# Solved: very high latency on online games all of a sudden



## neenerface (May 1, 2008)

Hi all,

So despite playing just fine for years, last week I rebooted my computer and suddenly got insanely high latency on online games. I'm mainly using World of Warcraft to test the lag, but the same thing happens with other MMOs too.

The lag is slightly odd, and tends to spike a lot rather than being constant, but overall it's 6,000ms or more on every in-game action, which is totally unplayable. I have two PCs next to each other, both using the same router and modem, and the other PC is totally fine with no lag whatsoever. I've swapped the cable from the secondary PC to this one and it made no difference at all, so I'm inclined to think the problem doesn't rest with the modem, router or cable, but rather something unique to my PC. 

The rest of the internet seems more or less unaffected. Downloads are fine, as is browsing, except I have noticed that I frequently (10-20 times per day) get a blank page when clicking a link, and have to refresh the page to have it load again without a problem.

Does anybody have any ideas as to what the problem could be, or suggestions for me to try to help narrow the possibilities? I can try traceroutes or ping tests but I'm not sure what I should be looking for.

Here are the specs of things I think might be useful:

O/S - Windows XP SP2
Motherboard - ASRock P4VM800 (using the onboard network card, all drivers updated)
Router - Linksys WRT54G
Modem - Motorola SURFboard SB5100
Firewall - Sygate Pro 

Any help will be greatly appreciated, as I'm completely out of ideas.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

Did you try connecting directly to the modem to see if eliminating the router helps? Make sure you power cycle the modem whenever you change the attached device.


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## neenerface (May 1, 2008)

Heya, thanks for the reply. Always glad to know someone is listening! 

I did indeed correct directly to the modem, and the problem continued.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

Register at DSLReports and run their Line Quality Tests. It's best to run this test with a direct wired connection to eliminate any wireless issues from the results. It's useful many times to run this test several times, and we'd like to see each of the results. Post the results link from the top of the test display page for each test run here.

The link to post is near the top of the page and looks like:

If you wish to post this result to a forum, please copy/paste this URL
*http://www.dslreports.com/linequality/nil/2357195* <- _sample only, yours will obviously be different!_
and your IP will be disguised.

Copy/paste that link here.

*Note:* _You will have to enable PING (ICMP) request response either in your router (if you have one), or in your computer's firewall for direct modem connections. This is very important to get the most important part of the test to run._


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## neenerface (May 1, 2008)

Hey, sorry for the slow reply, the forum downtime got in the way! Nice new design though 

So I registered at DSLreports and ran the test a bunch of times, but no matter what I do I can't get the ICMP ping part of the test to work. I'm pretty sure I did absolutely everything I was supposed to do, but the test still keeps saying "target IP does not respond to ICMP ping"

I followed the FAQ guide on how to set up Sygate Firewall to be pingable (http://www.dslreports.com/faq/5345) and I turned off the "Block Anonymous Internet Requests" option on my router as per the FAQ (http://www.dslreports.com/faq/237) but the tests still couldn't fully complete. To make sure the problem wasn't the router, I bypassed it again, plugging straight into the modem, and still the test couldn't ping me.

I'm at a loss! Either way, here are the results of a few tests, just in case they're still useful:
http://www.dslreports.com/linequality/nil/2380835
http://www.dslreports.com/linequality/nil/2379936
http://www.dslreports.com/linequality/nil/2379934
http://www.dslreports.com/linequality/nil/2379762


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## tssells (Apr 20, 2007)

It is possible that your ISP is the cause of the problem too. I would check the game servers you are connecting to and see if you can connect to any other (local preferred) servers to see if you get the same response. 

One other thing to try would be doing a tracert from the command line on your machine to the IP Address of the game server. This should give you a good indication of where the biggest latency is occurring (hop with the biggest response time difference). 

Note: Downloads are not affected the way Game Respoonse Time (ms) is. It just isn't noticeable since with a game you have constant input / output flowing from your machine and a download is mostly received packets versus sent packets back to the server advising of successful receipt of packets. If you want more info on this search out syn / ack packets.


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## neenerface (May 1, 2008)

tssells said:


> It is possible that your ISP is the cause of the problem too. I would check the game servers you are connecting to and see if you can connect to any other (local preferred) servers to see if you get the same response.


But would an ISP problem only affect one of the computers, and not the others that are using the same router and everything?

I did try find another server that might behave differently, but after checking about 10-15 with no success, I stopped.



