High latency causing lag on gaming and general speed issues

[SEBUK]

For approximately two weeks now, I have been really struggling with online gaming and streaming, with a lot of buffering and seemingly packet loss when I watch stream replays.

I stream from a wired Xbox One S. I tend to stream from about 10pm onwards. My son often has issues playing online games on his nintendo switch with lag, even if he is sitting in the same room. I know wifi can have issues sometimes, but this is seen even when wired.

My setup:

Openreach Master socket 5c with microfilter (I think it's called?) supplied by Sky, plugged into socket. Cable running from Master socket to Sky Q router ( Model ER110 Firmware Version 2.22.2883.R). This cable is approximately 2.5m long. Nothing else plugged in, we don't use landline phone.

Sky Q box and Xbox one S both wired into router. There is a what I think is a Sky Q wireless range extender near our stairs to help signal go upstairs where we have a Sky mini in the one bedroom.

House is a new buld built in 2018. We were with BT for 18 months after moving in, then switched to Sky a year ago. Only FTTC available in our area, and we're apparently on our max connection speed we'll ever get of 29999 Kbps. I felt, even though using the same infrastructure, Sky was getting a better connection speed than BT, who were giving us about 25000 Kbps.

Problem:

Frequent high latency pings seems to be causing a lot of buffering when gaming. Also during these latency periods, doing a speedtest on speedtest.net would tell me my download speed is about 2Mbps. Non high latency periods would give me about 20Mbps through wifi. 

I started monitoring the line yesterday at about 15:30, with thinkbroadband, and here is the shared link for the live graph: https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/14b0f3ac30db1cb7ffbbc1800fc2f2dca1...

Here is a link to a snapshop of yesterday incase I have to reboot router later for a video conf call and my IP changes: https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/b336a2b255b3fd8674a3c0e8b861394cb3...

Below are my router stats:

 So despite this, I have a steady connection speed. Everytime I've rung Sky about slow broadband, I've been told my connection is fine. Which I can see. I even ran a program called Routerstats Lite for about 18 hours, and only showed a few disconnection/connection speed drops (About 4 times)

I will frequently have to reboot the router before a Teams meeting, or if I'm streaming at night, so if anyone has any suggestions, please help.

[jamesn123]

Hi @SEBUK 

Your issue looks to be WiFi because your router is reporting nothing has been connected to the LAN interface since the router was last rebooted

[mae-3]

@SEBUK 

At what quality do you stream from 10 pm, if it's UHD 4K from Netflix or a similar service you are likely saturating the downstream from what I can see from the BQM and your description of the issue.

[SEBUK]

@jamesn123 Thanks for your comment. I'll check. I know the Xbox is connected via ethernet as I did a speed test from it last night and it showed Fixed line under connections.

@mae-3 By streaming this would refer to streaming online game to Twitch. So this would be upload instead of download, and it's in 720p format, bandwidth can't handle anything higher.

Looking at this non-live BQM graph: https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/b336a2b255b3fd8674a3c0e8b861394cb3...

1. I stopped streaming at 12 midnight all the way on the left. Network lag was too bad. Went to sleep, whole house is sleeping.

2. Blue spikes from 7am - 9am kids watching some youtube on their tablets.

3. 11am -12:30pm I had a Teams video meeting. Lost connection just after 12noon with packet loss. Lost connection again to Team meeting at about 12:20. both obviously on wifi, clear line of sight to router about 5m away. the graph shows packet loss there. No one else was actively using the internet at the time.

4. Around about 1pm-4pm my son was watching youtube on his tablet and playing an online game on his nintendo switch.

5. 8pm-10pm we were watching some Netflix on the TV.

I turned off a lot of devices yesterday to see what was causing the high latency, the yellow spikes continued even when these were turned off.

The live graph shows high blue latency at about 2am this morning, I'm guessing this would be ipads syncing at 2am, which is the time I've set them to do it.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/14b0f3ac30db1cb7ffbbc1800fc2f2dca1...

[jamesn123]

@SEBUK 

Honestly the BQM isnt massively accurate as the Sky router is programmed to prioritise traffic coming out of the network rather than respond to WAN pings which is why you see packet loss sometimes whent the network is busy. 

If you can test your teams meetings via ethernet & also confirm the Xbox is connected properly via ethernet then we can have a look. At the moment there is too much chance of WiFi being the issue rather than your line

[mae-3]

@SEBUK 

Something else I've noticed is your upstream noise margin is high and it's in this direction that streaming is taking place in your case, so it's likely saturation when uploading/streaming. This may sort itself out if the router isn't rebooted for about 3-4 days with DLM and offer slightly more upstream bandwidth which is likely the issue and difference during the last 2 week period?

