Ping Issues

[nebulousHarmony]

Hi all, currently having some issues with online games. Running anything online through steam causes a lot of “boomeranging” and jittering at random intervals. Some notes:

-I’m decently sure it’s not my internet, because my housemate’s less beefy computer is running heavier online games with no similar issues.
-Not bandwidth either, it happens whether it’s 2pm and the whole house is using the internet or 2am when I’m the only one awake.
-None of the other programs on my computer are having this issue.
-It happens no matter what game I play, no matter how high or low the graphics are set. My computer’s decent enough to handle most games anyways.

Does anyone have a list of troubleshooting things I could do, or any potential fixes? I’m not particularly tech savvy, but I’m not afraid to look up how to do stuff if I’ve got to. Thanks!

[Lavie]

Hi!

Some things to try here:
https://gameserrors.com/stuttering-in-games/

[nullable]

Well you say it's ping, but you don't mention the pings you're seeing or what your housemate is seeing.

It might not be your internet per se. But your house network might be having issues. How do each of you connect to your LAN/WLAN? When did the issues start? Did you change anything? Like move your PC far away from the modem/router and are using wireless? Or move the modem/router? Does your house have any sort of mesh network? Have you restarted the modem/router?

You say you don't see an issue with other programs? Would you care to elaborate on what you mean and why you think it's relevant?

What are your system specs?

[nebulousHarmony]

Originally posted by Lavie:

Hi!

Some things to try here:
https://gameserrors.com/stuttering-in-games/

Hi! Sorry, but these don’t seem to be what I’m looking for. My PC’s got decent specs, and it’s not an issue I’ve been having with any of my non-steam games, even the heavier ones. Thank you for the effort though!

[nebulousHarmony]

Originally posted by nullable:

Well you say it's ping, but you don't mention the pings you're seeing or what your housemate is seeing.

It might not be your internet per se. But your house network might be having issues. How do each of you connect to your LAN/WLAN? When did the issues start? Did you change anything? Like move your PC far away from the modem/router and are using wireless? Or move the modem/router? Does your house have any sort of mesh network? Have you restarted the modem/router?

You say you don't see an issue with other programs? Would you care to elaborate on what you mean and why you think it's relevant?

What are your system specs?

Hi! Sorry I don’t have the specific numbers for the ping, I haven’t been checking the numbers but certain games (Grounded) have given me a “High Ping” notification, paired with jittery movement and what I’ve been affectionately calling “teleporting”. I’ve been noticing similar jittery movements in other online games, though. The housemate I asked simply said he wasn’t having any issues lately on the same night I was having problems.

The issues started about a week ago after I cleared the steam browser cache to fix another issue where I was randomly getting kicked from online games. I cleared the cache via the steam settings.

I connect to the router via the WiFi, and I’m very close to it. I haven’t tried restarting the router simply because the best time to do it would be super late at night because I don’t want to interrupt my other housemate while he works from home, so I may try that tonight. Not super familiar with the other things you’ve mentioned, sorry!

My other programs that connect to the internet aren’t having the same issues. For example, when I’m on a discord call, the call doesn’t have any issues at the same time my game gives me the “High Ping” warning. I can use my browser or watch a stream just fine. I figured this was relevant because it may indicate that there’s an issue with the Steam program itself, rather than an internet issue.

Specs can be found here I think, the first option. https://amzn.to/3Nw7RBe

Thanks for helping me work through this!

[Ettanin]

It could be crapware that uses BitTorrent or any other file sharing software that runs on autostart and abuses your system as a file server.

[nullable]

Well try to keep in mind while a lot of software uses the internet the requirements might vary a lot. A lot of programs can be resilient to dropped packets and high ping because that can be recoverable and the amount of exact precision is more flexible than in a lot of games.

My expectation is this isn't a games problem per se. It's not like a bunch of games updated and broke their netcode. And it's not like your connection is detecting games and crapping out on those only. My guess is you have this problem all the time, but some programs and some uses don't make that clear. But it's clearly visible in games.

For example a few years ago the main connection my employer uses had an issue with dropped packets. You couldn't really notice it most of the time. But certain database operations up to azure started timing out because the additional time due to dropped packets being resent would hit timeout limits. So why was that happening, we discovered there was an issue where our connection was dropping a lot of packets. Now, if we were trying to play games on that connection, at the time, that probably would have been a lot more visible and a lot more painful. Because having to wait for all the data to actually be sent and re-sent to the server would have yielding an abysmal experience. But doing normal stuff, browsing the web, adding an extra second here or there to page loads and what not, hardly noticeable. Adding an extra 1000ms to your ping, you would be insane to not notice it.

Ultimately I think your appraisal, without using proper networking tools to quantify it has some extreme limitations. All it really tells you is that the problem isn't bad enough to notice it everywhere. At least that's my guess based on the limited data in your post. We'd need more evidence to confirm anything definitely.

And if you restart the router and that clears it up, we'll never know for sure. Even if it doesn't do anything, my approach to troubleshooting is do the easy stuff first. If you do it last, you'll feel dumb. Even if you're pretty sure it's pointless, do it, cross it off the list.

[Kaman]

you got cable or a dong in ur pc for internet?

[nebulousHarmony]

Hi all, thanks for your input, will update when I have the chance to restart the internet. Thanks for putting up with all my silly stuff, you’ll hear from me if the issue persists.

[nebulousHarmony]

Working Housemate reported some slowness on his end too, so we ended up restarting the router. Tested it with a friend after and I was reportedly "teleporting once a minute", so I suppose that the issue isn't fixed yet. What comes next?

Edit1: No wired internet connection here, I just connect to the wifi

Edit2: Did a quick malware scan as well, came up clean

[Lavie]

I suggest doing a Google search with "High Ping". I did it, and I find to many threads about this issue and suggestions to put it here. But i found this thread interesting. It's about making a traceroute to make a diagnostic...
i'm not at all a expert about this, so it's just something i would if I have this issue.... Maybe someone will come with a better idea...

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/very-high-ping-for-no-reason-at-all.2295261/
https://www.varonis.com/blog/what-is-traceroute

Also strongly suggest to make a test with a Ethernet cable.

Ignore the Ad part (Driver Easy Pro)
https://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmanager/how-to-fix-high-ping.html