Cause for Poor Internet?

[emma.concrete]

So I’m curious if anyone can tell / would know what might be happening.

To be clear, I want to get different internet. (This has been going on too long) I just would like to learn whats happening, I’m not looking for replies of. “Get better internet”, “Get a new modem”. I want to learn / understand what might be happening. I want to learn what I could do to diagnose whats wrong (if that is even possible)

Our internet service:
45 Mbps connection (Unlimited Bandwidth, but on average we use 70 gb per month)
The internet we get is a third party ISP, that we’ve been with for years. At the previous house we had the same company and the same modem. We moved out about 25 minute drive away (Still in a city) - Did not have issues in old house.

Issue:
Consistent latency issues. Or rather… consistent intermittent latency.

It does not matter what time of day, what day of the week, type of media, type of usage, how many users etc.

It was worse 3+ years ago and we called and complained, they replaced the modem, and we replaced all cable lines inside the house and it seemed to slightly improve. But not fixed.

The old house, we did not have these latency issues. So it is something about this location. I cannot remember if it went through the same cable lines of the same company or not.

When streaming movies, youtube etc. Its not too noticeable, however discord, zoom meetings, online games. Specifically WoW, Minecraft etc. The internet is… poor at best, and horrific at worst.

On some days I will experience disconnects in the 20+ in a 6 hour window. Minecraft I will experience disconnects, or massive lag spikes, jumping character around all over the map. (some anti cheat plugins will kick me) holding tab I will see my latency bars drop down to 1 / 4.

Using a simple ping to google (note any website / service will return similar results) When the internet is in its normal (poor state) which is what I will see all day everyday:
16, 16, 16, 16 ,16 ,16, 38, 180, 32, 250, 16, 16, 16, 16, 16, 16, 16, 16, 16, 16, 180, 16. Etc

When it is terrible say on a Saturday night when I get 1-3 disconnects per hour. I will get:
20, 20, 30, 260, 180, 300, 25, 300, 156, 400, 30, 267, 35, 95, 400, 800, 200, 20, 30, 450, 30, 800, LOST, 30, 30, 30, 400, 20, 30, 40. Etc
Keep in mind its not every Saturday, its not every Friday, its not every Tuesday. When it gets terrible its typically more on weekends (which is understandable from higher load etc)

I have done tracerts and pinged each individual jumps. I’ve done tracking of games I’ve played and looked at total dropped packets (Which aren’t a huge amount in the 1-2% range) . And it doesn’t matter once it leaves the router it instantly will have intermittent poor latency.

After trying out MTR through linux, I was able to see its extremely consistent. it almost goes through waves of poor latency.

So I’m curious with people who have more experience in the network / possibly ISP field. What do you think the problem is? Does anything I’ve shown / talked about obvious? Is it screaming the problem to anyone?
“Oh that’s likely the modem”
“Oh that’s a poor signal to the modem, probably a faulty connection”
“Oh that’s a hub problems. Everyone on the block will experience the same thing”
“Oh, that is a form of throttling. They are slowing your connection down intentionally”
“Oh, the packets are being queued, you are at the end of the queue so you get the worst connection”

My speculation:

I don’t think its a signal / a coaxial problem, because the internet can be significantly worse on high demand days (even when I’m the only one in the house).

I’m guessing the internet going through a third party ISP. Means that they are giving the worst possible connection. If I went through the main ISP that I’m going through the lines of, I wouldn’t experience this issue. Tinfoil hat. But maybe its a simple problem in the end I just wasn’t aware of.

I’m obviously not an expert on any of this, I apologize for the wall of text. But I would genuinely be interested with what others think the problem may be. Any ideas / other interesting things to test would be awesome.

Thank you all

Things to note:

We have tried multiple routers, and recently setup a pfSense box. (Specifically to isolate parts of the network)

Directly connected to the modem, which gives the same/ close to the same ping results.

The modem has been replaced. The Coaxial Cable Line from the modem to the cable junction box on the side of the house has been replaced. (The coaxial cable from the junction box to the cables lines has not been replaced)

I’ve tried connecting directly to the modem, to see the statistics of the modem, signal strength, db rating, service provider etc. (This model does support it. But, it will only show statistics until you plug in the cable connection, and the ISP (Or rather, the company the cable lines our ISP runs through) disables this function, so I cannot see anything like signal strength or anything else)

[n3tizen]

Using the same ‘trouble shooting’ steps that my ISP went through when I had similar issue:

1. replace every foot of coax cable.
2. make sure every piece of networking gear, modem/router/etc, is on a UPS to prevent ‘flapping’.
3. reduce or eliminate any un-needed splitters in the coax line to the modem.

