Weird packet loss or bad lag on my phone
Weird packet loss or bad lag on my phone
I've been running the same setup for years except for some small upgrades like my CPU. Nothing ever went wrong with packets or jitter. But yesterday, everything changed suddenly. Starting just two days ago, I'm seeing up to 90% packet loss and about 500ms of jitter. Even worse, my ping is spiking way higher than usual.
I have ethernet connected between my PC and the router. My modem and PC are actually just one foot apart. I'm using the built-in card on my MSI B450-A motherboard, with a Ryzen 5 5600X, a Radeon RX 3060 Ti, 32 gigs of Vengeance LPX running at 3000MHz, and a Linksys EA6350 router. I tried restarting the modem and my PC, unplugging and replugging all those cables, but nothing has worked yet.
Should I just buy a new router or try changing out the network card? Or is there something simple I can do to actually find where this problem is coming from?
Here is an update: I have been trying using PingPlotter. It shows that about 30% of my pings are getting lost after hitting more than a hundred packets to various places. But neither the IP address of my router nor my computer's own address had any packet loss at all.
I also tried running the command "ping -t" on some addresses like 1.1.1.1, 8.8.8.8, and my router itself. Those first two gave up after about one third of their packets, probably because they were losing data. I even swapped out each ethernet cable between the modem and my router, then again between the router and my PC with a completely different one. That didn't help anything either.
You need to be careful when looking at ping plotter results, but what you are seeing shows no loss on the first hop yet a loss on every second hop after that, even all the way to your end node. That usually means something is wrong with how the internet gets into your house. It's almost always some kind of wiring problem, though most of those issues happen outside your home. You can try a few simple steps to stop the ISP from blaming you when they call. I'd suggest taking out your router and plugging the PC straight into the modem. That way, your router won't be causing any trouble. I also want to check all the wires inside and around your house for damage or loose connections, maybe even water or dirt got stuck in the fittings. Some animals like to chew on cables, which can cause problems too.
Here are some easy steps to try first: Does this problem show up on other gadgets plugged into the same Wi-Fi network? (If it does not, move on and skip the rest). Turn off your internet router or modem. Let it sit unplugged for about a minute to make sure its battery is fully charged. You can often keep some memory working just for seconds even when power goes out. New routers sometimes have special settings that let video play before other things if you don't use them well. If your connection isn't great and you also have a TV, check here for how to help it work better. Look for Quality of Service under the Wi-Fi list.
It should work, though maybe you need to reboot your modem first before you plug in the computer. You might try changing the MAC address on the ethernet port to match the router instead. It is probably not going to happen that they lock the router's MAC just so nobody else can replace a broken one.
I have noticed that PingPlotter shows only packet loss when I send packets every half a second, but nothing happens when I wait one full second. Is there a reason for this difference? Here is what the graphs look like: 1 second to 8.8.8.8 and .5 seconds to 8.8.8.8.
Here you need to be careful when using things like pingplotter if you don't understand exactly what they do. Problems that show up in earlier steps but not in the final result are usually just testing bugs, not real issues. It's hard to tell why your router shows something wrong. Sometimes routers limit how much traffic they accept. This stops hackers from trying to stop internet services.
The trouble might happen often or sometimes only when needed. Instead of using ping plotter, just try doing it yourself. Start by opening several cmd windows to test pinging different hops along the way. If you find that a game is having issues, check those windows and see which one shows the problem clearly.