40-60ms of lag... from a router?

[Ciph_Moo]

Hi everyone,

 

     So I got Starlink internet about a year ago and it has 100% changed my gaming with the low latency. (rural internet is AWEFUL)

I plugged my computer directly into the modem, and while playing WoW I was getting in the range of 80-150ms of latency (local + global) my wife's computer was connected via 5g wireless and it was about the same, even while streaming the latency did not change.

    Now the messy part.
     At our farm there are 2 houses, Mine and my parents house; my brother his wife have also been living with my parents since the pandemic.
In order to cut monthly internet fees we trenched a 400ft of RG11 Coax cable (was rated for burial) and we linked my starlink service to my parents house. I have Used an older Asus router (RT-AC66U) as a gateway to connect my pc, the digital-to-analog converter to run internet to my parents, ext.

    Anyway ever since we made that change our latency has increased, it stays in the 200-250ms range now! I have researched and used the router settings and fine tuned the QoS settings, tried disabling firewall, wifi. and I can't get my gameplay lag below the 200-220ms range.

 

    Is this just because of the older router? the increase of devices? I don't know I've kinda reached the end of my knowledge at this point

 

thanks for reading!

 

**edit: I thought I should add that the peak about of devices connected is around 12. 3 of which are connected to the starlink 5g wifi but they too are showing the same increase in lag.
 

[Levent]

May I ask why you bothered with coax in the first place? You could have easily ran a STP CAT5E/CAT6 for that distance and added latency would be less than using MoCA adapters and it would be cheaper. In your case, I dont think your issue is on your LAN but on Starlink. What is your ping to your network gateway?

Launch CMD on a Windows machine (or terminal on anything else)

Do tracert 1.1.1.1 (or traceroute 1.1.1.1 on anything else)

Compare your hops and their latency between your computer and the one running behind that coax connection.

Here is mine for example,

1) Is my router

2) Is my modem

3) Is the F/O to COAX adapter in the apartment (I use a cable connection)

4) Is the distribution box few hundred meters away.

Rest is the backbone stuff.

[Needfuldoer]

400 feet is pushing it for UTP, at that length you'd want fiber or point-to-point wireless. (That would also keep the two houses electrically isolated from each other.) Gigabit fiber media converters are affordable and introduce minimal latency.

 

What does your network layout look like? Can you throw a quick MSPaint sketch together?

[Ciph_Moo]

"May I ask why you bothered with coax in the first place? You could have easily ran a STP CAT5E/CAT6 for that distance and added latency would be less than using MoCA adapters and it would be cheaper. In your case, I dont think your issue is on your LAN but on Starlink. What is your ping to your network gateway?"

 

At the time it seemed to be the cheapest, also it was the most heavy duty/durable of the options. we have very rocky soil and lots of frost heaving in the spring so I wanted something that would stand the test of time. Plus my parents use the internet for FB and streaming services so they wouldn't necessarily care about slightly higher latency.

what I didn't account for is my brother and his family moving in with my parents, which significantly increased the number of devices and bandwidth usage.

 

Here is a screenshot of that trace route test as well as a msp diagram of our network.

 

again it's the 60-200% increase in latency compared to when I had my computer directly wired into the starlink modem that has me stumped, as well as the fact that my wife is experiencing the same increase.

[Shinon214]

wireless PTP not reliable and expensive.
a slightly moved the adjustment, there goes your stable connection.
some birds came or heavy rain fall, especially with thunder storm and strong winds, there goes your stable connection.
in an area where a lot of roofs is made of galvanized iron sheet and hot noon, there goes your stable connection.

used cheapo gigabit fiber optical media converter multiple 1 core fiber optic and with steel wire cable 1000m per roll never had an issue ever even on latency. I ping my router and results at <1.

anyways try using shorter cable with cat6 cable, directly from starlink modem/router to the said router. if it does have higher ping then maybe its your router.

[Ciph_Moo]

4 minutes ago, Shinon214 said:

try using shorter cable with cat6 cable

I had a 3ft cad5e cable that I used to connect my computer to the starlink modem, I now use that 3ft cable to connect the starlink to the asus router and a 15ft cad5e cable from the asus router to my computer.

 

27 minutes ago, Ciph_Moo said:

again it's the 60-200% increase in latency compared to when I had my computer directly wired into the starlink modem that has me stumped, as well as the fact that my wife is experiencing the same increase.

would the longer cad5e cable make that huge of a difference? I thought I might have been the shear increase in devices might be creating a bottleneck, but late last night I unplugged my parents ethernet cable connecting them to the network to see if that would resolve my latency. but it was still about the same.

