Bad connection in Call of duty

[TheProtonman]

Hi,

I have the 1 Gigabit broadband but my speeds are bad when i play call of duty: black ops cold war (This is the only game i play, i do not own any others). I play on PC and wired. Just over a month ago everything was fine, but then, out of the blue my upload speeds dropped to 0.5Mbps, and at that time i noticed my connection ingame was really bad. I reset my hub and the upload speeds went back to normal, however my ingame connection barely improved. Throughout all this time, my ping and latency are surprisingly stable, I dont get spikes or connection interrupts.

The problem is my hit registration. It seems i am always "behind" other people, i could shoot an entire magazine and only a few bullets would hit then i would die from them turning around and on their screen i was staring at them for a long time before only shooting a few bullets, my bullets would just go straight through them as if the game did not register me shooting any bullets at the player or my bullets would deal the wrong amount of damage, such as, if i shot them in the head it would register as a body shot and therefore do less damage. It is easy to check this as the game allows you to watch your games back from anyones POV in the lobby.

The game has an ingame bandwidth test and i always seem to have a low value, ranging from 500-2100 Kbps (i have also used other bandwidth monitors to see the usage from the game and it is consistent with this value). I should be expecting over 3000 Kbps (which is what i was getting over a month ago). I have contacted call of duty about this issue and they said to contact my ISP.

I use port forwarding on my router (my hub 4 is in modem mode) to get an open NAT type, i have factory reset my entire PC, updated all my drivers, use a CAT-6A cable and done a clean install of the game. I am almost certain the issue is not with my router, PC or the game because it only started when my upload speeds randomly dropped over a month ago. Additionally, i have tried the following:
Different ethernet cable; My hub 4 in router mode and only connecting one wired PC and finally, a different PC (wired) in my household but the issue is still present.

I apologise for the long post, i want to give as much information as i could, to save you guys some time in asking a few obvious questions. If there is anything you want to know, please let me know.

Thanks.

[Zoie_P]

Hi Protonman, 

Thanks for your post and welcome to our forums.

Is this the only issue you are having with the service everything else is fine? 

I have located your account and all looks good, I cannot run further diagnostics as you have your hub in modem mode. 

Zoie

[Andrew-G]

Let's see how latency and packet loss are on your connection: Setup a BQM over at https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality that'll show what's going on with your VM connection.  Post a LINK to a LIVE, SHARED graph here and we'll see what's happening.  Usually needs to run for 24 hours before we can draw reasonable conclusions, but the live graph will continuously update so you can post the link immediately.

[legacy1]

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@Zoie_P wrote:

I have located your account and all looks good, I cannot run further diagnostics as you have your hub in modem mode. 

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Like what other  further diagnostics can't you run with the hub in modem mode? ping to modem 10. IP will show packet loss just like the WAN IP and if in router mode with ping reply disabled do you just enable it or is their a built in allow list?    

[Andrew-G]

@legacy1 I didn't really follow your words, so thought maybe you'd muddled the order.  I put them into a word shuffler, and the meaning seemed to be as clear after shuffling:

other diagnostics do is disabled in mode modem can't show with hub just like you built in list and to a WAN ping router run modem loss the what reply IP their allow with packet it enable if or will IP further mode? in the you ping Like 10. just

[TheProtonman]

Hi,

Yes, so far this is the only issue i have.

[TheProtonman]

Hi,

I had a BQM setup, but it messes up sometimes (im not too sure why). I guess you can ignore the time period where there is 100% packet loss because my internet was working during that time, in fact, i was playing call of duty and i was not disconnecting, just the usual bad bullet reg. Probably an issue on my end on that specific point.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/2d2b576cc960a6b2a2acf5eda9c8a8459e1e6adf-18-08-2021

Edit: A few days ago i had a BQM set up and it was fairly good (unfortunately i accidentally deleted it), no spikes or packet loss (unlike the one above) so its actually weird to me, seeing this specific BQM, because when i play COD, i dont notice or see any ping spikes.

[Andrew-G]

The few BQM spikes that show appear to be momentary, and could affect gaming, but if that's one or two packets that get delayed then the overall gaming experience won't be notably affected.  I'd be surprised if the latency visible in your BQM were sufficient to consistently affect bullet registration - normally I'd expect a much wider yellow fringe to be associated with problems.  Don't forget that there's cumulative lag between players, and the server, so that for example an opponent could have fired a shot that has "killed" you, but your PC shows you getting off a shot before you die, complete with the gunshot sound, when in fact the server's already registered your player as dead and the shot itself won't be registered by the server.

Of course, the BQM shows your connection to the Thinkbroadband servers, which I think are at Telehouse in London, which is almost a best case situation.  Any gaming ping problems could be down to internet traffic routing problems or gaming server connectivity or capacity problems.  I don't know who does CoD game hosting, but as an example EA servers regularly crop up in this forum as culprits when people have poor performance.  If it's something similar it's most likely that it isn't within VM's direct control.  Sometimes using a VPN can improve things (as that changes the internet routing), for some people they've found VM traffic routing an ongoing issue and have chosen to take an Openreach connection as a solution. 

[TheProtonman]

Yup, i agree with your comments about the BQM. I dont notice lag or spikes during gameplay. I have a few friends who live near me (5-10mins away) and they are on sky, they regularly get a good amount of ingame bandwidth and good hit registration. (One of them plays on wifi and the other on a powerline adapter)

To me, it seems unlikely that it is the game server, because since this call of duty came out, ive had no issues until my upload speeds just dropped down to 0.5Mbps. My thinking is that, there may be an issue with some wiring or software on the hub 4, or that virgin media has changed something in the way it connects to call of duty servers.

Something else that is weird, maybe not, but i cannot achieve an open NAT type by opening TCP ports in call of duty. I can only achieve this by opening UDP ports, and i do remember reading about UDP issues with virgin media although i cannot recall exactly what was said.

Is there something there to look into? I appreciate your replies because i am not that tech savvy!