SG Broadband Community

I get horrible pings pretty much everywhere I go, (ESP game where i can get 300+ ping at bad times.)

I have tried installing the patches on this site and they did not help. When i ping servers from MS dos, i always get high pings as well (from 75 to updwards of 500) on sites such as yahoo, or even speedguide. I don't know what is wrong with my connection. DL speeds are bearable (around 100KB/s on a respectable site. Surfing is also fine, but Pings are just horrible..(ESPECIALLY so during peak hours)

Seems the only time i can get good ping is 3 AM in the morning.

Is there anything i can do to help my situation (and no getting DSL is not an option.)

I am using rogers cable in Toronto, Ontario. It may be an area problem, but i would doubt that it would give me bad speeds to this extend. It used to be on @home, but now it's just rogers, but that didnt change the fact that my pings were bad.


I'm very pissed at my ISP right now, and their useless tech support representives are a joke.

Right now there really is nothing you can do to help pings. Your speeds may be able to be tweaked some more so go to the tweaking forum and ask lobo for help

I work for a cable company and i will let u in on a secret. The horrible pings are probably due to your node(the are where the fiber turns into coax) is probably overloaded with modems. The return fiber can handle only so much traffic(like pouring sand through a pipe, the more sand you try to pour through the slower it gets) you won't notice much surf speed change but if u eye ur pings you will. A suggested number of modems per node is 150 max. yours is probably over that...

Thanks for that bit of info.
btw pings are ok at crappy hours of the day (early mornings , late nights)

I guess im trapped then , its really annoying to get 250 ping playing games or whatnot.

I think alotta ppl do use cable in my area. Just a question, is there any way for my ISP to upgrade the node ?
Will Bitching to their sales reps help at all?

Thanks alot , appreciate the help guys.

would anyone else care to comment on this??

i use adelphia powerlink and during the last 2 months my pings hav been overwhelmingly crappy at times. im playing cs and my ping is 50 then all of the sudden it skyrockets to 200+ and then goes down and keeps on doing that the whole time. when im surfing the web all of the sudden pages start to load slower than a 56k, then after a min or 2 it goes back to normal. i dont hav a firewall on when doing either, its not that. things were not like this before what can i do i tried the twaeks on this site with little success. what do i do?? is it time to get a different cable isp?? ifso what r some good and reliable cable isp's in the los angeles areas??? plz help me my ping spikes in CS are causing me to become a crappy player waaaaaaaaaa!

I have the same problem. When i 1st got my cable connection i really had good pings, 80 - 120 but suddenly my pings are now like above 3000.

Downloading, no problems with that. And when i ping a site in dos then they show a normal ping too, but not when i am actually gaming.

GhostRider, can that be the same problem..is there anything i/my ISP can do about it?

John

i would really like a reply.

is there any way the ISP could upgrade the nodes?

They'd have to order a new backhaul circuit from their network carrier. Which means, they spend a crap load of money so little jimmy can play his games without worry.

well they're rakin in enough cash for sub-par service.

Sorry it took me so long to reply, but there is a way for them to fix the problem if it is actually an overload of modems that is causeing it. depending on the kind of node. I know that with the kind we are useing(Scientific Atlanta Prism) we have had to install what is called a BDR 1 in 2 combiner. ie 1 forward and 2 returns to split the return fibers.(hince half the modems on one fiber the other half on the other)

Ghost has given you some good info, but there is a little more that you should be aware of.

Before this can be blamed on return path congestion, you need to determine exactly where the bottleneck is occuring. Instead of just using pings, perform a traceroute (from dos "TRACERT <site>"). Are you seeing the high ping times at the first hop (first site listed) or is it occuring further down the line. If the times are good to the first hop, but get worse after a few hops, then there si a good chance that your provider does not have sufficient bandwidth to support all of their subscribers. Just as you have an ISP, your provider has high bandwidth circuits that provide connectivity between the local network and the public internet.

If you are seeing high ping times at the first hop, then there is most likely one of two problems occuring.
1. Common path noise that is intermittant. THis could be something as weird as a neighbor that turns on an electric appliance that is backfeeding through their ground lines into the cable network and causing interference. If this did turn out to be the case, you would just have to stumble across that one determined and knowledgable technician to find the problem.
2. Conjestion (like Ghost indicated). However, most cable systems combine several upstream nodes into one upstream port on the router. If this is the case, your cable co could recombine the nodes to better ballance the number of users across the upstram ports. Also, if they utilie Cisco CMTS's, they can actually split one node across multiple upstream ports by using different frequencies for half of the modems.

so.....(sorry so long) in order to get to the source of your problem:
1. check the trace routes-if bottleneck is past first hop, ask cable co when they are going to upgrade network bandwidth (provided it is within their network)
2. Ask your cable co to check the number of users on your upstream port. If more than 200 (this can vary depending on the modulation they are using but this is a general rule) ask them when they will recombine or look into alternatives to spread out the traffic.
3. Ask your provider to run a bandwidth usage report for your port to see if the bandwidth is being overutilized.
4. If all of this looks good, they may need to start looking into intermittant cable issues.

Hope this helps.

griping to your sales rep or anyone else won't help, trust me. The steps they'd have to go through to get you ( and hundreds of other users ) would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and that's the exact reason why so many companys are going under today

Originally posted by Homicyde
i would really like a reply.

is there any way the ISP could upgrade the nodes?

what isp?

