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High latency

IreneCheeseman
On our wavelength

My son has recently experienced unusually high latency when gaming - he hasn't had a problem with this for months until this weekend (Friday 11th - Sunday 13th March 2022).

What is causing this? We have reset the router and followed every recommended fix to no avail. Due to the nature of the games he plays he says that it is borderline unplayable with the current amount of input delay caused by the high latency. This is the same on a wired or wireless connection.

Thank you

22 REPLIES 22

Adduxi
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

Apart from the low number of T3 timeouts and one channel showing PostRS errors, the rest of the stats are good,   Your BQM is still pretty good, so can't see anything obvious apart from a very small amount of increased usage over peak hours on the broadband circuit.

If you wait here a day or two a VM Mod will pick this up and hopefully add something from their end diagnostics?

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Hi there @IreneCheeseman

 

Thank you so much for your post and welcome back to the forums! 

 

I'm so sorry to hear that you are facing this issue with your sons gaming. 

 

I have checked and all the Hub stats do appear to be in spec and running as we would expect.

 

Are you noticing any other issues at all on any other devices or is it just the games console? 

 

Thank you.

Hi,

Most other devices in the house do not require low latency to perform well (phones / tablets / laptops etc) so it hasn't really been a factor, other than for my son when gaming.

He used to regularly see latency of under 20ms before the problem occurred with the same exact setup (makes no difference if wired or wireless), but now he's lucky to see it stay below 30 or 40ms (which is very noticeable when playing certain online games).

I've heard that a possible cause could be low power levels or virgin being oversubsribed to other houses in our area - is there any truth in this? We've never had problems like this before.

Thank you.

Hi @IreneCheeseman,

Thank you for coming back to us about this ongoing issue. I ran another check on your services and your power levels are looking perfect at the moment, just as my colleague advised.

I'm very sorry that this issue is impacting your son's gaming. Do you know if your son's gaming console or PC is connected to your broadband connection via WiFi or Ethernet cable? 

I can see that you've not rebooted your Hub in almost a week. Please reboot your Hub if this is still impacting you, as a reboot can clear some faults on the system. Keep us updated on how you get on and if you need any further help. 

Thank you.

Paulina_Z
Forum Team

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@IreneCheeseman Keep an eye on the downstream data - the table you posted before showed uncorrectable (post-RS) errors breaking through on the downstream channel around 410 MHz - that's a frequency used by emergency services, so it seems likely to be radio frequency noise ingress through a faulty connection of some sort, or a damaged cable.

If the post-RS errors keep cropping up around that frequency, then irrespective of VM's staff saying they can't see anything, then there is something that is wrong.  The only thing within your control here is to check all VM coax cable joints are properly secured and any securing nuts are done up finger tight, and if there's any VM coax extensions that they have properly fitted coax cables or unused ports have a proper end cap.  If that isn't applicable, or you check what you can and the problem continues, then you need a technician to come and sort out the connection.

Sometimes these faults can be caused by customers buying unsuitable coax extensions to move their hub, as although all coax cable looks the same, it isn't always to the same technical standard.  Due to the way VM's cable works, the problem could even be caused by a neighbour doing that, as it can introduce noise that affects multiple customers.  But that's still VM's problem to find and fix.

Hi,

He is connected via ethernet cable but has tested it on wireless too. We performed a full router reset a week or so ago and nothing changed in terms of the latency, I'd rather not have to reset it again as it disconnects all of the devices and requires the network name and passwords to be changed again.

What do you advise going forward? It seems that nothing has worked and this problem has only developed recently.

Well, if VM are insisting that they're happy, there's little you can do.  You could try VM's complaint process, but that is a waste of time (I know, I have used it recently, and it is an exercise in fobbing off customers without actually doing anything).

If you're not in a fixed term contract, then get a new ISP in (because for most uses, latency is more important than pure download speed) and cancel the VM connection as soon as the new connection is working.  If you are in a fixed term contract with VM, make a diary note to issue your 30 day cancellation notice during the last 30 days the contract has to run in order to avoid the price early termination charges.

Hi IreneCheeseman, thanks for replying. Can you please do a reboot to see if anything changes and do a wired speed test and let us know the results? ^Chris

Hi,

I can confirm that I have rebooted the router since your message and we are still having problems with latency. Recently, there have also been problems with the wifi (green light flashing from time to time) so it feels like something is definetely wrong...

Adduxi
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

@IreneCheeseman wrote:

Hi,

I can confirm that I have rebooted the router since your message and we are still having problems with latency. Recently, there have also been problems with the wifi (green light flashing from time to time) so it feels like something is definetely wrong...


Have you done a wifi survey at all?  There are several apps on the Play Store and it may be a neighbour's wifi is causing interference etc.  

As for the latency, your BQM does show a slight rise in usage between approx. 18:00 and Midnight.  Does this match with the increased latency, or is it all day long ?

As Andrew said, if VM can't see anything wrong, it's hard to get this fixed.   Maybe time to shop around for an Openreach based ISP, e.g. BT, Sky etc 

 

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