Internet traffic spikes frequently, nearly daily.
Internet traffic spikes frequently, nearly daily.
Hello everyone, I regularly play Heroes of the Storm, World of Warcraft, and Overwatch at night. In recent months, I’ve observed a consistent pattern: around 11:38 PM, my gaming experience suddenly drops to zero for a few seconds or minutes. Once it starts, reconnecting works fine. The timing varies—sometimes it’s 11:37, 11:41, 11:45, or even later at 12:38 or 12:45 AM. Occasionally it happens earlier at 10:38 PM. While it can occur outside this window, the majority of incidents happen between 10:38 and 12:38. This has been happening for nearly two years now, and I’ve learned to adapt. At first, I didn’t realize it was a regular pattern, but over time I noticed it mostly affects my whole network. It sometimes disrupts streaming services on my TV, which is also connected via Ethernet. Usually there’s enough buffer to recover, but occasionally shows pause for a moment. Here’s a quick rundown of my setup:
- Comcast Xfinity 500 Mbps down/20 Mbps up (Chicago, IL)
- Arris Surfboard S33 modem
- Protectli firewall firmware version 4.2
- Ubiquiti Long Range Wi-Fi access point (not used for gaming)
- Gaming PC connected via Ethernet using Cat6 cable
Running ProteLiS with PFSense and the access point, I’ve tried several fixes:
- Adjusted buffer settings and traffic shapers to stay below my limits
- Set QoS priority for gaming traffic at level 15
- Disabled IPv6 temporarily
- Temporarily turned off the modem for 30 minutes to test a new IP
I suspect the problem might be related to ISP issues, possibly due to IP lease renewals during those late hours. It seems odd they’d do that so frequently, especially when there are still many people gaming online in Chicago. While it isn’t peak traffic time, renewing IPs around 10:30 PM or 12:30 AM could be a factor.
Other suggestions I’m considering:
- Monitor network logs for anomalies during those windows
- Check if my ISP has scheduled changes affecting bandwidth
- Explore alternative ISPs with different billing cycles
- Consider upgrading to a higher-speed plan if the issue persists
Let me know your thoughts or any tips you might have! Thanks a lot.
Have you checked the WAN IP before and after to notice any changes? Regarding DHCP, is the lease renewal scheduled for every 24 hours or 86,400 seconds? Do you have a switch positioned between the Protectli device and your PC? Or are you using pfSense to bridge the Protectli ports and treating those ports as a switch?
Contact your ISP and share the details you've collected about this matter. Request them to investigate further. To get more information, consider logging into your modem during outages and capturing screenshots of the connection status and event logs: Spoiler https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/B1iPPDPD-4L.pdf
I located a log on PFSense covering the past four days, before and after some changes, and my WAN IP stayed consistent. I also attempted to power off the modem for half an hour earlier, hoping for a replacement, and received the same IP upon restarting two days later. I configured a static local IP for my gaming PC to prevent reassignments, and I have a limited set of IP addresses that are restricted (my PC is within the restricted range so conflicts don’t occur). 3. ISP → Modem → Protectli PFSense → Unmanaged netgear GS108 8-port switch → Gaming PC 3a. My Protectli has two unused ports available at the moment, OPT1 and OPT2.
I’ll need to log into my modem and router next time and pull some logs. I wish I had done that sooner! Thanks for the assistance. It seems we’re facing a comparable problem, though mine has lasted nearly two years.