Firstly, I'm not 100% certain that this is the correct place for this thread, so feel free to shift it elsewhere if you reckon it's needed...

Anyway, my internet connection has been - and still is - almost notoriously dodgy. When web-browsing, or doing other general simple tasks (such as using Windows Live Messenger or TeamSpeak) I have little to no problem with it. Sure, the download speed's a little slow occasionally, but on the whole it seems fairly decent, and I never really bother downloading all that much anyway. The problem comes with how severely the connection is affected by the time of day.

At around 7:00 AM local time, the connection is as happy as can be. Gaming-wise, we're talking <50 ms ping, and 0% packet loss. Come evening time - or even late afternoon - however, and the packet loss in my current favoured MMOFPS (PlanetSide, for all interested) shoots to ridiculous levels. 7% would be a "good" loss for me on a typical evening, with 8% or so being the most common. What gets me is that, despite losing 8% of the data, my ping rarely goes above 100 ms, and if it does then it returns to its sub-100 level within a second or so. Similar patterns occur with other online games, and the download speed noticeably drops as the area becomes more "busy" (from around 5,600 kbps (the maximum my line can handle, apparently) to below 400 kbps over the course of the day, according to speedtest.net).

So, I'm curious as to the best way of giving this a tweak in the right direction. I know for a fact that my connection is capable of fantastic speed, latency and loss - albeit at 7:00 AM - so what would you say the problem is? So you know, my broadband connection is ADSL, connects directly (via ethernet cable) to a SpeedTouch router / modem combo that's sitting on my desk, which in turn goes outward to yonder world wide web. Occasionally, other people in my house (who connect wirelessly to the router) use the internet at the same time, but I get almost identical results even if their computers are off. I'll admit that I don't know all that much about what happens once the signal leaves the modem, so I'm curious as to whether it's a "fault" of the ISP (and I've heard "rumours" of problems occuring if the service in an area is oversubscribed - and I do live in a densely populated area), or if it's fairly common. Regardless, 8% loss is, in my opinion, ridiculous.

Any comments / queries / pointers about this before I take it up with some call centre or live support with my ISP?

Cheers in advance,

Mordent

 

 

 

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Any idea why the packets are getting dropped? Dropped by a router upstream? Malformed? Failed CRC?

I'd fire up a packet sniffer like wireshark on your box and see if you can discern why the packets are getting retransmitted.

If 8% of your packets are failing CRC somewhere upstream, you probably have a modem that's gone dodgy or a router that's improperly mangling packets. Check for a firmware update?

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I'm not really sure why the packets are being dropped. I'm fairly sure it's not a problem at "my end", as during the morning my connection is perfect (0% loss), and it gradually gets worse throughout the day. Also: "CRC"? Anyway, I've got Wireshark and will spend a little while having great fun with the streams of data coming back from that.

Cheers.

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I doubt that the router is the problem since it's a time based problem (unless you power off the router every evening, then it might be the router that is getting unstable due to "overheating").
My best guess is that the line you use is overloaded, if a switch (street cabinet, one at the ISP, ...) receives more data than it can buffer it'll simply drop this data untill it can buffer it again. I'd contact your ISP if it happens again, 8% data loss is unacceptable.

Also, if this happens again (packet loss), try running a ping in the background (eg. "ping www.google.com -t" ). It'll ping to the google server untill you hit ctrl+c and then it'll give you an overview of how much packets didn't arrive or weren't responded. The reason why you should do this is because the server you're gaming on is overloaded and drops packets because it can't handle all of them.

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Those thoughts pretty much sum up my own, wutske. The router isn't shutdown at regular intervals (we may do it once a month, or something silly like that), which does tend to make me think it's a problem nothing to do with anything at my end of the line. I like the idea of running a ping check in the background, and I'll make sure I do so next time I play the game. As for it happening "again", I can pretty much predict that it happens every evening, so I'll do so in a few hours when the problems really start to show.

Cheers for the advice.

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