Latency spikes and packet loss spikes EVERY hour for the past 18 months.
Never had this issue when the house was on a GIG1 (HUB4) plan in my dads name. 18 months ago I switched to M350 (HUB3) in my name for a better price as an new customer. Same address, same wiring etc, nothing changed physically on the set up. I run the hub in modem mode and use a Deco x20 as my router. Zero issues or drop outs in normal day to day stuff, it's just when gaming and you could almost set your watch by the frequency of it. Every single hour without fail, for about 30 seconds, I'll have huge ping spikes and huge packet loss making my games unplayable in that moment, before it all settles down like nothing has happened. Most noticeable on Rocket League and PUBG. Every hour there will be 30 seconds where everything just goes to **bleep** and I can't move or do anything. It's cost me more games/goals than I can count and frankly I'm really fed up with it now. Ping will jump from 40 to 1000+, packet loss will jump in to the red and I will sound like a robot in party chat. Everything in the Series X connection settings is as it should be, open NAT, low ping, no packet loss etc. It makes no difference if I'm hardwired or over wireless, it happens regardless. I know it's my end as my partner I play with has no issues on their end as I'm being thrown around and sounding like a robot over comms to them, telling me it isn't on the games server side. I remember reading a post here a while back, from somebody on GIG1 who said he had to contact virgin and ask to be opted out of some random speed test thing they do each hour? I can't remember the full details of the post but I'm not sure if it would apply to me on a M350 plan on a HUB3, I'm pretty sure he said it was exclusive to the GIG1 and the latest hub. He concluded it was Virgin sending packets periodically to the router to measure performance/speed and it was also hindering his gaming sessions in the same way it is mine. He opted out and his issues ceased. This has been going on for the best part of 18 months now and I've done countless resets of the whole system, I've tried wireless vs wired, I've tried using the HUB3 in both router mode and modem mode, nothing fixes it. I do have broadband quality monitoring (BQM) set up and it doesn't show problems, my connection is always online except for big outages that everybody in the area will get. Does this Virgin sending packets to the router ring any bells with anybody? Could they also be doing it to a HUB3 on M350? This 30 second period of madness is exactly the same every time, making me think it isn't random. It's pretty much 30 seconds of every hour, my ping will shoot right up, in the red, and packet loss the same, as I get thrown around the map/arena without touching my controller, rendering me completely useless until it settles down and then plays like nothing has happened for the next hour. Rinse and repeat. I would appreciate any guidance before I have to get on the phone to Virgin, for them to no doubt tell me everything looks fine on their end, as for 99.99% of the time, the connection is fine and I can game as normal. TLDR - Huge ping spikes and packet loss for 30 seconds of every hour. Pretty much a pattern for the best part of the last 18 months. Thanks for reading and I appreciate any input!