networking - How to fix my internet connection/bad ping

07
2014-04
  • user286092

    First of all thanks for any help!

    To start with, my internet speeds are bad (3 down and 3/4 up) I can normally play Minecraft with very little lag (me and my 2 bros that play).

    Recently my Internet has been degraded significantly with high ping/bad internet speeds, but in spikes!

    First of all we started with a old gateway router, wireless connection and extender. Just last night we set up a Netgear WPN824N router, and set it up LAN, this helped... but still had some lag with just the 3 of us with Minecraft (bearable but still annoying)

    But it seems we found a/the problem! when we blocked my sister's nexus 7 (1st gen) which she recently got back, IT WAS AMAZING, no lag (on the old router, wireless).

    I don't understand how we can have other tablets on the network and no lag, but my sisters Nexus 7 causes lag, this is the best tablet on the network! (we have a few others... all cheap tablets)

    I need to fix the problem with her tablet so I can have her on the network with us.

    So things I've ruled out as problems:

    1. Router
    2. Wireless/wired makes no difference (small but has been tested both ways)
    3. Only my pc, this is on mine, my 2 brothers machines as well
    4. Other Tablets on my network (although they pull some, its not to bad)

    Interesting things to note:

    1. I do know that there are some video sites that dont compress videos correctly, will have the same effect on the network, so much so, I used to be able to tell when someone was on one of those sites!
    2. It makes both ping and Internet speed go up and down!
    3. We have a network extender (but we have tried to turn that off, does nothing)
    4. HP Printer on my network
    5. Many PCs and tablets (although wasn't a problem with any but the Nexus 7)

    Important things:

    1. When restarting the router there is about 1 minute that it goes really well, NO LAG! but then I'm assuming there is something clogging it up!
    2. Normal ping to Google.com or 8.8.8.8 goes from 35 ms spiking at about 50 ms
    3. Bad ping goes 100 ms low to almost 1000 ms and servers that I connect to are always request timed out!

    As you can see with the screenshot below, there is something pulling all the internet speed at times! then it just stops...

    Last thing I might add that normally when it drops ping from really high to low... it has 1 request timed out, then goes low!

    If you have any ideas or questions be sure to ask!
    Thanks for your time and support!
    Justin

    PS Screenshot of pinging -t 8.8.8.8 http://postimg.org/image/3jwqdb525/

    Sorry cant post images yet....

    • Answers
    Know someone who can answer? Share a link to this question via email, Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.

    Related Question

    networking - A better way to monitor my internet connection other than ping
  • Cawas

    edit: despite the very good answer I once accepted, now I'm look for a simpler tool that requires no installation or preparation. Something like a ping with a timestamp would be of great help already.

    Once in a while I get bad Internet connection access points. Be it physical cables, WiFi or 3G spots. And I always figured how good would it be to have a way to monitor it, to determine exactly where's the issue and either consider trying to fix it or just accept there's no way.

    My current way of doing it is freaking ping. I ping any Internet IP I memorized and the Gateway. That tells me if the router is bad, eventually. Or that the Internet fell down, and it's not my computer issue, but not for how long it's down. Neither that it did so X hours ago, and that's why my download didn't went through, rather than some torrent issue, or server maintenance. And so on. Ping is a very old tool and not full featured at all.

    Currently came to my attention another way of doing it: logmein logs (idea came from looking at console). But I couldn't make much use of any of those logs so far. Anyway...

    Here I ask if there is any software, free and/or paid, that can give us those basic stats about our current network connection. And a connection graphic over time would be a big plus!


    • Related Answers
  • mazianni

    If all of your devices can do SNMP, you could use MRTG http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg/

    Alternately, you could run smokeping. http://oss.oetiker.ch/smokeping/

    Either one should give you some nice graphs, you can see when your network use is high, when it's utterly flat, etc.

    You can use Nagios to alert you when there's a problem, smokeping might do it to, it's been awhile since I've used it.

  • kagali-san
    1. Switch from using ping to tracepath (traceroute)
    2. Install Nagios (it is available for Windows too), then write a tracepath/ping module (or take something from a standart bundle)
  • 3d1l

    I created this simple batch file:

    @echo off
echo Internet Service Availability for %date%
:again
ping 70.45.95.8 -n 1 -l 1
time /T
timeout /T 300 > nul
goto again

    Run it redirecting it to a file the like c:>run.bat > statuslog.txt. The /T flag of the timeout command sets the pooling time interval, in this case 5 minutes. The /T flag for the time command provides the time stamp. You can then check the created file for reply or request time out patterns.

    Another alternative (the one I prefer), is to use one of the following freeware utilities that provides a more professional result:

    Pingplotter Freeware
EMCO Ping Monitor free
Internet Connectivity Monitor (java app)