Even then I still run a PfSense router/firewall between the ISP modem and my network. I enabled DNS over TLS, and make sure to have pfblock stopping as much as possible.

All that and I still need to have the ISP come out once every 2-3 years and recheck the connection from the pole to the house as bad winds, and/or a bad winter can make that connection dodgy. However, you, being with a reseller could make this last part difficult if it is something like that in your case.

[rcxb]

Likely your cheap ISP is oversubscribing customers too much. Either too many on each CMTS, too many in a neighborhood (more common in DSL than cable, and would persist if you switched to a different ISP), or perhaps even not enough upstream/peering bandwidth for peak demands.

You could get an idea of which it is by pinging local targets, as well as out to the internet. PIng your default gateway, one of the common next-hops shown in traceroutes out to the internet, the IP of other customers of the same ISP inside your neighborhood, and out. Then you’ll get a picture of where the packets are being delayed and lost, and so roughly where the bottleneck is.

[emma.concrete]

@n3tizen

However, you, being with a reseller could make this last part difficult if it is something like that in your case.

It is possible there is still coaxial cable problems. And yeah having it be through a reseller is extremely frustrating. When we first moved we were told a technician would hook up the cable connection. After 2 calls and 2 weeks no shows. I stepped out side, swapped the cable from the satellite the previous owners used to the cable connection. And the modem instantly connected and worked. No technician ever did show up. So getting the original company to replace any coaxial lines… sound unlikely.

@rcxb

Likely your cheap ISP is oversubscribing customers too much. Either too many on each CMTS, too many in a neighborhood (more common in DSL than cable, and would persist if you switched to a different ISP), or perhaps even not enough upstream/peering bandwidth for peak demands.

I completely expect this is the issue. Many people complain that their internet is poor from this provider but, I think this is common of most isp’s.

The connection to the router is 100% consistent under 1ms. The First hop is pretty bad, but the second hop is even worse. Typically when the internet is extremely poor, in combination to the first hop being poor, its the second hop that gives the worst latency / lost packets.

First Hop (After router):

Second Hop (Which says the cable company that owns the coaxial lines)

Typically after that, I can see the ISP company we use in the hostname of the next hop (That one isn’t normally high latency or has packet loss)

Having it persist through a different company makes me not really want to switch to a different ISP. But the one company provides fiber which should stop it from going through the same company lines.

[Shadowbane]

@emma.concrete I think the solution to your poor internet is two-fold. One, change to a provider that offers a fiber connection, Two don’t sign up for third-party service.

[hem]

Tell them they have a week to sort their shit, then switch ISP because they won’t fix it by then anyways.

To me it sounds like bad cables on their end, or congestion. To find out, you need to measure signal strength where router connects, or a quick look at traffic levels on router gateways.

[spaceman_spiff]

Some number of years ago I had a similar problem. We would experience laggy or buggy service where sometime the severity would increase seemingly randomly. We replaced our router and modem twice, to no avail, and had Comcast come over twice to do the same thing and say that the connectivity & SNR was within acceptable levels. A third time they came over, i stopped the tech from going through the same impotent motions, getting them up to speed on the prior efforts, and in a moment of clarity they decided to check the connections outside of the house. It turned out that there was some mechanical issue with some wiring coupler on the telephone pole. They replaced the entire device, which fed several other houses on the street, and our issues were resolved.

[Dimwit]

You have lead in your pipes. You need to change your network, not your ISP. The big problem is that it is a multiple service hookup. The actual network that is giving your signal has nothing to do with you and has no interest in doing so. The network (pipes) is old, decrepit and needs upgrading badly. So, change to the phone network, but of course, there’s no guarantee that that is any better! You might have to wait for Skylink to fly overhead before you can upgrade your connection!

[anon35662433]

@spaceman_spiff

Some number of years ago I had a similar problem. We would experience laggy or buggy service where sometime the severity would increase seemingly randomly. We replaced our router and modem twice, to no avail, and had Comcast come over twice to do the same thing and say that the connectivity & SNR was within acceptable levels. A third time they came over, i stopped the tech from going through the same impotent motions, getting them up to speed on the prior efforts, and in a moment of clarity they decided to check the connections outside of the house. It turned out that there was some mechanical issue with some wiring coupler on the telephone pole. They replaced the entire device, which fed several other houses on the street, and our issues were resolved.

Had an extremely similar issue here. Comcast tech said somebody hit the pole outside of our house. Cable was lose feeding into the house from the pole. We were experiencing drop outs of services two-three times a day. He re-tightened the cable on the pole, we’ve now had only about two drops outs in the past 6 months.