Desperate Need for Networking Help

[isaacsg31]

Hi guys,

I'll try to keep this short. I'm getting to the end of my rope with this stuff. I am trying to be able to game effectively on my xbox one (for halo). I have midcontinent communications for an ISP. I have a Motorola surfboard (Docsis 3.0), the most recent version. I have a Netgear Nighthawk x6 as well. My download from my ISP is 110Mbps down and about 15Mbps up with around 5ms latency for the closest server on speedtest. All devices seem to get this speed... other than the xbox. On the xbox I am hitting 290ms latency with maybe 20 down and 6 up. Obviously not ideal.

I ran a tracert and found my fifth hop to be very severe when I pinged xbox live servers, around 550ms. Same for google at around 250 (markedly better, but not great). I have tried swapping Ethernet cables, setting up a manual DNS with namebench, among other things. Is this a problem, albeit recent, with Midco? Any help would be amazing as this is driving me crazy, and I will provide any information I can. I would post the attachment of the command prompt screencap, but I am not authorized.

Thank you in advance.

 

[BeeBoop]

I'm not really tech savvy like most people here so dont get mad if my question seems stupid. Have you tried testing your television game mode to see if it is the problem? Most large screen LCD screens are horrible for games.

 

[isaacsg31]

Hey man, no worries I still appreciate the reply. Unfortunately what I am referring to is network latency, where you are suggesting input lag, or "screen lag". One is talking about connecting to a host or specific IP address, the other has to do with what you see aligning with commands from your controller or other input device and how it corresponds with screen refresh, etc. It is a valid question!

 

[XavierMace]

If you've already determined a specific hop to be the culprit, swapping cables/hardware isn't going to help unless that hop is on your network. Without seeing the actual results of the traceroute, we can't really provide more info than that.

 

[isaacsg31]

Sorry, here you go. I made an imgur link

http://imgur.com/gallery/X6POrRX/new

I hope it works.​

 

[dave_the_nerd]

That's... strange. I ran the IPs in your first stack trace through an IP locator, and apparently, you're getting bounced from Peru to Pakistan and back. So that's... yeah.

Are you a student at Anoka-Ramsey? Hey neighbor!

 

[isaacsg31]

Actually, no I go to school in Grand Forks, but grew up in Alexandria and Minneapolis. So kind of nearby! My friend works networking for the school there, and we were working on the issue, so he had me trace there.

In regards to what you said about Peru and Pakistan... that would make sense as to the extreme latency spikes. Why in the world would it be doing that? I have some knowledge about networking and such, as my parents own a few computer repair/networking stores, so I grew up around it, but admittedly not as much as I should. Is it in any way possible for an issue with my router or modem to be signaling some sort of identifier to route that way? Almost like a virus, since it originates from my network? I doubt it, but I thought I'd ask. If not, is it a problem with midco on one of those hops bouncing me across the globe?

Thanks again for the insight.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Actually, no I go to school in Grand Forks, but grew up in Alexandria and Minneapolis. So kind of nearby! My friend works networking for the school there, and we were working on the issue, so he had me trace there.

In regards to what you said about Peru and Pakistan... that would make sense as to the extreme latency spikes. Why in the world would it be doing that? I have some knowledge about networking and such, as my parents own a few computer repair/networking stores, so I grew up around it, but admittedly not as much as I should. Is it in any way possible for an issue with my router or modem to be signaling some sort of identifier to route that way? Almost like a virus, since it originates from my network? I doubt it, but I thought I'd ask. If not, is it a problem with midco on one of those hops bouncing me across the globe?

Thanks again for the insight.

Well, a couple things:

Routes can change, and do - so the traceroute you run today may very likely show something different.

The router at hop 3 decides where to send hop 4. So it's not really something you have control over on your end (it's unlikely that it's a virus or something, unless the router itself is compromised) Midco decided to send the traffic to a location in Canada, which forwarded it to Peru.

Typically, I'd assume there was an outage on the "normal" path between you and XBL, which cause one of the intermediary routers to shrug, cast the traffic into the great beyond, and hope for the best.

It's really something that a Midco network engineer should look into; have you contacted them?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I'd also point out that I'm getting bounced to some of the same subnets from here (I'm at work, so it goes through Texas first, too.) but my ping to that xbl server is ~50ms.

So... that's even weirder. Might be traffic/time-of-day related. :hmm:

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

C:\Users>tracert xeas.xboxlive.com

Tracing route to xeas.gtm.xboxlive.com [65.55.42.54]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     5 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  172.31.100.1
  2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  3     *        *        *  Request timed out
  4     *        *        *  Request timed out
  5     2 ms     2 ms     5 ms  209.63.66.2
  6    13 ms    13 ms    13 ms  be-2.br02.chcgildt.integra.net [209.63.82.198]
  7    11 ms    11 ms    11 ms  chi-8075.msn.net [206.223.119.27]
  8    12 ms    12 ms    13 ms  ae12-0.ch1-96c-2a.ntwk.msn.net [207.46.40.215]
  9     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 10     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 11    54 ms    54 ms    54 ms  ae9-0.co2-96c-1a.ntwk.msn.net [191.234.82.236]
 12    54 ms    54 ms    54 ms  134.170.8.231
 13     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 14     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 15    54 ms    54 ms    55 ms  25.255.4.94
 16    54 ms    54 ms    53 ms  25.255.5.35
 17    54 ms    54 ms    54 ms  65.55.42.54

Trace complete.

