Question Internet Goes to Crap at Same Time - How Can I Diagnose?

[Fenixgoon]

I have FTTH, and starting around 5pm my internet upload speeds drop like a rock, and I get huge variance in latency. For whatever reason, it shows up the worst when I play Baldur's Gate 3 with a couple of buddies. The second I join, the game goes to hell because of the lag I introduce. I have tried with 2 different computers in the house with the same results (both ethernet connected to router). I am assuming that clears my computers of any problems, but in case not, how do I diagnose it as something on my end, versus the ISP's end?

 

[akugami]

If you have FTTH, do they allow you to use your own router? I know this is possible with Verizon FIOS. See if bypassing the ISP's router with one of your own resolves the issue.

Have you tried asking the ISP if they pushed any firmware or malware updates to the Internet Modem recently? On a related note, try having them completely reset the settings in the Internet Modem to whatever is considered factory.

Another thing I like to do is use PingInfoView to run ping tests. It's a Windows only application. You can ping multiple addresses, and log the results. Generally, I ping another computer device on the LAN to see if the issue is local. I also usually ping the router (Internet Modem). Finally, I ping a couple locations such as Google's DNS (8.8.8.8) and Cloudflare's DNS (1.1.1.1). I set ping times to about 5s intervals. Walk away, come back in a day or so, and review the results. I usually restart the test and save the results to a new log file every new day.

For a general test of this nature, if the ping times on the LAN are good, and only ping times to the Internet is high latency, then that would be an Internet issue, and not local.

If all ping times suck, local and Internet, then it's something on your end.

I've seen some crazy stuff with network devices. Something as simple as a crappy IP camera has screwed up network printing and even some business critical network hardware on some of our client's computers.

 

[ch33zw1z]

^ yea, I do similar when I have network sluggishness. Ping and tracert are your friend. I windows ping -t will run a continuous ping. Tracert can help determine which hop is slowing you down. If you ping / tracert are funky in the first few hops, probably your isp.

If pings are funky in the LAN, it’s your stuff

 

[Red Squirrel]

Do you have some kind of offsite backup job that runs, like Backblaze or something like that?

 

[Fenixgoon]

Do you have some kind of offsite backup job that runs, like Backblaze or something like that?

Nope just a local NAS. And I checked my upload at the router while playing and it's very low (below 1mbps). So it's not like there's some crazy outbound upload traffic. Worth double checking my local backup but that should be set to run at like 3am

 

[akugami]

@ch33zw1z Good call on the tracert, forgot to mention that. I do use it for network testing. One of the reasons I use PingInfoView is the ability to log results to a text file, so I can view it later. I've accidentally closed the Windows CMD Prompt window on occasion and lost my test results, or when I'm running the test on a client system, it's been closed occasionally.

So usually "ping -t" is used for shorter duration tests, where I'm actively monitoring the results in real time, and PingInfoView is used when I want to run the test, minimize the testing application, and come back a day or so later to review it.

 

[Fenixgoon]

so last night i tried tracert while my internet was crap - confirmed by the skewed download/upload rates. here were the results. i also started pinginfoview to routinely ping the IPs where i saw terrible latency.


1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms ROUTER
2 3392 ms 2574 ms 2059 ms HOP1
3 2 ms 2 ms 1 ms HOP2
4 109 ms 266 ms 291 ms HOP3
5 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms HOP4
6 * 5 ms * HOP5
7 16 ms * 26 ms HOP6
8 18 ms 15 ms * HOP7
9 * 15 ms 15 ms HOP8
10 15 ms 15 ms 16 ms HOP9
11 16 ms 18 ms * dns.google [8.8.8.8]
12 15 ms 15 ms 15 ms dns.google [8.8.8.8]

when i was looking up info on the various IP addresses of the different hops using https://www.iplocation.net/ip-lookup

hop1 (super laggy) is listed as a Carrier-Grade NAT RFC6598. no location info.
hop2 is a private IP address. using the ip-lookup redirected me to my ISP info.
hop3 is the start of my ISP
HOPs 4/5/6 are also my ISP
HOP7 is the start of google's servers

 

[ch33zw1z]

Call your isp, that first hop is rough

 

[Fenixgoon]

sent a bunch of info to my ISP including tracert results and speedtest.net results (plotted vs time to show that things drop off at roughly the same time every day). we'll see what they come back with.

 

[ch33zw1z]

sent a bunch of info to my ISP including tracert results and speedtest.net results (plotted vs time to show that things drop off at roughly the same time every day). we'll see what they come back with.

They’re either loving you or hating you rn

 

[akugami]

I've had various ISP's around the country hang up on me when troubleshooting network problems we believe was the fault of the ISP...AT&T is one of the worse from a support perspective. Frontier sucks, so does Spectrum. Surprisingly, Comcast was OK from a civility standpoint but dreadful from a competence standpoint.

We become the defacto IT support for various business clients when our product doesn't work, and it's either help the clients or they can't use our business systems, and we lose money when they can't use our business systems.

 

[ch33zw1z]

I've had various ISP's around the country hang up on me when troubleshooting network problems we believe was the fault of the ISP...AT&T is one of the worse from a support perspective. Frontier sucks, so does Spectrum. Surprisingly, Comcast was OK from a civility standpoint but dreadful from a competence standpoint.

We become the defacto IT support for various business clients when our product doesn't work, and it's either help the clients or they can't use our business systems, and we lose money when they can't use our business systems.

Yep, ISP’s go thru great lengths to avoid blame. My XP with them varies in personal and professional. Verizon landline has always sucked for service, Comcast is meh, Comcast business is a bit better. AT&T sucks too for landline stuff, and as far as wireless goes they suck too.

I’ve been on field calls at ATMs where m swapping WIC’s and Verizon’s drop in has corrosion all over it. 3rd trip out Verizon finally shows up, I point at their drop, he cleans it and voila the connection starts working again. Just like, bro…

 

[akugami]

Not to turn this into an ISP bash session, but we literally told one of our clients to cut the Internet line going into their building. The client had constant Internet connection issues. And the ISP came out about 4 times, inspected it, and said their line into the building have no issues, and blamed the client.

After the line was cut, the ISP ran a new line. No more problems since.

 

[DaaQ]

Not to turn this into an ISP bash session, but we literally told one of our clients to cut the Internet line going into their building. The client had constant Internet connection issues. And the ISP came out about 4 times, inspected it, and said their line into the building have no issues, and blamed the client.

After the line was cut, the ISP ran a new line. No more problems since.

This, now I work with hardline, but installers, service techs, will do more work to get out of replacing a drop than just replacing the drop. SMH.

When I was in that position, if I had a repeat especially if it was a 3rd. Drop was getting replaced no matter what it tested as.

I have one now, missed the promotion boat, but man he works so hard at getting out of replacing a drop it's just plain painful. Always needs help replacing one too.

I ran 300ft drops across 2 lane hwy by myself, ran through trees and woods, by myself. This is what layup sticks are for.