Regular massive Latency Spikes

Technical Support
1

I’m running into numerous latency spike issues. These aren’t constant. Generally I’ll be able to play for awhile without issue and then experience a spike of hundreds to 1000m/s. Most of the time they’ll effectively put me out of the game for a good 10-15 seconds. Sometimes they’ll be bad enough to just straight up kill my connection.

For the sake of maintaining some privacy (Ignoring the MTR) I’m not posting my Modem…but it’s Broadcom based and generally regarded as “An Awesome Modem”. It’s also wired so not issues there.

I ran two separate MTR’s. The first, on the AI match as requested. The second, I just hopped into one of those RPG game servers so I wouldn’t be bored out of my mind.

I don’t recall any major latency spikes.

MTR1
|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

| WinMTR statistics |

| Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |

|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|

| 192.168.1.1 - 0 | 1659 | 1659 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 0 |

| 96.120.16.137 - 0 | 1659 | 1659 | 7 | 9 | 22 | 8 |

| Comcast Hop 3 - 0 | 1659 | 1659 | 5 | 10 | 70 | 10 |

| Comcast Hop 4 - 0 | 1659 | 1659 | 5 | 11 | 52 | 15 |

| Comcast Hop 5 - 0 | 1659 | 1659 | 12 | 17 | 34 | 16 |

| Comcast Hop 6 - 0 | 1659 | 1659 | 11 | 16 | 34 | 15 |

| 50.208.232.126 - 0 | 1659 | 1659 | 14 | 19 | 139 | 15 |

| ae1-br01-eqda6.as57976 net - 0 | 1659 | 1659 | 34 | 42 | 156 | 39 |

| et-0-0-4-br01-eqch2.as57976 net - 0 | 1659 | 1659 | 37 | 50 | 1706 | 38 |

I removed the (what looked to be) Comcast Hop names because of Privacy and because it made reading this annoying. I didn’t really notice anything off about those but I’m ready to be wrong.

MTR2
|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

| WinMTR statistics |

| Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |

|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|

| 192.168.1.1 - 0 | 1284 | 1284 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0 |

| 96.120.16.137 - 0 | 1284 | 1284 | 7 | 9 | 21 | 9 |

| Comcast Hop 3 - 0 | 1284 | 1284 | 6 | 10 | 60 | 11 |

| Comcast Hop 4 - 0 | 1284 | 1284 | 7 | 11 | 51 | 10 |

| Comcast Hop 5 - 0 | 1284 | 1284 | 13 | 17 | 32 | 17 |

| Comcast Hop 6 - 0 | 1284 | 1284 | 10 | 16 | 38 | 16 |

| 50.208.232.130 - 0 | 1284 | 1284 | 14 | 19 | 124 | 18 |

| ae1-br01-eqda6.as57976 net - 0 | 1284 | 1284 | 34 | 42 | 145 | 40 |

| et-0-0-4-br01-eqch2.as57976 net - 1 | 1228 | 1217 | 37 | 70 | 4896 | 51 |

Same deal.

What I have noticed is that there is, on both, a nasty spike between the final two hops. Both of which are Blizzard owned. And based in Amsterdam. K whatever.

I notice nothing really bad. On MTR2 I’m seeing a packetloss at the end, but that could be because the server had one of those silly script overflow things and reset. So MTR2 might be worthless but its still there just in case.

I did a couple of other MTR’s and it’s always the same. A small bump (in AVG and Worst) when jumping the pond, then a major bump between Blizzard’s two severs.

If this is going to be one of those “Let Comcast know about it” answers then I’m more than likely forced to quit playing. I mean these where the guys that insisted i was wrong when I told them the Non-Outdoor rated cable they installed was damaged from being outdoors.

In front of me.

Standing in front of the damaged cable that was not outdoor rated…outdoors.

2

I’ve also experienced this since new patch, I can get below 100 ms but then after a few secs it jumps to like 500-900 ms, in other games my connection is fine, but overwatch is not, its probably blizzard servers.

3

I’m normally in the 50’s. A typical lag spike for me would be 70’s-90’s.

It’s these quick massive ones which are making anything other than custom or arcade games a no-go for me.

4

Lets just wait till next patch i guess

5

At least I know I’m not the only one experiencing this. Every other game is fine, it’s just this one.

6

Same thing happening to me and I’ve never experienced this problem with Overwatch before.

7

Most of the Blizzard hops ignore a large percentage of ICMP requests (WinMTR-data style pings), so those numbers are heavily inflated/mostly useless for troubleshooting.

Same deal as above.

Unfortunately, since neither test captured a 500ms or greater latency spike like you mentioned, it’s hard to tell where that’s occurring. The only issues are a small bump on Comcast hop 3, and the last node 50.208.232.130 (which is also owned by Comcast), has a small lag spike.

If I were in this position, I’d keep WinMTR open in the background but not running. As soon as I started lagging, I’d click start and try to capture some data.

8

Hopefully this isn’t too late to post. I’ll try again in a few days if I don’t get a reply. But I finally managed to log a latency spike.