> One other thing to try would be doing a tracert from the command line on your machine to the IP Address of the game server. This should give you a good indication of where the biggest latency is occurring (hop with the biggest response time difference).


Yeah, doing tracerts was the first thing the Blizzard support guy suggested, but he couldn't really give me any feedback on it, and I don't personally know what to look for. Here's one I just took a second ago, while playing the game:

Tracing route to 206.17.111.101 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 19 ms 4 ms 4 ms 206.17.111.101 
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 16 ms 20 ms 16 ms rd1wh-ge3-0-0-8.vc.shawcable.net [64.59.159.147] 
4 15 ms 10 ms 21 ms rc1wh-ge9-0-0.vc.shawcable.net [66.163.69.109] 
5 * * 2307 ms rc1wt-pos1-0-0.wa.shawcable.net [66.163.76.2] 
6 43 ms 15 ms 16 ms te-3-4.car3.Seattle1.Level3.net [4.71.152.25] 
7 34 ms 64 ms 16 ms ge-2-0-0-52.gar1.Seattle1.Level3.net [4.68.105.41] 
8 26 ms 16 ms * 192.205.33.145 
9 101 ms 100 ms 91 ms ar1.st6wa.ip.att.net [12.127.6.169] 
10 92 ms 94 ms 90 ms cr1.st6wa.ip.att.net [12.122.23.129]
11 94 ms 96 ms 91 ms cr1.cgcil.ip.att.net [12.122.31.161] 
12 105 ms 93 ms 88 ms cr1.n54ny.ip.att.net [12.122.1.189]
13 116 ms 102 ms 92 ms cr2.n54ny.ip.att.net [12.122.2.14] 
14 101 ms 91 ms 89 ms cr1.cb1ma.ip.att.net [12.122.31.126] 
15 * * 3650 ms tbr1.cb1ma.ip.att.net [12.122.20.138] 
16 95 ms 115 ms 93 ms 12.127.5.93 
17 105 ms 99 ms 97 ms 12-122-254-14.attens.net [12.122.254.14] 
18 * * 3085 ms mdf001c7613r0004-gig-12-1.bos1.attens.net [12.130.0.174] 
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * * Request timed out.
26 * * * Request timed out.
27 * * * Request timed out.
28 * * * Request timed out.
29 * * * Request timed out.
30 * * * Request timed out.

Trace complete.

The way the latency spikes like that is indicative of the in-game behaviour too, where I get about 2 seconds of normality and then 15 seconds of lag, over and over until it disconnects me.


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## tssells (Apr 20, 2007)

Sorry I missed the part about on PC working fine. After re reading the post I would focus on the network card (onboard nic) on your machine. Try removing it from the device list and letting windows redetect it. If that doesn't work pickup a cheap PCI Network Card and go from there......


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

You need to configure the router to allow PING (ICMP) requests so we can see the most important part of the line quality tests.


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## neenerface (May 1, 2008)

JohnWill said:


> You need to configure the router to allow PING (ICMP) requests so we can see the most important part of the line quality tests.


See above. I'm fairly adamant I configured the router correctly to be pingable, but it still didn't work, so I bypassed the router entirely to make sure and still no success. I spent a lot of time trying to find out why it still wasn't allowing pings, because you'd said that was the most important part of the test, but even with no router and the firewall correctly set up, the test gives the same incomplete result.



> Sorry I missed the part about on PC working fine. After re reading the post I would focus on the network card (onboard nic) on your machine. Try removing it from the device list and letting windows redetect it. If that doesn't work pickup a cheap PCI Network Card and go from there......


the NIC drivers were one of the first things I updated, and without any apparent improvement. I think the cheap network card might be my next option.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

I think you're right, but I still can't figure out why the ping response doesn't work.


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## neenerface (May 1, 2008)

Okay, so to update this, I think I've fixed the problem.

The fact that I was failing the DSLreport tests even with my router bypassed and my Sygate firewall set up to be pingable got me thinking that the problem could well be the firewall. I'd turned it off with no benefit, but I know that often isn't enough so I completely uninstalled it and the problem went away instantly. Replaced it with Comodo (which seems to be popular?) and WoW and other games are running perfectly. 

So I guess something weird must've happened to my firewall, if such a thing is possible? Some sort of corruption or conflict with an update of some kind. Either way, thankyou kindly to JohnWill for setting me on the thought process that led me to try uninstalling it


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

Glad you got it sorted out. Firewalls are the bane of our existence here.


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