DSL inconsistent at home but not at work

[slightlyhuman]

Alright, I’ve made a few threads related to this. In short I play quake 2(only game I have installed really atm) and have 3mb DSL at home. Windstream is my provider at home and where I work. I know work pays for a lot better service but my question is why is my ping SIGNIFICANTLY worse at home than where I work. Sometimes my ping is great at home(hardly ever is it a smooth 50ms with ZERO packet loss. It’s usually the following:

i. 50ms with 0 PL
ii. 50ms with lots of PL
iii. 70ms with 0 PL
iv. 70ms with lots of PL
v. 90ms with 0 PL
vi. 90ms with lots of PL

I just don’t understand why my DSL is so inconsistent at home. I’ve tried different modems, cables, and complained for over 8 months about my issues.

Now at work, sometimes I play on the SAME Chicago-based quake 2 server. I ping 28ms with 0 packet loss. I’ll throw tracert’s from work and home down below. I just want to know what to call and tell my DSL provider because I’m sick of paying for an inconsistent service. The tech support has been worthless every time I’ve called in the past year. Even if I don’t have a 28 ping like I get at work I’d at least like to have a 50ms ping without packet loss every time I log on.

Wtf is going on Windstream?

Q2 Chicago-based Server I play on:

Lm.ravenhurst.com

Tracert from home:


Tracing route to stratosfear.ravenhurst.com [184.106.239.230]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.254.254
2 25 ms 25 ms 25 ms h1.96.184.173.dynamic.ip.windstream.net [173.184
.96.1]
3 24 ms 24 ms 25 ms h138.222.91.75.static.ip.windstream.net [75.91.2
22.138]
4 29 ms 29 ms 29 ms h122.222.91.75.static.ip.windstream.net [75.91.2
22.122]
5 30 ms 73 ms 29 ms h128.254.213.151.static.ip.windstream.net [151.2
13.254.128]
6 29 ms 28 ms 28 ms xe-8-3-0.edge3.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.71.198.25]

7 29 ms 28 ms 37 ms vlan80.csw3.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.69.145.190]
8 29 ms 28 ms 28 ms ae-81-81.ebr1.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.69.151.150]

9 67 ms 67 ms 71 ms ae-14-14.ebr2.Chicago2.Level3.net [4.69.151.117]

10 66 ms 66 ms 67 ms 4.69.158.237
11 67 ms 66 ms 67 ms 4.71.248.54
12 49 ms 49 ms 49 ms coreb.ord1.rackspace.net [184.106.126.134]
13 62 ms 70 ms 64 ms core1-CoreB.ord1.rackspace.net [184.106.126.129]

14 49 ms 48 ms 49 ms 173.203.0.177
15 67 ms 67 ms 67 ms stratosfear.ravenhurst.com [184.106.239.230]

 

[slightlyhuman]

tracert lm.ravenhurst.com

Tracing route to stratosfear.ravenhurst.com [184.106.239.230]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms h145.156.102.166.static.ip.windstream.net [166.1
02.156.145]
2 3 ms 2 ms 2 ms h37.222.91.75.static.ip.windstream.net [75.91.22
2.37]
3 6 ms 6 ms 6 ms h122.222.91.75.static.ip.windstream.net [75.91.2
22.122]
4 10 ms 24 ms 8 ms h128.254.213.151.static.ip.windstream.net [151.2
13.254.128]
5 10 ms 6 ms 6 ms xe-11-0-1.edge3.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.71.198.17]

6 6 ms 6 ms 13 ms vlan70.csw2.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.69.145.126]
7 7 ms 6 ms 6 ms ae-71-71.ebr1.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.69.151.138]

8 25 ms 25 ms 26 ms ae-14-14.ebr2.Chicago2.Level3.net [4.69.151.117]

9 25 ms 25 ms 25 ms 4.69.158.229
10 26 ms 25 ms 26 ms 4.71.248.54
11 26 ms 26 ms 26 ms coreb.ord1.rackspace.net [184.106.126.134]
12 26 ms 26 ms 26 ms core1-CoreB.ord1.rackspace.net [184.106.126.129]

13 26 ms 29 ms 26 ms 173.203.0.177
14 26 ms 26 ms 26 ms stratosfear.ravenhurst.com [184.106.239.230]

Trace complete.