Unfortunately it’s not as easy as just leaving WinMTR running as the Spike lasts for seconds at most. Not nearly enough time to punch in the server address and start running it.

But after running it off an on, I have one and it appears to be on my end.

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

| WinMTR statistics |

| Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |

|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|

| 192.168.1.1 - 98 | 13681 | 363 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 |

| 96.120.16.137 - 99 | 18100 | 361 | 7 | 9 | 16 | 14 |

| Comcast hop 1 - 98 | 15511 | 365 | 8 | 10 | 36 | 10 |

| Comcast hop 2 - 98 | 13671 | 363 | 9 | 12 | 45 | 11 |

| Comcast hop 3 - 98 | 15557 | 365 | 15 | 17 | 28 | 15 |

| Comcast hop 4 - 98 | 15539 | 365 | 11 | 16 | 34 | 14 |

| 50.208.232.130 - 98 | 16684 | 362 | 14 | 20 | 133 | 17 |

| ae1-br01-eqda6.as57976net - 99 | 23648 | 359 | 37 | 42 | 140 | 39 |

| et-0-0-4-br01-eqch2.as57976net - 98 | 13796 | 363 | 33 | 47 | 464 | 70 |

Okay, so clearly the issue is between my computer and the router. There’s probably a few things I could do on my end. I’ll check to see if I have a BIOS update and maybe swap out the ethernet cable.

Thing is that this is incredibly random, only lasts for 10…maybe 30 seconds and only seems to impact Overwatch. None of that really strikes me as something inherently wrong with my computer.

I’m going to do the above now, but in the off chance that someone notices this, hopefully you can point me to some other solutions.

9

I have the same problem for 2 days now, game is fine and peak to 500 ms, did you try to test other game if it does the same thing, i only have problem with overwatch, and by t hat i mean forever… hey call your ips and tell them to fix it for you … (end of sarcasm)

11

These tests show a small spike in Comcast’s network handing off traffic to Blizzard. There is no issue between your PC and router in this test. I would encourage you to view the in-game netgraph (Ctrl+Shift+N) to look for SIM spikes (large white chunks on graph).

Not sure where this idea is coming from, but it’s simply inaccurate. The majority of issues that players have when connecting can be traced back to ISPs improperly funneling traffic to other routes (causing you to look like you’re connecting from a country you aren’t), or oversaturation/lag/packet loss. Your other post about this talks about your internet speed, but that does not mean anything in terms of connection quality. A speed test can’t tell you when your ISP lines are losing data.

12

What’s going to be the solution then? I’m assuming I read the massive packet loss on my router incorrectly.

If it’s “Talk to Comcast”, we might as well be honest as just say “Uninstall the game”. I have no idea how I’m supposed to explain “Well Comcast is occasionally not handing off data properly to servers owned by Blizzard” to phone support.

1 Like
13

Thankfully, you don’t have to explain it. They have staff that is trained to read WinMTR tests, so you would forward that information to them.

14

Can you specify why you think this is an issue with the handoff from Comcast to Blizzard. I’ve tried several solutions with them to no avail and it would be helpful If I knew what was cluing you in.

The MTR with actual loss is showing a 98% packet loss between my computer and the router which is why I keep going back to that.

15

Comcast hands off the 1st line here to their routing partner or another part of their network on the 2nd line. The 2nd line shows a slight ping increase from 34ms to 133ms. The 3rd line is Blizzard’s network, which includes the increased delay from Comcast’s network. In most cases, an ISP will not address such a low ping increase.

Due to their masking most of your network traffic, you’ll continue to see a ridiculous packet loss number. But I assure you, if you were losing 98% of your data, you wouldn’t even be able to access the forum, it would just time out.

Another thing you could explore is a hardware issue, like overheating or delayed response due to driver corruption/failure. What does the in-game netgraph look like? (Ctrl+Shift+N) Can you upload a screenshot to imgur?

16

I mentioned before, but this instance of severe latency happens irregularly and only with Overwatch. As you can see from earlier MTR’s, I do not suffer packet loss during 90% of playtime. It’s only during these (10-30 second) latency spikes/disconnects that I experience packet loss.

That it’s a hardware issue is entirely possible but that it only happens during Overwatch matches is odd. I suppose I could run an MTR on the default server that Blizzard lists on the MTR page for a few hours and notice if there is a problem there. Might eliminate Overwatch itself being the culprit.

17

We don’t need any other WinMTR tests at this time. Instead, it would be helpful if you could provide a screenshot of the netgraph. The netgraph tracks more than your connection to the server – it also monitors your hardware.

18

Just recently had the chance to block out a chunk of time to play long enough to cause a spike. But i managed to just now. I have several more images of this event but I think this is the worst.

I can’t post links so I hope the following isn’t against any rules.

LAT Spike - imgur com/QydI096
Normal Play - imgur com/a5ijUzq

19

What kind of modem is this? And can you factory reset it? If it’s working with the Puma 6 chipset, that could be your issue.

20

2 posts were split to a new topic: Cayen - High latency report

21

It’s the Netgear CM600. It uses a Broadcom chip (I believe the Broadcom BCM3384).