Problem with latency on some servers

[Trolles]

Hey guys!

Lets see if someone can help me fix this issue, it's been driving me mad for days.

Problem is I usually have a 24-28 ping in Spain servers but during some hours of the day (around 7-10pm) ping goes crazy and stays around 120-200. Strangely enough when this happens I try and play in DE servers without problems. But sometimes it happens randomly in those servers too.

I have cable, I disabled wifi without any results, disconnected any other device from the router, installed netlimiter to check if there was any hidden connection on my pc, all without success. I guess it may be a routing problem or something but I am not an expert.

Do you have any ideas why this could be happening?

Thank you very much

[Lorfa]

Join the Spain QL server.

Type \cl_CurrentServerAddress in the console (and hit enter). It will tell you the ip of the server you are connecting to. This looks like xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Write this number down, or toggle out and put it in a text file.

Open command prompt (start->run or Windows key+r, type in cmd and say ok or hit enter)

type in tracert xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (use the ip that you saved earlier for the xxx part, hit enter when done)

The first number on the left is called the "hop" and it represents a certain location on the way to the server whose ip you specified.

The next 3 numbers are the latencies in milliseconds. Usually the first hops have very low latency as they are closest to you.

The information on the right is either the ip, or the name information of the server for each given hop.

Don't worry too much about timeouts if they happen every time you run a tracert, some servers are set to refuse tracert packets.

If your ping times are not low in your first hops, or are very inconsistent, it may be something that your ISP can fix such as line noise.

It could also mean that your neighborhood node is saturated, as in there is not enough bandwidth available to it to handle the usage at those hours. Since 7-10 pm is "prime time" it is a likely culprit. Your ISP might be sympathetic to this and provide more bandwidth to the neighborhood but in general I've found ISPs to care little about the quality of connection they provide.. as long as they provide a connection.

If your ping times are high in the middle or at the last few hops, there is little you can do to address the problem since a change in routing is required. There are VPN services you could look into that allow you to "tunnel" through different servers, but these require a monthly fee. I think one was about $ 10/month.

[Trolles]

Thank you for the deep response, I will check it out later today and see what happens.

Cheers

[Trolles]

So, after testing several times when things are wrong here are the typical results:

Tracing route to dl255.dinaserver.com [82.98.131.171]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms 1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 * * * Request timed out.
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 * * * Request timed out.
6 68 ms 71 ms 71 ms 193.149.1.88
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 128 ms 112 ms 101 ms dl255.dinaserver.com [82.98.131.171]


Cant get much information :/. Do you think I should speak with the ISP?

[Lorfa]

Wow, that's a lot of timeouts. Do you get packet loss in-game? (cg_lagometer 2)

[Trolles]

Not really, I don't get a lot of packet loss (yellow spikes in lagometer right?), just some here and there. It is weird because I have problems in ES servers but if I go to DE I can play for hours without issue.

[Lorfa]

Packet loss are red bars.

[Trolles]

I have one red bar every 10 seconds or so with high ping.

Another example of the tracert:

Tracing route to dl255.dinaserver.com [82.98.131.171]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 * * * Request timed out.
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 * * * Request timed out.
6 129 ms 141 ms 107 ms 193.149.1.88
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 75 ms 136 ms 89 ms dl255.dinaserver.com [82.98.131.171]

Trace complete.

[Lorfa]

Looks like those servers are refusing tracert packets.

Still, yeesh. Hop 6 is already really unstable: 129 141 107..

I wonder if ping plotter can find your route better.

[Trolles]

Not much luck, taken in a moment of good ping:

http://imgur.com/rXbHRBr