[SEBUK]

@jamesn123 and @mae-3 @thanks for your comments so far. I will test my next teams meeting wired. It seems my previous screenshot showed the LAN as not being used, it seems like that was an error, as I've just checked via stats and got shown it is in use, as per screenshot.

im not rebooting the router as shown by uptime so far, will see if it improves.

This is what I should be getting according to Bt wholesale site, wish I could get higher uploads.

[SEBUK]

So I've still been having horrible latency times. I did not reboot the router, DLM did not kick in to make it any better. 

I still have horrible high latency times, and a lot of dropped packets.

I'm getting frequent network lag playing online (Xbox connected via ethernet), dropped packets and pixelated zoom calls with voice sounding like a robot occassionally. Tested Zoom and teams calls with laptop on ethernet.

I had to reconnect to a different IP yesterday due to the public IP not being allowed to login to Sky account and forum.

Please see the following days BQM's:

9th April:  https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/93f8811ce3ad3d41edda8a45ce35139721...

10th April:  https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/9a0f5a87003b28a6b84e3f38e68c75cca4...

11th April:   https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/00d67264797dd8001ca24c4cba4ace37da...

12th April. You can see where I changed the IP address when I dropped the connection through the router:   https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/e627331cd0cebb3b633cdfd46280a5a370...

Today's graph. Massive packet loss at 8am teams call, laptop on ethernet. Packet loss on Zoom call at 13:30 as well, not as bad as in the morning.   https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/8c307993ea937c746ef3b1bf3e20057746...

Router stats again. It was mentioned a week ago that my upload noise might be too high?

Played around with a few tracert's and pings as well. All via ethernet.

>tracert 8.8.8.8

Tracing route to dns.google [8.8.8.8]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1  1 ms <1 ms <1 ms SkyRouter.Home [192.168.0.1]
2  152 ms 150 ms 155 ms 97e7feb2.skybroadband.com [151.231.254.178]
3  158 ms      *        139 ms be397.pr2.thlon.isp.sky.com [2.120.11.8]
4  122 ms 119 ms 130 ms 027ff1a3.bb.sky.com [2.127.241.163]
5  140 ms 148 ms 144 ms 216.239.62.19
6  151 ms 160 ms 172 ms 172.253.66.87
7  19 ms 24 ms 18 ms dns.google [8.8.8.8]

Trace complete.

>ping 8.8.8.8

Pinging 8.8.8.8 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=119
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=119
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=445ms TTL=119
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=32ms TTL=119

Ping statistics for 8.8.8.8:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 20ms, Maximum = 445ms, Average = 129ms

>tracert bbc.co.uk

Tracing route to bbc.co.uk [151.101.0.81]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1   1 ms 2 ms 1 ms 192.168.0.1
2   16 ms 15 ms 16 ms 97e7feb2.skybroadband.com [151.231.254.178]
3   22 ms 24 ms 22 ms be397.pr2.thlon.isp.sky.com [2.120.11.8]
4    *  *  * Request timed out.
5   82 ms 20 ms 237 ms 151.101.0.81

>ping bbc.co.uk

Pinging bbc.co.uk [151.101.0.81] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=234ms TTL=60
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=166ms TTL=60
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=57ms TTL=60
Reply from 151.101.0.81: bytes=32 time=249ms TTL=60

Ping statistics for 151.101.0.81:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 57ms, Maximum = 249ms, Average = 176ms

[jamesn123]

@SEBUK 

Are those ping tests you posted on a device connected directly via ethernet? If so thats horrible

[SEBUK]

@jamesn123 @Yup, Ethernet. I know, they're horrible. Hehe. What do the line stats look like? 

[jamesn123]

@SEBUK 

Banded still, with a dip in upload. All around not an ideal connection

[SEBUK]

@jamesn123 @Any suggestions on my next steps? Each time I've contacted Sky I've been told my access line speed is 29Mb/s, which is above my minimum, and my connection is good.

I was with BT until a year ago, and actually, when moving to Sky, I seemed to have a slight speed increase, even though nothing in the infrastructure has changed. I've been happy with my connection which has been stable, could do with more speed (Thanks OpenReach for deciding not to upgrade. CityFibre coming here for phase 2 sometime, don't know when)

[jamesn123]

@SEBUK 

Really cant sorry, there is a clearly a problem with the line or something at your cabinet/exchange. It will need some sort of investigation

[mrpugster]

hey there, did you get this fixed in the end?  I'm getting exactly the same as you.  Fine pings and then massive spikes when playing BF3,  streaming locking up for no apparent reason.   Had new Openreach Master socket fitted January, it's not been quite right. 

On my 2nd router, first one all the ethernet ports didn't work, not tried ringing Sky but will do tomorrow as I've reached the point where I'm fed up with it.

This is ping from www.bbc.co.uk

[mrpugster]