topic Re: Constant Ping Spikes while Gaming in Broadband

Constant Ping Spikes while Gaming

JulieDaf — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 23:38:06 GMT

I have recently upgraded to Fibre internet due to constant ping spikes in games (mainly CS2 and League of Legends but happens in every online game) but it hasn't solved my issues. If anything it has gotten worse. I have contacted Sky multiple times with no success at resolving my problem. I have run multiple speed and bufferbloat tests and they are mostly fine with the occasional result of high bufferbloat. I even bought and Edgerouter X because it has SQM which was meant to help with the bufferbloat but this has done next to nothing. I am at my wits end with my only available option to switch providers at this point. Posting on here is my last effort to try to resolve my issue.

Please help!

Re: Constant Ping Spikes while Gaming

JulieDaf — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 23:39:18 GMT

My latest bufferbloat test:

https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat?test-id=3ab005a2-b0e1-43e6-bf91-dd094c416842

Re: Constant Ping Spikes while Gaming

jamesn123 — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 09:10:19 GMT

@JulieDaf

Your unloaded latency is very high to begin with. How is your gaming device connected to the internet because that doesnt look like it can be ethernet?

Re: Constant Ping Spikes while Gaming

JulieDaf — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 11:21:59 GMT

Wired directly into the Sky router with a Cat 8 ethernet cable. Have the same exact issues over WiFi - no difference

Re: Constant Ping Spikes while Gaming

JimM1 — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 14:43:45 GMT

@JulieDaf Unless you say exactly what you have it's going to very difficult for anyone to help you!

Re: Constant Ping Spikes while Gaming

Mr+Slant — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 15:22:08 GMT

"Have the same exact issues over WiFi - no difference"

Which suggests you're not actually connected via the ethernet cable at all - or that the wifi connection is being used instead.

Disable wifi on the machine you're testing and see what happens.

Note that the site you're using isn't that accurate - its OK when the load on the server/CDN is low but it isn't at peak times as they don't have the bandwidth to cope.

Re: Constant Ping Spikes while Gaming

JulieDaf — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 20:33:41 GMT

What details do you need to know?

Re: Constant Ping Spikes while Gaming

JulieDaf — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 20:38:23 GMT

I have tried that. This is a picture of my current connection status. I have even disabled the WiFi completely on the Sky box to ensure this wasn't happening.

Re: Constant Ping Spikes while Gaming

Mr+Slant — Sat, 12 Jul 2025 14:41:35 GMT

What do you get if you use the ThinkBroadband ( https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest ) test?

Click on the "Analysis" button after the test to check latency under load etc.

If the link gets removed then a quick search will find it.

Re: Constant Ping Spikes while Gaming

JulieDaf — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 17:11:34 GMT

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/assets/speedtest/1752858386264981955.png

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/1752858386264981955

"Slower than 92.3% of tests in West Midlands

Faster than 65.6% of tests on your ISP using FTTH/FTTP
Quality 4.96(F) is worse than average 0.62 on your ISP(A) for FTTH/FTTP"

Re: Constant Ping Spikes while Gaming

JimM1 — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 17:17:29 GMT

@JulieDaf Wireless wi-fi test or is it wired! If you think that your PC picture has the wi-fi disconneted because you showed that you are not kidding us!

Re: Constant Ping Spikes while Gaming

JulieDaf — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 15:40:31 GMT

Wired. It is always wired. It is never on WiFi.

Also am I misunderstanding your reply or are you accusing me of lying? I normally have the Wireless capabilities of the router turned off to test the speeds but have recently turned it back on so sky won't accuse me of messing with the internet. Please don't accuse me of lying. Maybe actually try to help instead?

Re: Constant Ping Spikes while Gaming

JimM1 — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 16:01:52 GMT

@JulieDaf Nobody is accusing you off anything, i even PM'd you few day's back but now no response!

Re: Constant Ping Spikes while Gaming

jamesn123 — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 13:04:43 GMT

@JulieDaf

Is it direct ethernet from the router to PC or is there something inbetween?

Re: Constant Ping Spikes while Gaming

JulieDaf — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 19:23:19 GMT

@jamesn123

At the moment directly into the sky router I was provided by Sky. But I did buy an edgerouter X to enable SQM which does seem to help a bit but nowhere near enough for games to be playable

Re: Constant Ping Spikes while Gaming

Mr+Slant — Thu, 24 Jul 2025 15:48:58 GMT

Get the Edgerouter out of the way when you test. Sky router only. PC into that via ethernet, wifi turned off (check by disconnecting the ethernet cable - if you still have connectivity then the wifi won't ever have been turned off). Edit - Windows 11 certainly tries to use my wifi while wired if I let it. Reason is simple - Windows looks at the PHY rate and wired is 1Gbps, wireless PHY is 1.2Gbps but it won't stay at 1.2Gbps if there's lots of traffic. Make SURE its off.

Its very easy to screw up the queue on routers. I have many T-shirts on that subject on quite a few platforms 🙂

You have to understand that the Edgerouter isn't a magic bullet because it can't do traffic management on downstream traffic.

It can only manage your upstream traffic so its a balancing act - you're going to have to find a hard limit on downstream traffic which results in no latency increase/jitter. I did it with an old USG on 80/20 VDSL ("part-fibre") and had to set it for around 10% less than the sync rate, so synced at 80Mbps I set 72Mbps as the WAN speed. That'll use the usual TCP protocols to back things off on download.

Edit - it could be that your ethernet controller on the PC is faulty or the ethernet cable is faulty. Buy a cheapo USB-ethernet connector (Starlink are OK and work in most Linux distros too) and disable the onboard adapter on the computer to check.

Re: Constant Ping Spikes while Gaming

JulieDaf — Thu, 24 Jul 2025 18:51:22 GMT

@Mr+Slant

The edgerouter is disconnected at the moment and the test results I have shared are from the ethernet plugged directly into the sky router.

Could you explain the ethernet controller testing a bit more? How to test if it's faulty and how to fix it if you can?

Thanks

Re: Constant Ping Spikes while Gaming

JulieDaf — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 13:42:30 GMT

@Mr+Slant

I have bought an ethernet to USB dongle and the issues are the exact same.

I also bought an ethernet cable tester to see if the cable is faulty but that passed.

Any other ideas?

Re: Constant Ping Spikes while Gaming

JulieDaf — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 22:21:36 GMT

I'm still getting issues and Sky won't do anything about it. Any solutions before I take it to the ombudsman to make Sky take action?

Re: Constant Ping Spikes while Gaming

Chrisee — Sat, 16 Aug 2025 06:35:59 GMT

@JulieDaf the "ombudsman" who is an organisation called CISAS but they cannot take up your complaint until either 8 weeks have passed since your formal complaint or Sky have sent you a deadlock letter. See https://www.sky.com/help/articles/sky-customer-complaints-code-of-practice/ which is aporoved by Ofcom.

In practice with issues like yours where there is no obvious technical solution Sky (or CISAS will order them) to release you from contract so you can go elswhere.