why am I getting ping spikes?

[MassimoT]

So as of recently, i've been playing onlines games, and sometimes, my ping to all of my servers can increase by 250ms. for example, one server, I normally get 55-56ms to, and I've been getting up to 200ms on it. However somtimes this "lag" stops and it goes back to normal. Or sometimes what often happens is, my ping goes down to 88 or 97ms, which is playable, but I dont understand why this is happening. I did a tracert on this server in CMD. here is the result I got when it was really bad: Gyazo - 41e130928c002e35861fbe8abe12858c.png

What it looks like to me is, there isnt any issue on my end. It isnt my pc, as I've run the same command on another laptop and have gotten the same result, and the ping hops shown in that CMD test shows that my ping is perfectly fine from my PC to router, and from router to modem, and from modem to ISP. (my ISp is located in tampa, Florida as showed in the picture) I've also concluded that the issue is with my routing to the server itself, for some reason, the direction my packets are travelling to the server is sometimes slow, like the host of whatever server my ping is hopping to to connect to the game server itself is lagging. I hope this makes sense. please let me know if there is anything I can do to try and help the problem. i've tried almost everything in the book.

P.S. When I use a program called WTFast, it completely eliminates the problem because it reroutes my connection. However I am not able to use WTFast on all servers, so sometimes I can either not play at all, or play with terrible lag.

[7e18n1]

Assuming you’re using Home Fusion, line 5 in your trace is the backbone (alter.net is owned by Verizon). Line 6, Telia-Sonera is a European internet provider and 62.115.136.x is Barcelona, Spain and helps explain part of the lag. Lines 1 to 5 look good and effectively rule out you and Verizon Wireless’ as the cause.

WTFast is a proprietary VPN, try using a generic VPN configured for PPTP or IPSec/L2TP. You should be able to configure these in Windows with information provided by the VPN provider without third party software. OpenVPN is more CPU intense and may affect gaming.

http://www.google.com/search?q=vpn+reviews

[MassimoT]

So you're saying that I'm getting lag because of where those servers are hosted? This doesnt make any sense to me since this only just started happening recently, and sometimes the lag stops completely. What can I do to fix the problem besides using a VPN? I cant use a VPN on all of my servers. Is there any way I can change my router's settings on 192.168.1.1? Please let me know if I can

[vzw_customer_support]

Hello MassimoT! Help is here. Just to clarify, what is the make/model device you are using? Is this related to Verizon Wireless service or Verizon Fios internet/landline service? Keep us posted. Thanks!

KristieQ_VZW
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[MassimoT]

internet/landline service. I am using a PC, but I know it isnt an issue with my PC or router. Here is the ping trace to a server that I normally get 55ms to.

Tracing route to na.badlion.net

over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 4 ms 4 ms 4 ms Wireless_Broadband_Router.home

2 13 ms 13 ms 11 ms L100.TAMPFL-VFTTP-156.verizon-gni.net

3 13 ms 16 ms 18 ms G0-3-1-6.TAMPFL-LCR-22.verizon-gni.net

4 * * * Request timed out.

5 19 ms 19 ms 20 ms 0.ae10.GW1.MIA19.ALTER.NET

6 83 ms 82 ms 80 ms teliasonera-gw.customer.alter.net

7 107 ms 115 ms 105 ms ash-bb4-link.telia.net

8 111 ms 113 ms 107 ms nyk-bb2-link.telia.net

9 105 ms 111 ms 106 ms nyk-b5-link.telia.net

10 107 ms 108 ms 105 ms pni-as1299-nyc1.staminus.net

11 * * * Request timed out.

12 114 ms 114 ms 115 ms .

Trace complete.

[AnthonyArmato]

What you're showing are not ping spikes... That's simply a tracert that shows the amount of time it's taking to reach a specific destination. Wireless (LTE) service will always have a higher latency than Cable/DSL service. What you're seeing is completely normal and will not change drastically. Sure, fluctuations are normal with server load, however.

[MassimoT]

I literally just said that I was using Home internet......why would I be using LTE to play online games? I'm calling it ping spikes because this is on and off. I used to never get this lag, but now I get it about 90% of the time I am online.

[AnthonyArmato]

This is a Verizon WIRELESS forum...

[Snn5 · Accepted solution]

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[7e18n1]

It doesn’t matter when it started or how it worked yesterday or tomorrow. What matters is the trace route shows it is not your equipment or Verizon.

You’ve already discovered what to do: go around the problem by changing the route with a VPN.  What servers are you talking about that you can’t VPN too?  There might be compatibly issues that make one protocol or client fail whereas another might work.

I’m sure there is a way to change the router’s default LAN IP address and subnet, but there is no logical reason to do this.