C:\Users\log2>

 

[imagoon]

I would guess that your office either a) pays for a business DSL line, or b) doesn't use DSL at all. T1 / business cable / business DSL / SONET / Pick a tech businesses use when Internet matters... will be consistent and have a higher SLA / Priority that the people with $25 home service.

Windstream likely has over-committed their circuits (common on residential) so your service suffers. There also could be "last mile" issues. DSL over a shorter run is pretty solid but it starts to fail hard when hitting the 15000 foot limit. (assuming ADSL here and not something like VDSL2 etc)

 

[slightlyhuman]

so i'm pretty much getting "fucked" by windstream? i have a feeling it's over-committed circuits seeing as 5 years ago when i was the only house around here and now there are close to 7 new houses.

fraud much?

 

[slightlyhuman]

also, my work is windstream, have checked into it.

 

[Fardringle]

Change your home service to be the same as what you have at the office (and probably pay many times more) and you'll get similar results. You can't expect a cheap residential line to have the same quality and reliability as an expensive business line.

 

[slightlyhuman]

Change your home service to be the same as what you have at the office (and probably pay many times more) and you'll get similar results. You can't expect a cheap residential line to have the same quality and reliability as an expensive business line.

i'm not saying i expect that. but i expect to be able to play a 14-year old game that takes very little packets of data and i can't even do that.

 

[slightlyhuman]

so is my inconsistent ping due to too many people being on the circuit? isn't that fraud?

 

[Fardringle]

so is my inconsistent ping due to too many people being on the circuit? isn't that fraud?

Nope, that's standard business practice for residential Internet service. You pay more for a business class service to get better SLA (outage repair) and for the privilege of not having an over-sold circuit.

 

[slightlyhuman]

Nope, that's standard business practice for residential Internet service. You pay more for a business class service to get better SLA (outage repair) and for the privilege of not having an over-sold circuit.

i wonder if their cheapest "business" service is even somewhat affordable. and could an individual even get it?

 

[kevnich2]

Trying running a non stop ping to google.com (ping google.com -t) for about 1 minute. Then hit ctrl C to stop it and post the results.

Also, as others have said, dsl providers routinely over subscribe lines. No it's not fraud. They sell UP TO a certain bandwidth. No carrier guarantees anything unless it's a business line, and you pay for that. If you want consistent guaranteed performance like you get at work - then buy the same line your work does and expect a bill of around $500-1,000/month. If you really need a consistent connection and bandwidth doesn't matter - call windstream and ask about a T1 line. It's guaranteed 1.5mb bandwidth to your house.

Sorry but don't expect the same kind of internet that a business probably paying around $500/month on your connection paying <$50/month. You get what you pay for. Do you have any other ISP's that you can sign up with - cable company?

 

[slightlyhuman]

Trying running a non stop ping to google.com (ping google.com -t) for about 1 minute. Then hit ctrl C to stop it and post the results.

Also, as others have said, dsl providers routinely over subscribe lines. No it's not fraud. They sell UP TO a certain bandwidth. No carrier guarantees anything unless it's a business line, and you pay for that. If you want consistent guaranteed performance like you get at work - then buy the same line your work does and expect a bill of around $500-1,000/month. If you really need a consistent connection and bandwidth doesn't matter - call windstream and ask about a T1 line. It's guaranteed 1.5mb bandwidth to your house.

Sorry but don't expect the same kind of internet that a business probably paying around $500/month on your connection paying <$50/month. You get what you pay for. Do you have any other ISP's that you can sign up with - cable company?

i'm not expecting the same performance, at all. but if my connection is a smooth 50ms with ZERO packet loss then i expect it to be up to that caliber or around that(not 75+ with ridiculous amount of PL). that's something i have a hard time swallowing.

if my connection can be 50ms sometimes then it SHOULD most of the time. is there anything i can bitch about to windstream in that regard?

