Signal is 'wonky' - dying router?

[LaCroix]

I'm having an issue with my connection lately - I'm having access to a WAN network, which feds into my router to feed the actual computers.

Lately, I had lag issues while gaming, and debug monitors in-game told me the speed goes from short bursts of the usual 220kB/s to lurking at 0-5kB/s area for a few seconds or minute, before having short bursts of full connection, again. Internet browsing works fine, though, even youtube.

Speedtest sites still claim I have 2Mbps down and .5 Mbps upload, though.

Provider says their net looks fine, must be my router (LAN/WLAN combo box) at home is derping out. I cannot check this, because the net only works when fed into the router. You think this is consistent with a dying router? I do figure that this might only occur during gaming, because the data flow is consistently high?

Just wanted a check with the tech savvy before I need to shell out for a new router - if I buy one, it should be a good one.

[Borgholio]

Could be a dying router. Best thing to do is download an app to your phone called WiFi Analyzer to check for interference. Could be other networks in the area.

[TheFeniX]

I'm having an issue with my connection lately - I'm having access to a WAN network, which feds into my router to feed the actual computers.

Define this. Do you have a standard ISP or is this some kind of local provider?

Lately, I had lag issues while gaming, and debug monitors in-game told me the speed goes from short bursts of the usual 220kB/s to lurking at 0-5kB/s area for a few seconds or minute, before having short bursts of full connection, again. Internet browsing works fine, though, even youtube.

Burst transmission usually isn't affected like gaming would be since buffering is a large part of online video.

Speedtest sites still claim I have 2Mbps down and .5 Mbps upload, though.

ISPs can throttle after a few MBs to fool speedtesters.

Provider says their net looks fine, must be my router (LAN/WLAN combo box) at home is derping out. I cannot check this, because the net only works when fed into the router. You think this is consistent with a dying router? I do figure that this might only occur during gaming, because the data flow is consistently high?

Throughput requirements for online games is ridiculously low compared to what we download in this day and age. FPS requires the most and that's not a lot. When I was stuck on a cellular card for a while, 1 hour of WoW equated to 100MBs, and this was only when raiding. Just putsing around doing dailies cut that by 1/4. Gaming requires consistent throughput, not high throughput.

Just wanted a check with the tech savvy before I need to shell out for a new router - if I buy one, it should be a good one.

For a larf, try opening a command prompt and typing: ping <your router IP> -t

This will setup a continuous ping to your router. Look for any large jumps in latency (ms). This could show an issue with your router being unable to process your packets. Is this wireless or wired? If you're on wireless, try plugging your PC directly into the router. You can also try changing the broadcast frequency of your router since new conflicts could have come up like someone else getting a new wireless router, etc. tracert google.com could give you some info. See where your latency jumps.

There's programs out there to test this, but I can only recall Retina. Essentially what they do is a trace, say to something like the server of the game you want to test. Then it consistently pings each "hop" (IP Address) along the way, giving you an output that shows your latency at each hop in real time.

[LaCroix]

Could be a dying router. Best thing to do is download an app to your phone called WiFi Analyzer to check for interference. Could be other networks in the area.

Unlikely, I'm living quite isolated. But I'll check on it.

[LaCroix]

@Fenix
Local provider, direct antenna link WAN.


I did notice that the lag always occurred while the transmission went down. If transmission went high, I could operate fine even ig I was doing things that cause update lag to go up to 80% and framerate down to 20. When transmission bugs out, my framerate stays in the 90s, it's just that my interactions with the server aren't registering, anymore - like, I vcan move around perfectly well, but I can't interact with the environment, like picking up stuff - those commands are only resolved when the transmission picks up, again, which causes all the clicks to be executed in rapid order, even though I have moved along, already.

Regarding consistent throughput - jumping from 220 to 1 to 5, hovering there, then going back to 220 isn't quite consistent.. I'll do try the ping, though, since I did have a lot of "signal lost" events, lately. A shame I didn't think of that, already... I did try to plug directly, which had no positive effect, though.

I'll test the server trace, but I'm pretty sure that it isn't some other signal messing with me - my house is quite a bit away from the town, that's why they linked me with a dish antenna instead of a cable.

[TheFeniX]

@Fenix
Local provider, direct antenna link WAN.

So, point-to-point wireless? It's not an actual satellite dish is it? Even dual-band sat is worthless for gaming, but based on your post, I don't think that's your problem.

I did notice that the lag always occurred while the transmission went down. If transmission went high, I could operate fine even ig I was doing things that cause update lag to go up to 80% and framerate down to 20. When transmission bugs out, my framerate stays in the 90s, it's just that my interactions with the server aren't registering, anymore - like, I vcan move around perfectly well, but I can't interact with the environment, like picking up stuff - those commands are only resolved when the transmission picks up, again, which causes all the clicks to be executed in rapid order, even though I have moved along, already.

What game is this? Framerate shouldn't be tied to latency. That's processed locally.

Regarding consistent throughput - jumping from 220 to 1 to 5, hovering there, then going back to 220 isn't quite consistent.. I'll do try the ping, though, since I did have a lot of "signal lost" events, lately. A shame I didn't think of that, already... I did try to plug directly, which had no positive effect, though.

The point is to find out where you're bottlenecking or what device is not passing your traffic consistently. Since you don't have any advanced packet tracking programs, you can "cheat" with ping.

Do a ping <your router IP> -t

You're looking for not only latency increases, but also "lag" in the response back from the device. Essentially, pings will come back about 1 a second, you can tap your foot to them. So, watch the screen. If 5 come every 1 second, then 1 comes in 2+ seconds, your router hardware is locking up and not able to process the command and get your packet back to you. That's a hardware issue, but can also be an issue with your wireless signal, since wireless is always wonky. Either way, it tells you where the connection problem is.

If this happens on a regular basis (late pings) your hardware might be bust. EDIT: I forgot to mention, pings late in this way should come with a corresponding latency increase, because your computer doesn't care why a packet it late. However, with a busted up Linksys USB card, I had this "lag" without the corresponding latency increase because my NIC itself was locking up and not sending it's packets in a timely fashion... so received packets were coming in on time... when it actually sent them.

Do this same thing with the next "hop" to your ISP. If you don't know what that hop is, do a tracert to something like google.com or 1.1.1.1 as it will go somewhere before it comes back with destination unreachable. If that's fine, do the next hop.