Routing problems?

[therealvee]

Hey all been having an issue with packet loss in a bunch of games for the past couple of weeks and am not really sure what I can do to fix the problems. I've contacted my provider 6 times and none of their proposed solutions or troubleshooting methods have helped. Recently had a tech come to my house and replace the router and ONT on the side of the house and I'm still having problems. I believe my issue stems from poor routing as the only temporary fix I have is using a VPN but even then I'm at the mercy of their service. At this point I'm just wondering if there was anything I could do outside of switching providers.The entire process with them has been incredibly vague and if it was entirely out of their control I would understand but all they do is give me the run around. Any suggestions?

[mynameisjuan]

What about of loss are you seeing?

What troubleshooting did you do?

What troubleshooting did they do?

[therealvee]

On 9/28/2019 at 9:00 PM, mynameisjuan said:

What about of loss are you seeing?

What troubleshooting did you do?

What troubleshooting did they do?

around 10-20% over several hops, they've replaced the ONT on the side of my house, remote reset my lines multiple times (my understanding is they also plugged me into a different line) and replaced the router. Using a VPN is my only solution right now but that's only when it wants to cooperate

[mynameisjuan]

1 minute ago, therealvee said:

around 10-20% over several hops, they've replaced the ONT on the side of my house, remote reset my lines multiple times (my understanding is they also plugged me into a different line) and replaced the router. Using a VPN is my only solution right now but that's only when it wants to cooperate

How many hops before you start seeing loss? 

VPN suddenly fixing the problem is clear its not your ONT or possibly even your provider. Them replacing equipment is them just making the customer happy. 

I dont use it but results from software like PingPlotter would help narrow down the issue. 

[mtz_federico]

you should try replacing the router (if possible) with another one.

Ask someone if you can borrow a router or check the return policies on your local stores.

[therealvee]

On 9/30/2019 at 9:45 PM, mynameisjuan said:

How many hops before you start seeing loss? 

VPN suddenly fixing the problem is clear its not your ONT or possibly even your provider. Them replacing equipment is them just making the customer happy. 

I dont use it but results from software like PingPlotter would help narrow down the issue. 

Yeah I imagine they're just doing things to placate me but the problem is none of their solutions have actually helped. The problems usually start at hop 4, in this case level3 is giving me some loss but I was reading a bit online and that seems like it has to do with icmp requests. Included a screenshot of WinMTR

 

On 10/1/2019 at 10:08 AM, mtz_federico said:

you should try replacing the router (if possible) with another one.

Ask someone if you can borrow a router or check the return policies on your local stores.

I've already had it replaced and the issue persists.

 

[Donut417]

1 hour ago, therealvee said:

I've already had it replaced and the issue persists.

Looks like there is an issue with Level3. Thats outside your ISP's control possbily. It could be a congrested peering point. As in the link between your ISP and Level3 is too saturated. 

 

Thought you have Fronteir, and they are always on the edge of going out of business. They made some stupid choices when buying territory from Verizon. 

[mynameisjuan]

The issue is not with Level3 but your gateway device or equipment between it. Notice the peaks. This could be congestion on your network, on theirs, but the impact is not that high.

 

Ignore the packet loss on the Level3, that's usually due to ECMP where the public interfaces of the alternative routes don't respond publicly.

 

Where did you start noticing the packet loss? Actually in game monitoring or just notice lag spikes and troubleshot after?

[therealvee]

6 hours ago, mynameisjuan said:

The issue is not with Level3 but your gateway device or equipment between it. Notice the peaks. This could be congestion on your network, on theirs, but the impact is not that high.

 

Ignore the packet loss on the Level3, that's usually due to ECMP where the public interfaces of the alternative routes don't respond publicly.

 

Where did you start noticing the packet loss? Actually in game monitoring or just notice lag spikes and troubleshot after?

It's been this way for at least 2 months now, I gave the problem the benefit of the doubt for a bit and was making due with a VPN solution but lately the VPN has been getting really congested and not working for me. Not sure if it's been going on for longer than that, I mostly play Apex Legends now and in past versions of the game there were no network indicators so I very likely just thought other players were having issues or the game was running poorly. Now that there are network indicators I can see I have constant loss and the players hitching/freezing and general laggy feeling I get is from that. I have at least 10 devices connected to the network but only 6 are active at most doing light work like web browsing. After installing fresh hardware and re-configuring my network I tried my connection with only my PC active and the problem was still there.

 

20 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Looks like there is an issue with Level3. Thats outside your ISP's control possbily. It could be a congrested peering point. As in the link between your ISP and Level3 is too saturated. 

 

Thought you have Fronteir, and they are always on the edge of going out of business. They made some stupid choices when buying territory from Verizon. 

Yeah that's what I was reading but unfortunately there are only 2 ISPs available in my area and the other one was a mess that caused the switch to Frontier. It's just frustrating when they don't tell you anything even if it's out of their control