Not ready to blame my PC

[El_Quesogrande]

So, this is kind of an ongoing story, so I'll do my best to sum up.

About a month ago, a representative from Time Warner (our ISP) asked if he could go into our back yard and go up the pole. Fine, sure, whatever. Ever since then, or close to it, we've had tons of latency, packet loss, and disconnects from online video games.

I had a tech come out and check our setup. He ran all kinds of tests at the wall connection, in the attic, outside, up the pole and in the library with the candlestick. He says that everything hardware-wise is fine. He mentioned something about 9 dB (I'm assuming that's what he meant, decibels) being fine.

So I ran a little test for him. I connect my PC directly to the modem and did
ping -t yahoo.com

No packet loss and latency of about 70ms. Great.

Next, I did
ping -t google.com

This time, we see about 18% packet loss. I repeat this test on my wife's PC with the same results. He tries the same test on his laptop. Google doesn't have any packet loss. He tries again for longer, without packet loss.

So to make me happy, he swaps the modem and goes on his way.

A friend loans me his tester laptop with a wireless NIC. This is a fresh install of windows XP with all updates. I connect to my router wirelessly and run the above tests with the same results. A neighbor has an open wireless router using the same ISP, so I connect to that router and run the tests with the same results. I connect wirelessly on my PC with a borrowed wireless card and test with the same results.

I grabbed PingPlotter and used yahoo.com and google.com as test cases. As before, google.com loses packets. I have results from these ping plots, and google always loses packets at one specific IP address, a Level3.net address in Dallas.

I have Avast antivirus that is updated and throroughly scanned. I have Adaware that is updated and thoroughly scanned. I have HijackThis scanned and checked. Tell me what to post and I'll post it. I just need to get this fixed on my end or ammunition to take to my ISP.

THANK YOU in advance!!

-El Q

[edit] p.s. my system is home built but only about a year or so old, my wife's computer is an old Dell Dimension tower, and we typically connect with cables instead of wireless.

[jasonb31]

Run this test and post the results.

http://nitro.ucsc.edu/

[helter]

So you have time warner cable, which comes in tow modem that has been swapped it then comes into a router which you have connected by Ethernet cables to the modem and to the two PC's. Without the router, there is no packet loss, with it there is.


This leaves


the ethernet cables not used with the direct modem connection and the router.

[Quesogrande]

Helter, I'm sorry if I mislead you, but there is packet loss whether we route through the router or straight to the Time Warner Cable modem.

Jasonb31, I'll run that test tonight and post my results.

[El_Quesogrande]

Run this test and post the results.

http://nitro.ucsc.edu/

Here you go:

Connected to: nitro.ucsc.edu -- Using IPv4 address
Checking for Middleboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Done
checking for firewalls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Done
running 10s outbound test (client-to-server [C2S]) . . . . . 488.0kb/s
running 10s inbound test (server-to-client [S2C]) . . . . . . 5.50Mb/s
Your PC is connected to a Cable/DSL modem
Information: Other network traffic is congesting the link

[helter]

Helter, I'm sorry if I mislead you, but there is packet loss whether we route through the router or straight to the Time Warner Cable modem.

Jasonb31, I'll run that test tonight and post my results.

OK, so you lose packets going straight to the modem.
ping 192.168.100.1 -n 1000

leave it for about 10 minutes.

this is pinging straight to the modem, or tests the computer NIC, Ethernet cables and modems Ethernet port. You should see <1 ms and 0% loss.

next try pinging the first hop you find in a tracert to any webpage with -n 1000 and see there.

[El_Quesogrande]

C:\Documents and Settings\peanut>ipconfig /all

Windows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : alphagonzo
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Unknown
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : earthlink.net

Ethernet adapter dumb:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : earthlink.net
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-17-31-CB-E9-16
Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.101
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.2
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.2
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.2
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Wednesday, February 20, 2008 9:15:59
PM
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Wednesday, February 27, 2008 9:15:59
PM

C:\Documents and Settings\peanut>tracert 192.168.100.1

Tracing route to 192.168.100.1 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.2
2 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.100.1

Trace complete.

[El_Quesogrande]

Ping statistics for 192.168.100.1:
Packets: Sent = 49, Received = 49, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 1ms, Maximum = 24ms, Average = 12ms


Ping statistics for 192.168.100.1:
Packets: Sent = 49, Received = 49, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 1ms, Maximum = 24ms, Average = 12ms

[El_Quesogrande]

so what this is telling me is that somewhere between the first hop of the tracert, which is my router (192.168.0.2) and my PC, there is latency. Similar results from my modem (192.168.100.1). Bad cat5 cables? I can try to reenable our wireless to see if I can at least verify that it's not the cat5 between the PC and the router.

What next?