream bandwidth which sometimes gets overlooked as everyone focuses on downstream. Do you have a way to look at that when you see the problem? Things like viruses, mass sync to cloud storage or more often than not torrenting can take up all your upstream bandwidth. Do you have kids at all? I've seen them become the culprits as they suddenly learn about P2P or click on dodgy links and install something nasty.

Robbo · 12 Feb 2019 at 14:30

Thanks. I am going to ensure all network devices are switched off and run some tests, and also try the inner socket on the BT master socket and see if any of that helps.

Robbo · 28 Feb 2019 at 17:10

So I've had a free of charge Openreach Engineer check everything. The line is fine, consistent and no obvious issues at all.

So what on earth is happening. Could it be the BT Router's QoS being bad? It was ok in the past... could certain games be sensitive to lag on a network?

Here's an example:

I'm playing an online match on FIFA 19 on the PS4, if I open a YouTube video on another device, it starts stuttering every few seconds. There should be more than enough bandwidth to cover this.

It also stutters if you load a webpage on another device, pretty much any network interaction - stutter.

Weird... anything else I can try?

michty_me · 1 Mar 2019 at 12:59

Any way you can replicate it through ping test sites to see what is going on while you stream a video?
Do you notice noticeable issues say between a PC and an iPad?