Diagnosing my networking issue

Wahnond · Post by **Wahnond** » Wed Mar 09, 2016 2:36 pm

First and foremost, I deeply appreciate any help I can get.

I am not satisfied with the performance results I get in gaming. Though my connection is absolutely flawless and perfect in all other aspects, and I cannot complain, this gaming-related problem has been a true pain in the ass. I need your help to try to pinpoint the cause of the issue and help me eliminate it.

Advertisted internet speed: 240 Mbps downstream, 20 Mbps upstream
Actual transfer speed: equals Advertisted Internet Speed (95% of the time I checked)
ISP, connection type: UPC Ceska Republika, s.r.o., Fiber-optic connection, connected from modem to my PC via cable
Modem: Technicolor TC7200.U
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1

TCP Analyzer

« SpeedGuide.net TCP Analyzer Results »
Tested on: 2016.03.09 13:06
Client OS/browser: Windows 7 (Firefox 44.0)

TCP options string: 020405b401010402
MSS: 1460
MTU: 1500
TCP Window: 64240 (multiple of MSS)
RWIN Scaling: 0 bits
Unscaled RWIN : 64240
Recommended RWINs: 64240, 128480, 256960, 513920, 1027840
BDP limit (200ms): 2570kbps (321KBytes/s)
BDP limit (500ms): 1028kbps (128KBytes/s)
MTU Discovery: ON
TTL: 49
Timestamps: OFF
SACKs: ON
IP ToS: 00000000 (0)

TCP Optimizer settings (I believe I have messed with these, because this problem has been very persistent and Optimal settings showed no apparent improval):

If anyone would be interested, I can run a Network Diagnostic Tool by Measurement Lab as well.

PS: I know this could be caused by electromagnetic interference, among many other things, but I am most interested in you checking my internet settings and whether you see anything suspicious within the results I posted above.

Post by **Philip** » Wed Mar 09, 2016 8:07 pm

There is nothing that jumps out of the box... Except that you've disabled "TCP Auto Tuning", which will prevent high-speed transfers at higher latencies (servers distant from you).

Have you looked through the Gaming Tweaks article on the main site ? http://www.speedguide.net/articles/gaming-tweaks-5812 It also links to a "Network Adapter Optimization" article that gives out plenty of information on each possible setting related to gaming.

You may want to post a tracert, you can see how far from you the latency occurs and whether it is close to your end.
You did not specify what game(s), and whether you are using wired or wireless locally.
Also, keep in mind that while you may be getting that advertised speed to your city/country/ISP, you will not be able to have that across countries/continents on a residential connection. In addition, latency (sometimes jitter) often plays more important role than throughput.

Wahnond · Post by **Wahnond** » Thu Mar 10, 2016 11:46 am

Philip wrote:There is nothing that jumps out of the box... Except that you've disabled "TCP Auto Tuning", which will prevent high-speed transfers at higher latencies (servers distant from you).

Have you looked through the Gaming Tweaks article on the main site ? http://www.speedguide.net/articles/gaming-tweaks-5812 It also links to a "Network Adapter Optimization" article that gives out plenty of information on each possible setting related to gaming.

You may want to post a tracert, you can see how far from you the latency occurs and whether it is close to your end.
You did not specify what game(s), and whether you are using wired or wireless locally.
Also, keep in mind that while you may be getting that advertised speed to your city/country/ISP, you will not be able to have that across countries/continents on a residential connection. In addition, latency (sometimes jitter) often plays more important role than throughput.

Hello Philip,

thank you very much for giving me your time. I appreciate it much more than it looks like - really.

As far as I remember, I have went through all the possible tweaks on SpeedGuide and applied them to my system, and though there were some quite noticeable performance improvements, none have fixed the specific problem I have. However, I wouldnt mind at all if someone went through the process of tweaking my system again, on the contrary, I would love that to happen. But I doubt anyone has that much time and will at their disposal.

I am using wired connection. It happens in literally every First Person Shooter games there is, in League of Legends too. I can describe the issue in detail, but only if you want me to do so.
I live in Czech republic, which geographically is a great location for gaming, I believe. My ping almost never goes beyond 50 in all servers I play on, I take very good care of that. But the issue happens even when my ping is 6, et cetera... Jitter last time I checked ranged from 2 to 5.

___________________________________________________________________________

Here I tracert a official Valve CS:GO server:

Microsoft Windows [Verze 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Windows\system32>tracert 146.66.155.104

Tracing route to 146.66.155.104 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 < 1 ms < 1 ms < 1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 8 ms 8 ms 7 ms static-84-242-127-225.net.upcbroadband.cz [84.242.127.225]
4 13 ms 10 ms 11 ms cz-prg02a-ra2-vla2115.net.upc.cz [84.116.221.62]
5 11 ms 8 ms 11 ms cz-prg01a-ra1-ge-0-0-0-v50.aorta.net [213.46.172.18]
6 9 ms 11 ms 8 ms prag-bb1-link.telia.net [213.155.131.64]
7 15 ms 17 ms 14 ms win-b4-link.telia.net [62.115.137.1]
8 14 ms 16 ms 15 ms valve-ic-156665-win-b4.c.telia.net [195.12.255.186]
9 * * * Request timed out.
10 14 ms 17 ms 16 ms 146.66.155.104

Trace complete.

