Poor connectivity making online gaming impossible

[mben63]

When my son tries to play Valorant on a Windows laptop, it struggles to connect to the Riot Games servers. Sometimes he gets connected and starts a game, then gets disconnected shortly afterwards. We see the same behaviour on 2 different laptops. We've applied all Windows patches and updates, changed DNS config, rebooted our Hub 3, and tried multiple other suggested fixes. All other broadband access is fine, we get download speeds of 300+Mbps. Only when gaming do we see connection issues.

Riot Games have been helpful, but after trying various things, their conclusion is that it's an ISP routing issue. Their route info is here: https://www.peeringdb.com/net/5918.

Not sure if posting here is the best way to progress this issue? Should I be raising a support case with VM? Is there more diagnostic info that I should provide? Thanks.

[legacy1]

Try by wire with hub in modem mode

[mben63]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I don't have a standalone router so modem mode no good. Even a wired connection to the hub isn't feasible due to room layout.

[jpeg1]

You need to establish whether this is a VM network issue or simply WiFi.

Move the laptop temporarily close to the Hub and connect it by ethernet. You don't need to switch to modem mode.  Does the game play OK that way?

If this is a Wifi problem then you have a choice of buying a much better WiFi access point, or running an ethernet cable (which is always the best choice for games). 

[mben63]

Thanks for your reply. Today we tried playing a couple of Valorant games with a wired connection: that worked ok, no disconnects.

We then tried without the ethernet cable, back on wifi, and that also worked, no disconnects during 20 minutes online play.

Not convinced the issue has gone away. We'll try a longer session next time and post the results here.

[Adduxi]

Setup a BQM in the meantime to monitor the circuit.   www.thinkbroadband.com/ping

I would advise anyone to game over cable and not Wifi if possible.  

[mben63]

Thanks for your reply. We tried another gaming session today on wifi, fine for 20 minutes then disconnected.

I understand the recommendation for wired rather than wifi, but our room layout and hub position make that difficult.

I've created a BQM, so we'll see what that shows up.

[legacy1]

get yourself a better wifi router

[jpeg1]

Post a link to the live BQM, and it will help to establish if there is an external problem. But you will have to accept the gaming over WiFi is going to be second best. 

[mben63]

Here's the link to my BQM:

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/fe8f24b61d5c695a0ed3fb9aa63d65fd20...

FYI, there was a wired gaming session in progress between 8pm and 10pm yesterday (14th March).