Horrible latency/ping, way to test?

[Atty]

We've recently upgraded to the Roadrunner lightning speed which is a 40/5 connection. We have a Cisco Linksys E3000 router.

For some reason we are getting terrible pings to servers everywhere. We got it for wireless connection throughout the house for everyones Netflix uses as well as for gaming on XBL. Connection to XBL is horrific on a hard line of wireless.

Is there any way to test to see if the latency and poor connection speeds are the fault of the router and the way it is set up or poor ISP set up?

 

[Ghiedo27]

Have you tried running a tracert to google.com (tracert google.com from the cmd prompt)? That can give you some insight as to where it's slowing down. For example, I get 1ms response from the router (192.168.1.1) and then 7ms response from the next device, and 9ms from Comcast, so on and so on. Every new hop adds just a bit more latency until I get up to ~20ms to google.

If you're getting something like 60ms on the first hop (your router) then you'll know something is wrong. On the other hand, if one of your service providers hops adds a lot of latency it would be good to have the IP address of that slow hop available when you call to complain.

 

[Binky]

Do you have a kid, maybe a son between the age of 10 and 40? Does your router show more than 100 connections constantly? This would be a sign of torrent downloading (porn, movies, games).

VOIP is sensitive to this kind of thing, so a google search of "VOIP test" should result in numerous test sites. Try a few and see what you find. The cable techs can come out with their laptop and test the connection.

 

[Fardringle]

I would combine what Ghiedo and Binky said. Completely turn off/disconnect every network device in the house except for one computer (that you know is not running P2P/torrent software). Run a TRACERT test from that computer to see what results you get. If the PING times are still high, call the ISP and have them correct the problem. If the results are good, turn each device back on one at a time and continue testing until the problem returns. That will let you know which device/connection is causing the problem and you can troubleshoot that device separately to find out why.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Also, what are you considering to be poor pings? A typical cable connection averages around 30-50ms most places ive been, even 100 isnt unheard of.

 

[Atty]

Have you tried running a tracert to google.com (tracert google.com from the cmd prompt)? That can give you some insight as to where it's slowing down. For example, I get 1ms response from the router (192.168.1.1) and then 7ms response from the next device, and 9ms from Comcast, so on and so on. Every new hop adds just a bit more latency until I get up to ~20ms to google.

If you're getting something like 60ms on the first hop (your router) then you'll know something is wrong. On the other hand, if one of your service providers hops adds a lot of latency it would be good to have the IP address of that slow hop available when you call to complain.

Will do that, as soon as I figure out how to do that from terminal from OS X.

Do you have a kid, maybe a son between the age of 10 and 40? Does your router show more than 100 connections constantly? This would be a sign of torrent downloading (porn, movies, games).

VOIP is sensitive to this kind of thing, so a google search of "VOIP test" should result in numerous test sites. Try a few and see what you find. The cable techs can come out with their laptop and test the connection.

Nope, no kids like that, or massive torrenting or connections.

Also, what are you considering to be poor pings? A typical cable connection averages around 30-50ms most places ive been, even 100 isnt unheard of.

150+

E:

1 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 3.428 ms 0.724 ms 0.650 ms
2 10.203.64.1 (10.203.64.1) 14.621 ms 8.324 ms 9.410 ms
3 gig11-0-0-2044.tampfledc-rtr1.tampflrdc.rr.com (65.32.25.46) 98.427 ms 28.896 ms 11.557 ms
4 ae2.orld71-cbr1.bhn.net (72.31.220.1) 14.990 ms 13.673 ms 15.155 ms
5 xe-11-0-0.bar1.orlando1.level3.net (4.79.118.41) 46.090 ms 44.245 ms 45.087 ms
6 ae-0-11.bar2.orlando1.level3.net (4.69.137.146) 44.725 ms 45.119 ms 46.658 ms
7 ae-5-5.ebr2.miami1.level3.net (4.69.148.209) 52.126 ms 51.812 ms 53.597 ms
8 ae-2-52.edge1.miami2.level3.net (4.69.138.107) 86.413 ms 49.226 ms 54.527 ms
9 google-inc.edge1.miami2.level3.net (4.59.240.26) 31.739 ms 32.243 ms 32.409 ms
10 209.85.253.74 (209.85.253.74) 34.035 ms 29.323 ms 29.702 ms
11 209.85.254.252 (209.85.254.252) 30.224 ms 54.362 ms 32.253 ms
12 72.14.232.215 (72.14.232.215) 30.686 ms
72.14.232.213 (72.14.232.213) 30.729 ms 29.269 ms
13 209.85.253.145 (209.85.253.145) 30.895 ms
209.85.253.141 (209.85.253.141) 32.605 ms
209.85.253.145 (209.85.253.145) 30.716 ms
14 yx-in-f99.1e100.net (74.125.45.99) 32.168 ms 34.955 ms 29.405 ms

SO MANY NUMBERS D: Halp make sense?

So I assume 1 is from laptop to modem (wirelessly, OS X to linksys), second is router to modem? Third ( gig11-0-0-2044.tampfledc-rtr1.tampflrdc.rr.com (65.32.25.46) 98.427 ms 28.896 ms 11.557 ms) is to ISP, which is 98ms?

 

[Fardringle]

1 out of 3 pings to the third hop (RoadRunner) is somewhat high, but everything else down the list looks just fine all the way to the end. That one high number on hop 3 is a bit odd but not really something to be concerned about unless it happens a lot.

Nothing in that tracert report suggests that you would be getting high pings at all to the yx-in-f99.1e100.net server (owned by Google). All three results from that server are under 35ms, which is excellent.

Since you specifically mentioned trouble with Netflix, try running tracert movies.netflix.com[/u] to see what happens. The actual movies server doesn't respond to PING requests so you'll eventually just get a bunch of asterisks (*) for the results (press CTRL-C to stop it), but look at the ping times for the hops just before that starts happening.