Hey, need some help understanding what those traceroute and pingpath reports are saying?
Hey, need some help understanding what those traceroute and pingpath reports are saying?
I will now tell you about the problem I've been fighting with. A few weeks ago, my game started acting really slow when it came to ping (ping is like how fast data gets from me to the server). The numbers went up to 300 or even 400 milliseconds. You know what? It only happened in Overwatch. I tried other games and websites, but they worked fine without lag or buffering problems.
I talked to support people for Overwatch. They sent me a test file (WinMTR) along with my computer's specs. Their answer was vague: maybe it wasn't me, maybe it wasn't the game. But when I called them back later, they said everything was okay on their side. That sounds like a lie or at least confusing.
I've tried looking at these tests myself to understand what's going on, but I still don't get it all and would really need some help! What do those tests actually show? Do they prove my ISP is the problem, or are they pointing somewhere else?
Here is something interesting I noticed:
One day, I unplugged my ethernet cable from my router to test if removing it helps. When I did that, my ping in-game dropped and got better! It went down from those scary 300-400ms numbers to just 90 or 100 milliseconds.
Wait, this makes no sense to me right? How can having a wireless connection make the game run faster than having an ethernet one? If I'm unplugged and the ping is actually lower, what specific problem would happen if I plugged that cable back in?
The problem you see in that picture has already gone beyond what you can fix on your own. It's out of your reach now.
Why are we talking about a time that is way too late for my support team?
Your internet is connected to a company that doesn't know you, so neither you nor they can manage it right now.
Who has the key to this switch? Should I pay someone to walk right up and see if it works for me? That includes my old router, modems, and all those other little gadgets.
Check the domain info for that IP address to see where it comes from. You should visit https://www.whois.com/whois/137.221.69.29 to find out who owns it. But honestly, you don't need to talk to a tech person just to check this stuff.
I wonder why I changed my guess about where this game came from. It said the IP is from a data center, but it's actually in the Netherlands? Did you choose that place because there was bad internet speed there? Even Comcast showed high ping everywhere they checked (including that Dutch location).
There might be a problem with how your house connects to the internet company (ISP). This is just a small issue because your speed is still pretty fast, so most of your data packets arrive quickly without problems. The real trouble comes from the ISP who barely says they will give you xxxx megabytes per second. They promise nothing about slow speeds or long waits in time. High waiting times are caused by data getting stuck in a temporary storage place called a buffer. Maybe you have too much traffic for what you pay for, and your data is being held up. You could try fixing this by finding the app that handles sending files from your computer to your phone. The problem might be that your internet connection is getting crowded because of both your own use and other people using the same cables to reach the ISP. The company will never say they broke their promise, even if they did, because they can't easily change the hardware without spending a lot more money. I think this is just a test glitch since other tools don't show it either. We aren't sure what's going on there. What you really want to see is missing packets not slow speed. The company will fix missing packets because that usually means bad equipment instead of too much traffic.
Do you think changing the network means switching to a higher plan? Because I am already on the second-best option (1000Mbps internet). The only thing that costs more is unlimited data, but honestly, we probably don't need that much. We did exceed our 1.2TB limit by almost 20GB last month, yet my speed readings look normal. Was it possible they meant upgrading their equipment? My ISP plans to send a tech soon and I'm not sure if fixing anything will actually be an issue. Should we let them take a look before then?
I think my previous comment was confusing. When I said "upgrade," it meant the ISP digs through your street and lays more cable or fiber to give less houses fewer wires. That's never going to happen. It's very rare for a network in your neighborhood to get too full from you. With a plan that is as fast as yours, there is only one way you can overload the connection: on upload speed. That would only be something like cloud backup happening inside your house. This is really unlikely but I guess you could check just to make sure no big uploads are running on your computers. What matters most is how often high ping happens. You might do better by just using a simple ping command to a common address, like 8.8.8.8. Alternatively, you can test against 96.120.24.121, which is the first router of your ISP. Let a continuous ping run in the background window and see if the ping spikes match any issues you are seeing in games. Often, it would be better if the problem isn't about the network at all but some strange issue inside the game that causes the machine to get stuck on something like video rendering. Real ping spikes usually happen when data is waiting in a buffer while other traffic moves around. This is not as simple as broken equipment dropping damaged data.