EVERY NIGHT, at the same damn time, I've been having packet loss for over a month now. I have had three separate technicians come out and change shit over the past two weeks, including running a dedicated line to my apartment and giving me a new router, but I am still having issues. This is happening over both ethernet and wifi, and I know it's not an issue with my hardware, but my isp says they've done everything they can.
My internet is fine during the daytime; this is happening from sundown to sunrise, so I had a theory that one of the street lights being on is messing with the wires through some short or interference or something, but my isp just refused to pursue anything further. It would probably be a city utilities issues too and I probably can't get the ball rolling on that one either.
And the frustrating part is that this isn't constant. It's just losing packets for about 1-3 seconds, long enough to fuck up a connection and boot me from games and shit. Download speeds and discord chat are fine though. So when they check my connection they see everything is fine. I had to have the fucking supervisor come to my apartment and show him the packet loss through my command prompt before they realized that something is wrong.
What the fuck can I do, is there something I'm missing??? I've been wanting to stream but anything that requires a constant connection gets fucked after dark. :angery:
I would recommend checking that your CAT5 (or whatever CAT-x cabling) you're using is properly terminated, and if you're running bundles of cables together, that they're shielded. That should prevent crosstalk, which might be the cause of your packet loss.
Would that be something around my router or around the poles outside? And I would think it would be a constant issue all day if that were the case
CAT5 is a type of ethenet cable. You probably have one running from your router to PC, and maybe one from your modem to your router, if you have a modem. If your ISP is using copper cabling, that also might be a problem if they're unshielded.
Yeah it's a cat5e. And for what it's worth the time table of problems has shifted. It now only lasts until 8:30 pm instead of until 7 am apparently (so now it's a timeframe of 2 hours vs the previous 13 hours; and this is after they changed modems)
If it's electromagnetic interference from something outside (e.g., electrical noise from a street light), I'm wondering if replacing your CAT5e cable runs with CAT6 would have any benefit. CAT6 uses heavier gauge wires and slightly beefier shielding, but it's a little stiff if you need to do any tight bends. Also make sure your cables aren't running too close to any heating vents or radiators or anything like that. If you want to rule out a cable having an internal short, pull up command prompt/PowerShell/terminal/whatever you have and start a continuous ping against a known-good IP or hostname (e.g., Google). If you're on Windows, that looks like:
ping -t google.comAnd then Ctrl+C to exit when you're done. While the continuous ping is running, try jiggling connectors and flexing some of the cables between your PC and your router. Not too hard, mind you -- there's an inner core/spacer that keeps the wire pairs from getting too close together and causing interference, and it could be bad if that breaks. But if you get any ping timeouts that coincide with bending a cable or jiggling a connector, you either have a loose plug or a bad cable.
If it's not that, I'd see about pinging another device on your internal network, if you have one (e.g., if you know the internal IP for your modem or router; better yet, open two windows and ping both). Run a continuous ping against that during the evening -- if you don't get any packet drops, then the problem is with your ISP, because it's happening outside your network. If you do get packet drops, then it's on your end somewhere.
Unfortunately I've done all of that lol. Both my desktop (hard wired) and laptop (wifi) showed packet loss at the exact same times (through the command prompt method you suggested and app monitors), and I have moved all of the cables around and tried different ports in the modem and pc to make sure it wasn't an issue with them. I used that ping command to prove it to the isp supervisor when he showed up and have been trying to convince them it is an issue on their end This is unfortunately where I have hit a wall with them. They've just been throwing physical solutions at me that don't extent outside of my apartment when it makes more sense that it's something beyond or on the pole my internet is connected to, which unfortunately seems to move into the territory of city utilities. The only thing that has changed is the window when the issues take place (after they gave me a new modem). It starts at the same time every night (6:15 pm), but now ends at 8:30 pm instead of 7 am.
Oh and this has happened with two different ethernet cables
Have you tried tracert, to see on which hop connection times out? If it’s first one or two it’s likely local (router) + you may see an address where problem occurs. Also if it’s further away, vpn could help.
+1 for tracert
No, first time I've heard about that. Will try tomorrow though
Ok I ran it and it consistently timed out on the second hop and had asterisks or a timeout on the 11th hop. I ran it 5 times.
(edit) I ran the trace on google
This sucks then:( 2 hop is (likely) between your router to the first isp switch/node, so problem is either in the cable in the street or in their equipment. At least you can describe it to them I guess:(
11th hop on the other hand is some fuckery that vpn could potentially fix. Try something like protonvpn or similar free vpn thingy to see if it helps with that part.
Additionally, try tracing not to google.com, but direct ip address like 1.1.1.1 (cloudflare) or 8.8.8.8 (google) to check if some default isp’s dns fucks up on 11th hop under load at that time. But other than that no idea:(
I tried 8.8.8.8 just now and the first two hops time out. I'll be calling them tomorrow anyway to see if they can't switch nodes as someone else suggested and I'll talk to them about traceroutes too.