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[Townendk]

Hello Guys, I'm hoping somebody can shed some light on my issues here since they're driving me mad and preventing me from doing what I enjoy - which is online gaming, namely World of Warcraft.

Basically, my ISP (BT Broadband) is supplying me with everything they're contracted to - 5xxxd/4xxu speeds, which is as far as I can get with their indian call centres.

However my ingame latency hovers around 700ms, spiking up to over 3000ms occasionally and giving me lagspikes of over 12 seconds making the game unplayable.

I've only had these issues since early December, so i'm not sure what could have changed to cause this.

I've followed the troubleshooting processes with the game manufacturors, configured my firewall properly and have invested in a new router (Netgear DG835G).

All my networking is done via ethernet, no wireless although I've tested the connection using wireless and got the same result, so I don't believe my NIC to be faulty.

Issues also continue on my laptop, so I fail to consider my PC as a problem.

I conducted a Line Quality test on the dslreports website and I got the following results:

http://www.dslreports.com/linequality/744438228a49/2329149

My friend who lives under the same exchange just round the corner is getting less than 2% packetloss on all tests as opposed to over 80%!

The Telephone wiring in my house is rather old, and I do not have a modern style master socket with the removable fascia and test socket, so I've requested for installation of a shiney new one, BT agreed and an engineer is booked for Friday (day after tomorrow).

When the engineer comes, he is also going to investigate at the telephone exchange - but I'm not holding my breath, I assume all he'll do is conduct a speed test, confirm my speed is fine then fob me off - I need to avoid this at all costs.

I've also been recommended to arrange having 'interleaving' disabled. I followed some instructions as to finding out whether or not interleaving is indeed on or off, but I'm confused as to my results:



I've also looked at my router statistics:

ADSL Link                   Downstream    Upstream
Connection Speed     5312 kbps         448 kbps
Line Attenuation        27 db                   7 db
Noise Margin                  8 db                    24 db

I'm really concerned that I'm the victim of poor BT infrastructure somewhere along the line and that a visit or two from a telecomms engineer won't bring me closer to being able to play online games again - hence me boring you lot with this information hoping that someone can make a suggestion for me to pass on to the engineer and aid him the best I can in resolving my fault.

Many Thanks in advance
Kyle

[Astral]

Hello Kyle

Welcome to the forum.

Your latency is exactly the same as mine. I am on BT with interleaving turned on. You definitely want interleaving turned off for games playing.

[Townendk]

Hello Kyle

Welcome to the forum.

Your latency is exactly the same as mine. I am on BT with interleaving turned on. You definitely want interleaving turned off for games playing.

Thanks for the welcome

Who should I contact to get interleaving disabled? Their India Support Line?

[guest]

Unless its a "twitch" game - first player shooters mainly - then you don't need interleaving turned off. You certainly won't notice a difference with MMORPGs (wife plays LOTRO). Your latency looks fine on the dslreports test but the packet loss doesn't. Routing to WoW servers has in the past been problematic to say the least but I've never played it so I don't know if there are currently issues on some servers.

Going by that stats screen there's nothing much wrong with your connection to the exchange but I suspect you took that shortly after you rebooted the router? If so then can you download around 500MB or so and then show us the stats again?

[Astral]

>Their India Support Line?<

Probably. My broadband is a business service  paid for by my employer and I seem to talk to a call centre in the UK. However when I asked for interleaving to be turned off it didn't happen. Whether "India" are any better at fulfilling customer requests is a moot point. Good luck anyway.

[Townendk]

Thanks for the replies so far guys.

Here is a screenshot after a few hours of "attempted" online gaming and a couple of 260mb downloads.

[guest]

There's nothing seriously amiss with that line. Certainly nothing that would explain 29% packet loss.

You are getting quite a low sync rate for the attenuation though which indicates it must be pretty noisy. I'd say its exchange contention or you're being throttled.

If you re-run the dslreports test early in the morning (say 7.30 am) what does it say - your previous test was at 18:18 which is peak time for your ISP.

[Townendk]

There's nothing seriously amiss with that line. Certainly nothing that would explain 29% packet loss.

You are getting quite a low sync rate for the attenuation though which indicates it must be pretty noisy. I'd say its exchange contention or you're being throttled.

If you re-run the dslreports test early in the morning (say 7.30 am) what does it say - your previous test was at 18:18 which is peak time for your ISP.

Thanks for your analysis

I've run the test just now, not quite 7:30 but close enough

http://www.dslreports.com/linequality/nil/2329843

It kinda worries me that it could be contention ratio causing this issue - that basically means that there is nothing that can be done by the engineer right?

If the line is 'noisy' what precautions can I take to make it clear as possible? If I can get the engineer to at least install a new master socket, that should help - right?

Many thanks again

[guest]

I've run the test just now, not quite 7:30 but close enough

http://www.dslreports.com/linequality/nil/2329843

It kinda worries me that it could be contention ratio causing this issue - that basically means that there is nothing that can be done by the engineer right?

If the line is 'noisy' what precautions can I take to make it clear as possible? If I can get the engineer to at least install a new master socket, that should help - right?

Much better on the packet loss for simple ping checks. If it IS contention then yes you are stuffed. Are you sure you haven't fallen foul of the BT Broadband AUP/FUP and are being throttled?

A new master socket is unlikely to make any difference. Is that where the router is plugged into or is it on an extension?

All improving the noise margin on the line would do anyway is result in a higher sync rate, which isn't really going to help as your packet loss doesn't appear to be caused by line errors.

Edit - the other possibility is that your router has some sort of DoS protection set and when dslreports hit you with 56k and 128k ping streams then it thinks that there's some sort of denial of service attack going on so doesn't reply to all the packets.

[Townendk]

Edit - the other possibility is that your router has some sort of DoS protection set and when dslreports hit you with 56k and 128k ping streams then it thinks that there's some sort of denial of service attack going on so doesn't reply to all the packets.

Is there any way I can check for this and/or disable it?

[guest]

What router is it?

If there is something like this then it'll normally be called IDS (Intrusion Detection System).

If you can't find that then disable your firewall on the router, rerun the dslreports test and then immediately enable the firewall again.

Edit - ah its a DG835 which I can't find on the Netgear site. Does the router have a "Logs" page and if so then does it have security warnings listed?

[Townendk]

What router is it?

If there is something like this then it'll normally be called IDS (Intrusion Detection System).

If you can't find that then disable your firewall on the router, rerun the dslreports test and then immediately enable the firewall again.

Edit - ah its a DG835 which I can't find on the Netgear site. Does the router have a "Logs" page and if so then does it have security warnings listed?

Sorry, it's a dg834 - typo on my part :<

[guest]

In that case is there anything listed in the security logs from either :

217.160.255.49 or 64.81.79.41

If there is then create a rule that allows all inbound traffic from both of those addresses.

[Townendk]

In that case is there anything listed in the security logs from either :

217.160.255.49 or 64.81.79.41

If there is then create a rule that allows all inbound traffic from both of those addresses.

I'm at work now, so won't be trying this until this evening :<

Thanks alot for your help so far

[guest]

You are aware that if the BT engineer finds nothing wrong with your line (and from the stats you have posted there is nothing wrong with it) then you're very likely to get charged £144 + VAT?