C:\Windows\system32>

Tracert to Czech website:

Microsoft Windows [Verze 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. Všechna práva vyhrazena.

C:\Windows\system32>tracert seznam.cz

Výpis trasy k seznam.cz [77.75.79.39]
s nejvýše 30 směrováními:

1 < 1 ms < 1 ms < 1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 * * * Vypršel časový limit žádosti.
3 9 ms 6 ms 9 ms static-84-242-127-225.net.upcbroadband.cz [84.242.127.225]
4 8 ms 10 ms 8 ms cz-prg02a-ra2-vla2115.net.upc.cz [84.116.221.62]
5 10 ms 9 ms 11 ms nix4.seznam.cz [91.210.16.195]
6 9 ms 10 ms 9 ms 77.75.75.222
7 8 ms 10 ms 12 ms http://www.seznam.cz [77.75.79.39]

Trasování bylo dokončeno.

C:\Windows\system32>

Tracert to German website:

Microsoft Windows [Verze 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. Všechna práva vyhrazena.

C:\Windows\system32>tracert molkerei-weihenstephan.de

Výpis trasy k molkerei-weihenstephan.de [193.138.114.24]
s nejvýše 30 směrováními:

1 < 1 ms < 1 ms < 1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 * * * Vypršel časový limit žádosti.
3 8 ms 9 ms 6 ms static-84-242-127-225.net.upcbroadband.cz [84.242.127.225]
4 17 ms 16 ms 16 ms cz-prg02a-ra2-vla2115.net.upc.cz [84.116.221.62]
5 16 ms 15 ms 15 ms at-vie01a-rd1-ae27-0.aorta.net [213.46.160.173]
6 17 ms 14 ms 16 ms at-vie05b-ri2-ae4-0.aorta.net [213.46.173.117]
7 16 ms 19 ms 15 ms f-ed2.f.de.net.dtag.de [193.159.227.137]
8 27 ms 25 ms 26 ms a-eb1-i.A.DE.NET.DTAG.DE [62.154.126.46]
9 28 ms 25 ms 25 ms a-eb1-i.A.DE.NET.DTAG.DE [62.154.126.46]
10 28 ms 25 ms 23 ms 62.157.251.126
11 27 ms 26 ms 29 ms 193.138.114.210
12 27 ms 29 ms 37 ms ar24web.muellergroup-service.com [193.138.114.24]

Trasování bylo dokončeno.

C:\Windows\system32>

___________________________________________________________________________

Please, if there is any more information I can provide which might possibly lead to you finding the culprit, dont hesitate to ask!

cchooper · Post by **cchooper** » Thu Mar 10, 2016 9:09 pm

Dang, I wish I had that Internet connection

For a start, I'd be interested in seeing what your Negalyzr results are: http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/

I'm particularly interested in seeing how much latency your upstream and downstream buffers introduce

Wahnond · Post by **Wahnond** » Fri Mar 11, 2016 10:57 am

cchooper wrote:Dang, I wish I had that Internet connection

For a start, I'd be interested in seeing what your Negalyzr results are: http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/

I'm particularly interested in seeing how much latency your upstream and downstream buffers introduce

Hello cchooper,

thank you for your input. Netalyzr seems very useful, I absolutely love it! I did what you asked me to do, though perhaps not exactly in a correct way:

I got a Firewall prompt and as traditionally, I clicked Cancel (always do that, but I can change that and run the tests again, if it were important).
I did multiple tests with slightly different settings.

In the entire testing, Noteworthy Events were:
________________________________________________________________________________________________

Certain TCP protocols are blocked in outbound traffic (same for all tests, protocols: 465, 993, 995).
________________________________________________________________________________________________

We detected at least one proxy (same for all tests):

Port: 25 , Response Time: 1 ms
Port: 110 (POP3), Response Time: 1 ms
Port: 143 (IMAP), Response Time: 1 ms
Port: 465 (SMTP/SSL), Response Time: 0 ms
Port: 587 (Authenticated SMTP), Response Time: 0 ms
Port: 993 (IMAP/SSL), Response Time: 0 ms
Port: 995 (POP/SSL), Response Time: 1 ms
________________________________________________________________________________________________

Network buffer measurements:

1st test, TCP Auto Tuning Disabled, unlimited speed: Uplink is good, Downlink 76 ms
2nd test, TCP Auto Tuning Normal, unlimited speed: Uplink is good, Downlink is good
3rd test, TCP Auto Tuning Disabled, speed limited to 10 Mbps: Uplink is good, Downlink 110 ms
4rd test, TCP Auto Tuning Normal, speed limited to 10 Mbps: Uplink is good, Downlink 120 ms
5th test, TCP Auto Tuning Disabled, unlimited speed: Uplink is good, Downlink is good
6th test, TCP Auto Tuning Normal, unlimited speed: Uplink is good, Downlink 83 ms

I changed the TCP Auto Tuning because I ve only been using that setting recently and because I was curious too, but apparently, it didnt really matter. Out of curiosity I also ran the tests with speed limited to 10 Mbps (because I ve tried limiting my speed in the past too, in hopes it would ve helped my problem).

