Hi there. I have an issue with my computer that prevents me from playing my games properly (on Steam) and from using other features such as Google Meet and Discord. The problem seems to be high latency. My games are fine if I am not playing online.
I have had my system for about a year but this lagging issue has only cropped up in the last two weeks.
I have i5 8400 processor.
I have GTX1070ti graphics card.
I have 16 GB of DDR4 RAM, 36000 Hz.
My WiFi is D-Link DWA-582 Wireless AC1200 Dual Band PCI Express Adapter.
My internet provider is Bell and I have a fibre optic connection.
I have called technical support and they are hesitant to send me a new modem as they are pretty sure that is not the problem.
A speed test has given me a download speed of up to 65 Mbps but this seems to vary a lot depending on when we do the test. My latest speed test shows downloads at 9.5 Mbps and uploads at 96 Kbps. Latency unloaded 6 ms and loaded 143 ms. (fast.com speed test)
Can someone guide me to possible solutions to this problem?
Thank you.
I am putting this question in General Questions. I’m not sure if the Gaming forum might be better.
First, I agree that you might want to ask for this to be moved. Lots of our resident gaming nerds hang out there, and I don’t think there is going to be one single answer to this question.
With that said, your internet is slow, very slow. While the download speed is in the tolerable range, that upload speed seems scarily low to me and is 1/100th of the download speed, when it’s typically not lower than 1/10th or 1/15th in my experience. Your unloaded latency doesn’t look scary, but you want loaded and unloaded to be a lot closer to each other and 143 ms is slow enough to be noticeable.
If this issue has only cropped up in the last few weeks, did you change anything on your computer in that timeframe? Are there other devices on your network? Something like several computers downloading Windows updates could account for what you’re seeing. If convenient I would change your WiFi password, add the new password to just your computer, reboot the computer, and run some speed tests to see what you get.
Does your Wi-Fi have a regular and a 5g signal? I just recently noticed a similar split in the speed of my connection based on which signal my computer connected to. (Sometimes the regular signal is stronger.). The difference is not really noticeable for just browsing, etc., but becomes very apparent when gaming, streaming, or downloading a large file. I had to have my computer"forget," the low speed Wi-Fi so it will always connect to the 5g.
Welcome to the dark art / nightmare of network debugging, made harder and harder the more clever the network devices have become.
If the issue is reproducible, the very first step would be to connect your computer to your router via Ethernet with a cable instead of Wi-Fi and see if the problem persists. The different results of that test will lead to very different paths of investigation.
I’m an in Ontario on a Bell Fiber optic plan. I am supposed to get 50Mbps. When I am on customer support they do speed tests and sometime I exceed this amount and sometimes the speed test fails. They are sending me a new modem.
Do you think this is a modem issue?
No. Nothing on our end has changed. We are certainly not downloading multiple Windows updates on our computers. The modem was reset to factory settings a few days ago. No improvement.
I’m pretty sure my WiFi does not have a 5G signal. I do have access to the modem/hub setting and there is only a normal WiFi connection and a WiFi-v which I learned is for visitors.
Yes. We considered that but it would involve moving the computer much closer to the modem. Its definitely a possibility but would require a bit of work. I’m going to wait for the new modem to arrive and see if that solves it.
There isn’t enough information here to speculate. The issue could be related to software or drivers on your computer, your computer hardware, your radio environment, other devices on your network, your wifi router hardware, your wifi router firmware, your computer or router settings, your modem hardware (which may or may not be a separate box), the physical fiber into your house, the local hub from which your fiber originates, or more.
Quick first tests would be
test your connection when connected with an Ethernet cable rather than over Wi-Fi
test your connection on a different Wi-Fi device such as a phone or tablet
test your connection in a different physical location such as very near the Wi-Fi router
test your connection immediately after rebooting elements of your network one at a time
It could be your modem, but in my experience with ISP issues (sadly, too many), sending a new modem is just the first thing they come to in their troubleshooting “script”. It’s cheap to just send one, they don’t have to schedule any technician time, and they don’t care if the user has to wait around for days to even see if it helps.
In the meantime, if you can do any or all of the above tests and report back here, we can try to help further.
I had the exact same issue as you tried everything to no avail then I read to check for malware I bought a full licensed version of Malware bytes, turns out there was some malicious garbage installed that was slowing everything down and it resolved it.
I could move this to the Game Room… but it’s fundamentally a question about computer networking, not a question about games themselves. So let’s just leave it here.
96 kbps is a completely unacceptable upload speed. One that definitely indicates a problem somewhere. For reference, 96kbps is less than twice what an old 56k (kbps) dial up modem can do.
So when you do pretty much any activity, even though more data comes as a download rather than an upload, you still do have to upload data. In games, you’re uploading data that says “I’m here, I’m looking this way, I’m moving this way” a few dozen times a second. Or if you’re doing something like streaming, you’re saying “okay, I got this packet, send the next one. Okay, got the next packet, send the next one” because of the way network transmission control works.
Your upload queue is getting completely saturated. Those packets that are sending data back both for updating what you’re doing (gaming) and telling what you’re connected to that you received the last data and they can send more end up having to wait their turn to travel up your completely full connection. Waiting their turn is what’s causing your latency, they literally may not be able to transmit for several hundred milliseconds because there’s a traffic jam in the upload capacity.
I would guess this is a problem in your ISP’s network infrastructure, although it could potentially be something on your end. For instance, if your computer has some malware that has it being remote controlled by a botnet, the botnet could be sending a ton of upload traffic drowning out the rest of it. But most likely it’s something with the network infrastructure.
The list of things to try @Pasta mentioned is a good place to start. Also, reboot your modem if that’s an option.
The company the OP is with has history of throttling it’s clients.
If that’s the case I found a way for the OP to find out if that’s it.
The easiest way to determine if your Internet Service Provider (ISP) is throttling your internet connection is to run a speed test and then run the speed test again using a virtual private network (VPN). If your connection is significantly faster with the VPN, your ISP is likely throttling your service.
That will only detect if they’re throttling the service based on a specific type of content, not if they’re just providing a crappy connection to you. If they’re just providing bad network infrastructure or infrastructure with a very low cap, the VPN will also lag.
Yes, or whatever your ISP decided to throttle based on content.
It’s very unlikely they’re throttling his speed test, because that makes them look bad. ISPs usually do the opposite - they actually manipulate/fast track content from speed test sites to make them look better. The fact that he’s only getting 96kbps upload on his speed test indicates that’s the problem.
Your loaded latency is the problem. It should not be increasing that much under load. 6 ms is spectacular, ~50 ms is decent, and above 100 ms is pretty sketchy for online play.
Your hardware is fine; something has changed on your ISP’s side. It could be the number of customers sharing your connection has increased, or their existing customers have increased their bandwidth usage. Unless you want to pay more for a dedicated business-type connection there’s not much you can do aside from switching to a different ISP.
It could also be malware but my gut says it’s the ISP.