[Needfuldoer]

1 hour ago, Ciph_Moo said:

I see the potential for multiple layers of NAT here: the Starlink modem, your Asus router, and the router at your parents' house. What address spaces are they all handing out on their LAN sides?

[Ciph_Moo]

24 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

I see the potential for multiple layers of NAT here: the Starlink modem, your Asus router, and the router at your parents' house. What address spaces are they all handing out on their LAN sides?

The Asus router is 192.168.2.1

The router at my parents house is 192.168.2.232 (it is currently set as an AP)

[Shinon214]

32 minutes ago, Ciph_Moo said:

I had a 3ft cad5e cable that I used to connect my computer to the starlink modem, I now use that 3ft cable to connect the starlink to the asus router and a 15ft cad5e cable from the asus router to my computer.

do you have other routers? doesn't matter if its cheapo or not, just for testing purposes.

[Blue4130]

2 hours ago, Ciph_Moo said:

"May I ask why you bothered with coax in the first place? You could have easily ran a STP CAT5E/CAT6 for that distance and added latency would be less than using MoCA adapters and it would be cheaper. In your case, I dont think your issue is on your LAN but on Starlink. What is your ping to your network gateway?"

 

At the time it seemed to be the cheapest, also it was the most heavy duty/durable of the options. we have very rocky soil and lots of frost heaving in the spring so I wanted something that would stand the test of time. Plus my parents use the internet for FB and streaming services so they wouldn't necessarily care about slightly higher latency.

what I didn't account for is my brother and his family moving in with my parents, which significantly increased the number of devices and bandwidth usage.

 

Here is a screenshot of that trace route test as well as a msp diagram of our network.

 

again it's the 60-200% increase in latency compared to when I had my computer directly wired into the starlink modem that has me stumped, as well as the fact that my wife is experiencing the same increase.

 

The way i am reading this, all the latency is happening after your equipment. What happens when you go back to your old setup? Does latency go back down?

[Ciph_Moo]

37 minutes ago, Shinon214 said:

do you have other routers? doesn't matter if its cheapo or not, just for testing purposes.

No I don't, I threw in this one just because I had it on hand.

18 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

The way i am reading this, all the latency is happening after your equipment. What happens when you go back to your old setup? Does latency go back down?

So I was actually just finishing that test when you sent this... It now makes no change you Discord or WoW latency at all... which makes me wonder what is causing this near double my normal latency. I'd want to say there is a ddos attack on blizz (again) but my guildmates haven't been experiencing the lag increase. idk I'm stumped

[Ciph_Moo]

So I tried using a VPN to Chicago (where the US central WoW server is) and my latency is now back to around normal at a range of 135-160ms in game (local + global). which is great compared to the 200-250+ I've been getting all week.
Anyone understand why this change would happen?

[Alex Atkin UK]

9 hours ago, Ciph_Moo said:

So I tried using a VPN to Chicago (where the US central WoW server is) and my latency is now back to around normal at a range of 135-160ms in game (local + global). which is great compared to the 200-250+ I've been getting all week.
Anyone understand why this change would happen?

More customers using the same sattelite?  Bad weather conditions?  I'd imagine something like Starlink has a LOT of factors even before reaching the ISP side.

I'm honestly surprised your latency was lower than even poor rural broadband.

[Needfuldoer]

5 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I'd imagine something like Starlink has a LOT of factors even before reaching the ISP side.

From what I understand, Starlink uses the Ku and Ka satellite bands. You'll see performance fluctuate due to cloud cover and weather conditions ("rain fade") at those frequencies, even on a 2.4 meter dish.

[Ciph_Moo]

1 hour ago, Needfuldoer said:

From what I understand, Starlink uses the Ku and Ka satellite bands. You'll see performance fluctuate due to cloud cover and weather conditions ("rain fade") at those frequencies, even on a 2.4 meter dish.

Yes that does happen, but not as much as you'd think, its much more reliable and stable of a connection than other satellite services we have used (by a massive amount actually). again our average latency for the past year has been about 120-160, with a full blown prairie blizzard causing it to stutter into the 200s for brief moments.

 

I tested my connection on speedtest.net and also tested it on my phones starlink app, with multiple tests both showed an average of 60-80ms latency, 145-155mps download, 16-24mps upload. which is all normal numbers to what I've periodically tested over the last year. but... I'm still in the 200+ ms of lag >.<

 

I just removed the starlink modem and set the Asus router to dhcp to see if that will improve things at all.