Packet loss and gaming lag.

[HighwindX]

Hello,

I've been experiencing some internet and gaming lag over the past few days and can see that I've been getting small amounts of packet loss throughout the day.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/22dbf4ca5d3ae0391439005fbbdc6b60c3466a15-18-08-2021 

 Is this a cause for concern? I also noticed the green cabinet on my street has been left open for a few days now and I don't think it has been shut. On Saturday, I also noticed two of my upstream channels drop to 16 QAM, but it managed to recover.

Sadly, I've been experiencing these issues for close to a year now and am disappointed it has returned again.

[Martin_N]

Hi HighwindX,

Thank you for your post. I'm very sorry to hear about the issue you're having with your broadband service. 

I have been able to locate your account and have taken a quick look over and nothing is showing that could be affecting this. 

What I will do is private message you so we can look into this further. 

^Martin

[jpeg1]

Your BQM shows a good service.

[Andrew-G]

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@jpeg1 wrote:

Your BQM shows a good service.

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No it doesn't.  It shows, as the OP says, persistent low level packet loss, and even at the level showing that's enough to create intermittent but severe speed problems and an unreliable connection.  I can say for a fact as my own connection was doing this for three of the last four weeks, and in the example below was glitching on work videocalls, dropping out on streaming, with poor and erratic speeds in the 50-90 Mbps range.  I'd also point up that the OP has worse and more inconsistent latency than my own shonky connection, so how you judge that a "good service" I have no idea.

Packet loss is often immaterial for casual, non-time sensitive use (general web browsing, Youtube cat videos, social media), but for all other uses for which speed or latency matter, even the very lowest levels of packet loss are a real problem. 

[Andrew-G]

@HighwindX Connect to the hub and pull up the log in page for the hub.  But don't log in, just click on the link "Check router status"  That'll bring up a window with five tabs.  Open the Downstream tab.  Select all the text (Ctrl-A if using a keyboard), copy it (Ctrl-C), then paste it (Ctrl-V) into a reply here as TEXT not screenshots.  Post that, do the same in replies for the Upstream and Network log.  You'll get an error message when you post the Network log, just click on "post" a second time. Then we can check for any obvious problems with power, noise or error counts.

If you can do this after the hub's been running for a good few hours without a reboot that'll help.  You may also want to do some speed tests when the packet loss is observable on your live BQM.  Repeat a few times, there's a good chance you can get some speed tests below VM's (crap) minimum guaranteed speeds, and that may be enough to provoke action.

[jpeg1]

Your eyes are better than mine!  With different glasses I can now see those tiny red specs.  Well spotted.

[Zoie_P]

Hi HighwindX,

Thanks for your post, I am sorry to hear you are having issues.

I have located your account and everything looks fine. I have checked your power levels also and they are all fine, is it a certain game that lags? is it wireless or a wired connection you have this on? Are other devices connected fine?

Zoie

[jpeg1]

When I said above that I couldn't see any packet loss, this is the sort of thing I was looking for!  This happens every day, often at 'quiet' times.

I haven't tried to get it fixed as we don't do gaming. It has never interfered with zoom or teams, and I can't raise the effort to battle with customer service!