C:\Users>ping xeas.xboxlive.com

Pinging xeas.gtm.xboxlive.com [65.55.42.54] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 65.55.42.54: bytes=32 time=54ms TTL=52
Reply from 65.55.42.54: bytes=32 time=54ms TTL=52
Reply from 65.55.42.54: bytes=32 time=53ms TTL=52

Ping statistics for 65.55.42.54:
    Packets: Sent = 3, Received = 3, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 53ms, Maximum = 54ms, Average = 53ms
Control-C
^C

 

[isaacsg31]

Interesting, thank you again for the detailed replies. I really appreciate your help.

So if you're near the cities, shouldn't our latency be at least somewhat similar? Granted you are not on midco, so I guess that could be a differentiator, but wouldn't our paths be similar to get to xbox services? I may have my friend who works for the school near you as network engineer talk to you on here. My knowledge on this stuff may be better than the general public, but it seems you both know far more than myself.

I did talk to midco, and they are going to look into it. My hopes aren't high, but hopefully I will be escalated beyond a phone service tech. Do you think it is midco who is routing me incorrectly? I just can't fathom being sent around the globe for no reason, and this latency issue seems to be persistent for me for awhile now.

When you say my router could be compromised, what does that entail? Factory reset and wiping my computer? Or can I get a new IP from the ISP? My understanding was IP is dynamic, in which case I don't have the networking understanding to know if my router is compromised (the thing is damn near a laptop itself, internally) does that mean it could be sending some identifier to get the data to bounce through peru and such before getting to my destination?

Thanks again! You give me hope. Haha

 

[isaacsg31]

Also, I just ran a trace against my girlfriends internet the next room over in the apt complex I'm in and got this (first result) vs mine. Differences being obviously the router and she is using the building supplied internet (no modem, its somewhere in the building). I am using Midco's private service. The building appears to be supplied by qwest at much slower speeds, but apparently with better latency. It also appears not to have the lag spike destination that midco does when comparing it to my trace. I think the route I take is in Toronto from Sioux Falls, where Qwest doesn't route through Toronto. At the expense of an additional 130ms in latency. Anyone... why is it doing this? And how can I stop it?

Thank you!

http://imgur.com/gallery/fQVPXu6/new

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4289859590

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Interesting, thank you again for the detailed replies. I really appreciate your help.

So if you're near the cities, shouldn't our latency be at least somewhat similar? Granted you are not on midco, so I guess that could be a differentiator, but wouldn't our paths be similar to get to xbox services?

Not necessarily - at some point, your ISP hands off traffic to another ISP, and then to another, etc., through any number of backbone connections, before it finally gets to the destination. Our ISPs probably have handoffs in different geographical places (or they could be in the same building, it's hard to know.)

I may have my friend who works for the school near you as network engineer talk to you on here. My knowledge on this stuff may be better than the general public, but it seems you both know far more than myself.

I did talk to midco, and they are going to look into it. My hopes aren't high, but hopefully I will be escalated beyond a phone service tech. Do you think it is midco who is routing me incorrectly? I just can't fathom being sent around the globe for no reason, and this latency issue seems to be persistent for me for awhile now.

When you say my router could be compromised, what does that entail?

I meant their (the ISP's) router, actually. If an ISP router in North Dakota is just randomly sending traffic to Peru for no reason, that's weird. It could be a down line, it could be a misconfiguration, or (very tiny chance) it could actually have been hacked.

But that's very unlikely. Remember:

Factory reset and wiping my computer? Or can I get a new IP from the ISP? My understanding was IP is dynamic, in which case I don't have the networking understanding to know if my router is compromised (the thing is damn near a laptop itself, internally) does that mean it could be sending some identifier to get the data to bounce through peru and such before getting to my destination?

Doesn't really work that way. When your routers sends data out, it just has an IP address for the destination; there's nothing in the TCP/IP protocol that allows your computer/router to tell your ISP, "Send this to Microsoft, but don't you dare send it via Peru." How your data gets from A to Z depends on the routers in between and how they're configured to route/prioritize traffic. There's really nothing you can do on your end to resolve this except complaining to the right people and possibly switching ISPs.

 

[isaacsg31]

There's really nothing you can do on your end to resolve this except complaining to the right people and possibly switching ISPs.

Haha... nice.

Okay, I think I understand what you're saying. Essentially in terms of what I can physically do, I am out of options. I need to try and see if Midco can resolve the issue. Are there any specific things I should say or tell them to check when I call back? I feel the likelihood of them resolving an issue for one person is slim. I better complain loudly.

Also did you happen to see my post right above your last?

Thanks again, man.

 

[isaacsg31]

For example, is there I way I convince midco to not route through that lag spike in Toronto and just go to the next server like the Qwest trace route did? I thought of switching to them as an ISP but they cap speeds literally 1/100th of midco. A whopping 1.5

 

[dave_the_nerd]

For example, is there I way I convince midco to not route through that lag spike in Toronto and just go to the next server like the Qwest trace route did? I thought of switching to them as an ISP but they cap speeds literally 1/100th of midco. A whopping 1.5

That was kinda my point - you can't really control that, except by making noise with customer service. Whatever "next server" Qwest goes to is probably not on Midco's network, so they probably have to route the traffic some other way. (Depending on where they have network handoffs with other ISPs, service agreements, etc.)

If you're having this problem, chances are pretty good other MidCo customers are having the issue, so it's probably not just you they'd have to fix it for. Ask around at work or something?