 

[Cabletek]

I am confused, 100ms will not even be noticable in quake 2 which was written with DIAL up in mind running in a range of 300-400 MS. Yes I know this for a fact I played it back then over dial up and remember having to LEAD my opponents on dsl/cable/isdn/college lan. I was not aware q2 multiplayer was that popular still, unless you mean a modification since carmack was nice enough to open source his engine.

Something is definitely wrong other than your 100ms latency if you cannot play quake 2.

Can you please describe what is going on?

Are you losing packets at home or not [you say no then say you want it without packet loss so I am confused]? What is your network setup? Are you aware your phone NID has a test point and that you can run a long ribbon from that point to your dsl modem after removing the house feed and test the companies side of the network versus yours, you MUST plug ethenet into the modem though. Wireless can be unpredictable and need some TLC in a lot of places. Even a simple wireless house phone can fuck it up when it rings or is in use.

 

[Fardringle]

Do what kevnich said with a continuous ping to google.com and post the exact results (not a summary, but an actual screenshot or copy-and-paste) here. If you are actually getting high packet loss between you and the ISP then you can complain to them, but if the packet loss is beyond their network (i.e. somewhere else on the Internet) then there's really nothing you can do about it.

 

[slightlyhuman]

I am confused, 100ms will not even be noticable in quake 2 which was written with DIAL up in mind running in a range of 300-400 MS. Yes I know this for a fact I played it back then over dial up and remember having to LEAD my opponents on dsl/cable/isdn/college lan. I was not aware q2 multiplayer was that popular still, unless you mean a modification since carmack was nice enough to open source his engine.

Something is definitely wrong other than your 100ms latency if you cannot play quake 2.

Can you please describe what is going on?

Are you losing packets at home or not [you say no then say you want it without packet loss so I am confused]? What is your network setup? Are you aware your phone NID has a test point and that you can run a long ribbon from that point to your dsl modem after removing the house feed and test the companies side of the network versus yours, you MUST plug ethenet into the modem though. Wireless can be unpredictable and need some TLC in a lot of places. Even a simple wireless house phone can fuck it up when it rings or is in use.

no wireless here. and yes there's a HUGE difference on quake 2 with a 50 ping to a 75. i'm not saying it's night and day but from a competitive POV, it's a huge difference.

i don't know how else to explain my problem:

when my DSL is working and i have no complaints my ping is a smooth 50ms without any PL. i'm not expecting to have the same latency as my work DSL, i realize that. but i do expect it to be around 50ms most of the time instead of 70ms-130ms with a crazy amount of packet loss. when i say packet loss this is what my netgraph in quake 2 looks like:

those red lines is PL. every few seconds my game stutters. i've tried everything i know. different modems, different cat 5 cables, different phone line cables. i can't put it in another room because my shitastic DSL company requires someone to come out and move it to another room(what the fuck?). a few years ago i could move it in any room i wanted without their assistance at all.


i just want a stable connection. even if my ping is 75 i still shouldn't be dealing with CONSTANT packet loss.

 

[slightlyhuman]

if you look closely i have a great ping but HORRIBLE pl.

 

[slightlyhuman]

i will do the continuous ping this evening when i'm back at home.

 

[slightlyhuman]

also, i will point out... every time i connect to this chicago-based server if my ping is high i can usually quit quake 2 and reconnect and eventually my ping will drop 20-25ms.

example:

i connect to server and ping around 90ms-100ms. a lot of the time i can simply quit and reconnect and my ping will drop to 75ms and sometimes even the 50ms that i'm looking for. what the fuck?

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Tracert from home:


Tracing route to stratosfear.ravenhurst.com [184.106.239.230]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.254.254
2 25 ms 25 ms 25 ms h1.96.184.173.dynamic.ip.windstream.net [173.184
.96.1]

Hop #2 is your problem. All other pings are inflated due to that hop. What hardware are you using for your LAN/modem?

