How to Test for Lag???

[DKlein]

I'm currently trying to decide whether my router/setup or my ISP is the cause of my constant lag/CI's. I've hooked my computer up with the router setup and now am connecting it straight to the modem, but have no real way to test the lag. The way I'm planning on doing it is going into online games to see how it is, but those could be laggy anyways. Anyone got suggestions as to how I could figure this out?
Thanks.

 

[Smilin]

Run a traceroute to a couple different places on the 'net and see what hop the latency starts to jump at.

 

[DKlein]

It's more CI's that I'm worried about... how useful is this is testing that?

 

[Smilin]

Not very. Find some sites that are actually ON your ISP like their DNS servers, homepage servers etc. If you get a dropped connection try pinging those. Do use tracert to find what the next hop past your cable modem is though - If you can't ping that node then you've got a problem possibly related to your cable run. If you can ping it but nothing else then your ISP is fuggin up.

 

[hagrin]

The above poster has the right idea.

You should be running contsant pings and traceroutes to whatever gaming servers you are trying to play on. You should do this with both the router and without the router and see if you see any performance difference.

Without the router - When you see the response times jump drastically on the traceroute, see if it is on your ISPs network or off of it. If it is off your ISPs network, it could be network congestion or some peering issue. If it is on your network, then you probably want to contact Technical Support and let them know.

If you have a cable modem, make sure your signal levels are in good ranges (you can usually grab these from the modem's internal web page - assuming it has one).

There's plenty you can try, but that would be the first steps in diagnosing the problem.

 

[DKlein]

Well I haven't gotten around to traceroute or any of that, too busy playing. Decided to just play and see what it's like. There is almost no CIs at all and almost no lag at all now (as compared to the sub 56K quality before) so I'm thinking it's either the router or the wireless adapter. Switching adapters would quickly tell which it was. I'm quite glad becuase now all I need is a new router/or adapter instead of having to go through all that crap with the ISP (no doubt that would be a hassle). Thanks anyways though.

 

[Garion]

Go out and snag Ping Plotter. It will tell you a lot of good info on the latency ("lag") and where it's coming from. Very cool tool.

- G

 

[batmang]

Well, theres a few ways you can do packetloss/lag look up. You can do a regular traceroute, if you have quake3 enable the packetloss meter, the speedtest on www.dslreports.com, or you can use what i normally use. Virtual Trace Route. Search it up on google.com, great program.