Causes of Lag Spikes

Tar.Aldarion

What are the main things that causes lag spikes.
I have 2mb up and down broadband in Sligo with Fastcom.
http://www.fastcom.ie/products_home.php

I use it for gaming and ventrilo(a VOIP communications program used to chat to each other in game). Now my pings are fine. 30-50, which is grand for gaming but I get very regular lag spikes.

I will freeze up in game not being able to move or anything for a period between 1 and 10 seconds until service returns to the normal ping. Also, I will start recieving the communications sent to me over ventrilo either 30 seconds late... or it will stop completely for a minute and I will get it all at once sped up. A minutes conversation in 10 seconds, for example.

I could understand if the ping was always high and that was why I could not play it's very annoying to have perfect pings but still have an unplayable game.
I was wondering what causes you might suggest for this?

KoKane

Do you remember if you had these problems before the "upgrade of doom" applied nationwide?

These forums lit up fairly fast after the upgrade started rolling out. I'd blame EVERYTHING on that.

Tar.Aldarion

Personally I blame the recession. I believe it happened before that.
Added info, it happens if I use a wireless router or the wired connection.

Hank Scorpio

hi there
most likely its packetloss

run a ping comment in the windows prompt to the specified server with the subtext -t

for example

ping www.boards.ie -t

where boaeds.ie is the vent/game server ur connecting to

let it run for a while and examine it. then post the results here

challengemaster

Main thing that causes it? Ireland being shít at doing anything relating to internet services in a half decent way.

barnicles

Or ping boards.ie -n 250 will let you see percentage

Tar.Aldarion

Packets: Sent = 250, Received = 245, Lost = 5 (2% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 21ms, Maximum = 1366ms, Average = 96ms

It is worse in the evening though, simple trafiic? The game was running better htan usual during this test.

PogMoThoin

Its a wireless provider, do You have perfectly clear line of sight from your reciever to their access point?

Tar.Aldarion

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Its a wireless provider, do You have perfectly clear line of sight from your reciever to their access point?

I am not sure as I do not know where that is. The signal was perfect however when they came and instaled it. Might just be distance or something blocking it? Traffic? There are times when it runs perfectly so I know it can, this is usually late a t night so nobody else would be on.

PogMoThoin

Its in Your iterest to find out. Its the basis of any proper wireless connection, find out where their access point is, go up on your own roof and find out if you got line of sight, Ask them they'll tell You where it is

Tar.Aldarion

I'll try it, house is high and not much around so I imagine it is. If it's not, not much I can do.

Mothergoose555

fastcom use traffic shaping on their router. If you do a lot of P2p dl your shafted getting them to fix it, but if you don't ask them to sort it out for you so you can play games. They put it on every two months or so. It's annoying. But solveable.