Network latency issue, reduce it?

The Flying Sloth · July 18, 2020

Hey guys,

I'm in Australia and anyone who lives here knows the tale of NBN but I won't go into it beyond this, long and short of it is the government did a big upgrade to fibre optic across the whole country but before they could implement it they lost an election and the other side turned it into FTTN and made it cost a bunch more and it sucks.

Ever since this upgrade I've had some issues with latency when playing multiplayer games (on wifi using a range extender as my adapter bringing ethernet into my PC), it's not constant, I usually sit around 60ms in-game but that can spike to 300 and then play around in the high 100s which really doesn't help me do well. Speedtests always have my ping at around 11 ms so I assume this naturally higher base ping is due to using the extender but the spikes don't seem to line up with any other network activity. My question is this, do I need to run ethernet all the way along my house to fix the latency issues or is it possible that it's just the terrible fibre implementation and that won't do anything for me.

If anyone has any thoughts or ideas I'd be grateful if they shared them here.

Thanks

Sloth

PeterPorker3 · July 18, 2020

16 minutes ago, The Flying Sloth said:

Hey guys,

I'm in Australia and anyone who lives here knows the tale of NBN but I won't go into it beyond this, long and short of it is the government did a big upgrade to fibre optic across the whole country but before they could implement it they lost an election and the other side turned it into FTTN and made it cost a bunch more and it sucks.

Ever since this upgrade I've had some issues with latency when playing multiplayer games (on wifi using a range extender as my adapter bringing ethernet into my PC), it's not constant, I usually sit around 60ms in-game but that can spike to 300 and then play around in the high 100s which really doesn't help me do well. Speedtests always have my ping at around 11 ms so I assume this naturally higher base ping is due to using the extender but the spikes don't seem to line up with any other network activity. My question is this, do I need to run ethernet all the way along my house to fix the latency issues or is it possible that it's just the terrible fibre implementation and that won't do anything for me.

If anyone has any thoughts or ideas I'd be grateful if they shared them here.

Thanks

Sloth

Well if speedtest is saying your ping is 11, that's the ping between wherever that speedtest server is and you. Speedtest servers are usualy pretty near by, sometimes even hosted by your ISP, and therefor should have a good connection to you. If there is consistently high latency between your PC and your access point/router/internet service provider, speedtest would be able to tell you that, and because 11 ms ping is pretty good, that means all of your equipment is at least capable of a low latency connection. Most likely, the high ping in game is cause by a bad connection between your ISP and whatever game server you are connecting to, maybe due to them being located very far away or just having poor internet connections in the frist place. In that case, there's not a lot you can do, however its also possible that speedtest just happens to be getting good readings when you run the test, but your latency is inconsistent due to a bad wifi connection. In that case, Ethernet can help and give you a more consistent ping. At least try without a wifi extender and connect to your main wifi network because wifi extenders suck in general.

The Flying Sloth · July 19, 2020

7 hours ago, PeterPorker3 said:

At least try without a wifi extender and connect to your main wifi network because wifi extenders suck in general.

You misunderstand, I'm using an extender as a dedicated network card, it's not transmitting, just take the ethernet out from it and sent it to my PC.

The speedtest servers I use aren't run by my ISP and the game more specifically is Overwatch, I don't play many other multiplayer games where ping matters. My ping sits at 60 and spikes to 300 fairly regularly and sometimes goes a lot higher. I suppose I'll just deal with it for now, many thanks.

Alex Atkin UK · July 19, 2020

4 hours ago, The Flying Sloth said:

You misunderstand, I'm using an extender as a dedicated network card, it's not transmitting, just take the ethernet out from it and sent it to my PC.

The speedtest servers I use aren't run by my ISP and the game more specifically is Overwatch, I don't play many other multiplayer games where ping matters. My ping sits at 60 and spikes to 300 fairly regularly and sometimes goes a lot higher. I suppose I'll just deal with it for now, many thanks.

While you are correct in that it wont halve the bandwidth done like that, it still might be causing the latency, especially if its using older WiFi standards or a plug-in one where the antennas are internal and just generally everything is really close to the PSU.

If you can add a PCIe WiFi card you can at least eliminate that possibility, especially if you get one with a wired antenna you can move around for optimum signal.