 

[slightlyhuman]

Hop #2 is your problem. All other pings are inflated due to that hop. What hardware are you using for your LAN/modem?

i have a windstream 4200 DSL modem and just hooked up a newer windstream gigaset 4300 DSL modem.

over the weekend i bought a netgear n600 adsl2+ modem/router but didn't have much luck with it.

 

[Fardringle]

also, i will point out... every time i connect to this chicago-based server if my ping is high i can usually quit quake 2 and reconnect and eventually my ping will drop 20-25ms.

example:

i connect to server and ping around 90ms-100ms. a lot of the time i can simply quit and reconnect and my ping will drop to 75ms and sometimes even the 50ms that i'm looking for.

That along with your game screenshot sure make it seem like you have a problem with the game server and not your connection. Post the results of an actual PING test (not inside the game) so we can see what it looks like.

 

[slightlyhuman]

That along with your game screenshot sure make it seem like you have a problem with the game server and not your connection. Post the results of an actual PING test (not inside the game) so we can see what it looks like.

Pinging stratosfear.ravenhurst.com [184.106.239.230] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 184.106.239.230: bytes=32 time=86ms TTL=50
Reply from 184.106.239.230: bytes=32 time=109ms TTL=50
Reply from 184.106.239.230: bytes=32 time=86ms TTL=50
Reply from 184.106.239.230: bytes=32 time=114ms TTL=50

Pinging stratosfear.ravenhurst.com [184.106.239.230] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 184.106.239.230: bytes=32 time=68ms TTL=50
Reply from 184.106.239.230: bytes=32 time=67ms TTL=50
Reply from 184.106.239.230: bytes=32 time=67ms TTL=50
Reply from 184.106.239.230: bytes=32 time=68ms TTL=50


Pinging stratosfear.ravenhurst.com [184.106.239.230] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 184.106.239.230: bytes=32 time=86ms TTL=50
Reply from 184.106.239.230: bytes=32 time=86ms TTL=50
Reply from 184.106.239.230: bytes=32 time=86ms TTL=50
Reply from 184.106.239.230: bytes=32 time=86ms TTL=50

 

[slightlyhuman]

That along with your game screenshot sure make it seem like you have a problem with the game server and not your connection. Post the results of an actual PING test (not inside the game) so we can see what it looks like.

i also get pretty horrible PL on a quake 2 server in dallas. i hardly ever play on it but noticed my ping can be any where from 31 with 0 PL all the way up to 100ms with PL.

i thought it was just that chicago-based server at first until it happened more than once on other servers.

 

[Fardringle]

Your PINGs didn't lose any packets at all. That seems to reinforce the idea that it's a game server/software problem and not a connection problem. It's less likely that two different servers would have issues, but it's not at all impossible, particularly for a really old game.

Run this in a command prompt: ping -n 100 stratosfear.ravenhurst.com

Then copy the results here. (You can change the 100 to something larger if you want an even longer test, but 100 is a good start.)

For reference, this is my result for that same command so you can see which lines to copy here:

Ping statistics for 184.106.239.230:
Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 100, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 46ms, Maximum = 67ms, Average = 48ms

 

[slightlyhuman]

Your PINGs didn't lose any packets at all. That seems to reinforce the idea that it's a game server/software problem and not a connection problem. It's less likely that two different servers would have issues, but it's not at all impossible, particularly for a really old game.

Run this in a command prompt: ping -n 100 stratosfear.ravenhurst.com

Then copy the results here. (You can change the 100 to something larger if you want an even longer test, but 100 is a good start.)

For reference, this is my result for that same command so you can see which lines to copy here:

ok, thanks for your help. i will do that this evening and update.

i just know i used to play this game with a smooth 50 ping and never had any PL. i'm just trying to get my connection to perform how i know it can, all the time. if that even makes sense.

i'm ok with a 50 ping and nothing less but i just want to experience the 50ms connect every time or at the very least, MOST of the time. just trying to figure out wtf is causing that.