What is wrong with my cable internet?

[dude8604]

I have ATTBI, and for the last few months I've been getting terrible lag in games. I'll be playing for a while at pings of about 50, but then after a while (anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes), it jumps to over 800. Sometimes after a few more minutes it will go down to about 300, but not for long. This problem doesn't seem to happen much with web browsing or other internet things, but it's really getting me frustrated.

I have this problem with Battlefield 1942 mostly, but it seems to happen with just about every other game. What can I do to fix this? I don't want to have to deal with phone support!:|

 

[kyutip]

Try this.
Shutdown your comp, power off your cable modem, router (if you have).
Wait about a minute or more then power on your cable modem first.
after all lights on the cable modem are on and everything is fine, power on your router (if you have) then last your comp.
See if you notice any difference.
If not, you really need to call tech support to have them troubleshoot this.

 

[Xtremetechie]

I saw a similar scenerio were it was discovered that a neighbor had spliced the users cable line and was stealing tv, after we disconnected the splitter the connection worked perfectly, no more dropped packets. I have also seen bad cable modems produce similar symptoms.