Well i'll do a tracert as soon as i get home, but i can tell you that the pings are not just bad on the first hop, but are totally erratic and almost always over 150 or 200ms.

btw my isp is rogers, or formerly Rogers@home.

I would also like to add one important fact that i neglected in my previous posts, the upload of my connection is horrible. I can only get around 5-15 kps upload at any time of day . I've tried mornings and late nights . Altough I notice it is worse at peak hours.

tracert to http://www.yahoo.com

Tracing route to http://www.yahoo.akadns.net [216.115.102.76]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 47 ms 35 ms 174 ms mcr4.mtmc.phub.net.cable.rogers.com [24.100.18.1
]
2 217 ms 246 ms 359 ms 24.112.249.161
3 435 ms 207 ms 204 ms gw01.esna.phub.net.cable.rogers.com [66.185.81.1
65]
4 208 ms 41 ms 114 ms gw02.mtnk.phub.net.cable.rogers.com [66.185.80.1
81]
5 224 ms 110 ms 117 ms gw01.mtnk.phub.net.cable.rogers.com [66.185.80.1
73]
6 150 ms 121 ms 167 ms gw02.wlfdle.phub.net.cable.rogers.com [66.185.80
.149]
7 653 ms 268 ms 276 ms 66.185.81.42
8 490 ms 202 ms 208 ms c1-pos10-0.bflony1.home.net [24.7.79.45]
9 148 ms 138 ms 132 ms c1-pos3-0.washdc1.home.net [24.7.69.41]
10 250 ms 125 ms 129 ms c2-pos10-0.washdc1.home.net [24.7.78.178]
11 391 ms 252 ms 340 ms pos6-1.core1.Washington1.Level3.net [209.0.227.1
17]
12 216 ms 61 ms 114 ms ae0-56.mp2.Washington1.Level3.net [64.159.18.162
]
13 535 ms 190 ms 171 ms so-2-0-0.mp2.SanJose1.Level3.net [64.159.0.218]
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 255 ms 304 ms 310 ms ge-2-3-0.msr2.pao.yahoo.com [216.115.101.46]
17 293 ms 131 ms 500 ms vl21.bas2.snv.yahoo.com [216.115.100.229]
18 342 ms 201 ms 155 ms http://www.yahoo.akadns.net [216.115.102.76]

Trace complete.


here is a test I ran at dslreports.com

Test running.........
** Speed 332(down)/26(up) kbps **
(At least 6 times faster than a 56k modem)
Finish.

A tech guy is coming to check it out on Wednesday, if that does not work , do i have the right to request a discount for such poor speeds? Has this worked for anyone else.

I have the same problem!! and an other too:

My provider had my connexion switched to smaalband, because my upstream volume for december was too hight.
And I can't do any games, counter strike, etc.... sombody sayed that my provider can " cut " the games, that 's a punishment ( to mutch upstream volume...). Is that possible to do for a provider??

I have a provider who work with the "optical cable", quicker than others cables. But, the dsl system is better , isn't right?
I have pings of 1000 , 3000, the sunday's, and during the evenings. is that possible that's my router , of the computers, of the cables are bads, of the modem?

for the games, coutner strike, tft, etc... cable of dsl?


p.s: excuse me for my bad english!, and thanks.

Originally posted by Homicyde
A tech guy is coming to check it out on Wednesday, if that does not work , do i have the right to request a discount for such poor speeds? Has this worked for anyone else.

A tech coming out cannot fix your problem. It looks like the is too much traffic on that network. It probably isn't a NODE issue. It looks like the problem starts with 24.100.18.1, which looks like the Head-end router. There could be too many customers on that upstream port. They might have to re-balance the router to split the balance of customers on that port.

Good luck! See if you have any neighbors that have the same problem.

Thank you !!!!

k a service guy came to my house, and didnt find any problems with the line, I'm sure that its not just me, cause my neighbour gets bad pings also.
Where do I go from here?

I used to have the same problem for like 2 years, was almost unplayable online. Finally I cancelled my cable service, then I reordered it(within the same week). They gave me a new modem and new IP and its been good ever since

My friend had the same problem and he just asked for a new modem, and they gave him a new IP along with it, and that fixed his problem as well.

Hope this helps

hmm im not sure that the modem is the problem but its worth a try. Also my upload is soo slow, it's only around 3-4/kb/s during peak hours.

ok they figured out its an area problem, how can i get my ISP to resolve it quicker?

Homycide where in Toronto do you live? because im having these same problems too, for a couple months now... im in scarborough, and cable is horribly slow, especiialy around 3pm - 12am or so.. its pissing me off and im wondering if switching to DSL will be better, eventhough their downstream isnt as fast as cable, the speeds i get now are ridiculous... and my upload speed doesnt get higher than 10 - 15k/sec.. damn rogers! also, what did you have to say to tech support for them to investigate the problem?

ok im just bumping this up cause i really wanna know how rogers is handling the situation and if i should do the same as homicyde...

you have to be quite direct to them, and describe your problem then mention that it is AN AREA problem , that is not local on your computer. Just keep calling them, the more ppl that call the higher chance they will service it.

In fact they have a policy on their website that says if speeds get slow they should do their best to upgrade it. (nodes servers etc. )

heres the email for rogers to bitch at them:
internetsupport@rci.rogers.com