Post by **Philip** » Sun Mar 13, 2016 6:57 pm

Your latency looks good, your speed is fine, I would turn on TCP Auto Tuning, but that's just me.

What's the issue you are having if it is not latency ? Is it related to time of day, or any other user/software on your local network consuming traffic ?

Wahnond · Post by **Wahnond** » Tue Mar 15, 2016 9:58 am

Philip wrote:Your latency looks good, your speed is fine, I would turn on TCP Auto Tuning, but that's just me.

What's the issue you are having if it is not latency ? Is it related to time of day, or any other user/software on your local network consuming traffic ?

It seems to be absolutely random. Over the years, I have tried playing at all times of day and night, I have even turned off my antivirus and Firewall when playing, it didnt help either. There are 2 more users who use the same local network, but even if they are both sleeping, there is still that problem going on.

The problem is that whenever I am shooting someone, the bullets simply are NOT registered by the server, or very weird bugs happen between me and the server (very common bug in all those games is doing 99 damage, but the person you are shooting is unable to die for a temporary moment anyway). Now, you might say that its just a problem in the engine of that game, but it happens in all of them and I have seen videos on YouTube/Twitch where the game was absolutely smooth and close to flawless. So I think the problem is definitely client-sided.

In League of Legends it slightly differs. The core stays the same though - abilities go through the enemies without dealing damage and I have problems using active items. Lets say, I can press BotRK ten times but it wont work until the eleventh attempt.

Wahnond · Post by **Wahnond** » Mon Mar 21, 2016 10:01 am

So, thats it? Theres nothing that can be done?

Post by **Philip** » Mon Mar 21, 2016 3:09 pm

I don't know, to me it sounds like either latency or packet prioritization/aggregation at your ISP, I doubt you can do much about it on the client side though.

Wahnond · Post by **Wahnond** » Tue Mar 22, 2016 11:44 am

Philip wrote:I don't know, to me it sounds like either latency or packet prioritization/aggregation at your ISP, I doubt you can do much about it on the client side though.

If I called my ISP and asked them about that, do you think they would disclose such information to me? Also, would there be any way to verify whether they are talking the truth? I know that these two questions may sound quite weird, but I am just desperate when it comes to this. I have gotten to Global Elite in CS GO in just 150 wins and wanted to slowly climb my way into pro scene, but this problem makes it literally impossible for me to improve in any gameplay aspect.

Or maybe there are ISPs who focus on providing internet solely for gaming? I doubt, but had to ask anyway.
Also, thank you for all your time and replies.

Post by **Philip** » Tue Mar 22, 2016 5:24 pm

I doubt anyone that you can talk directly to would even know the technical details of their backbone equipment/setup/peering arrangements even..

You can try to talk to some other gamer in your area on the same ISP to see if the issue is common ?
You can try using some type of VPN service in your area that has servers physically close to you and your ISP - that way, your ISP is only responsible for the connection between you and that VPN server, and the rest would be handled by the VPN provider, that may have an effect as well.

Wahnond · Post by **Wahnond** » Fri Apr 29, 2016 11:46 am

Philip wrote:I doubt anyone that you can talk directly to would even know the technical details of their backbone equipment/setup/peering arrangements even..

You can try to talk to some other gamer in your area on the same ISP to see if the issue is common ?
You can try using some type of VPN service in your area that has servers physically close to you and your ISP - that way, your ISP is only responsible for the connection between you and that VPN server, and the rest would be handled by the VPN provider, that may have an effect as well.

I would like to use a VPN, but I have no idea which one to try. Would you have any recommendations for me, please? I have tried WTFast in the past, but heard it is a spyware, or something like that. No idea if that is truth, though. Oh and, if you do not want to publicly advertise anyone, perhaps you could PM me. Thank you very much!

Post by **Philip** » Fri Apr 29, 2016 1:01 pm

I would choose a VPN provider that meets most of the following:

1. It has servers close to your physical location (and possibly many more in different countries)
2. It supports multiple protocols, i.e. PPtP, OpenVPN
3. Unlimited bandwidth, you'd have to actually measure their capacity to handle high-speed transfers, low latency, etc.

There are a number of other less important considerations you can add to the above, but those would be the big 3 for me. I use IPVanish personally, and I am happy with it, but I am not sure how they perform near your location.