Out Of Nowhere Internet Latency Issues (Road Runner/Time Warner)

Hello everyone! I'm having some issues with my internet connection and I'm hoping I can find some help here!

First, let me explain my setup: I'm currently subscribed to Time Warner's Road Runner Turbo with Power Boost. I believe the DL/UL rate is 10/1. We have a Motorola Surfboard modem I believe that is connected to a Linksys wireless router (WRT54GS, v6, I believe. Which is the neutered version in terms of RAM, apparently). Connected to the router are my PC via a wired connection, my Xbox 360 via a wired connection, and another router in another room. That router is then connected to another PC via a wired connection and another Xbox 360 via a wired connection. One final PC is connected in another room via the wireless signal.

Now here's the issue, I play a lot of Super Street Fighter 4 online via my Xbox 360. Because this is a 1 on 1 fighting game which is very frame dependent, it requires a solid connection and good netcode for the game itself. Latency in this game, and fighting games in general, is extremely noticeable and bothersome. My issue is that as of late, the last number of months, I've been lagging a lot more than I used to. The prequel to this game, which was just called Street Fighter 4, came out in 02/2009, the updated version came out in 04/2010. The games should use roughly the same netcode and be equally as demanding. Now here's the strange thing, my matches were fine with SF4 and were fine for the first 4 or so months with SSF4. The issues started around August of last year. And nothing has changed in terms of our plan or how we use our connection.

Now before anyone suggests it might be the setup, I'm not sure that's the case as this is the same setup we had when everything was working fine. In addition to that I don't believe it's a user issue in terms of one person sapping all the bandwidth as I've tested the game when I'm the only person online. Also, I've tried it with the wireless signal disabled and still no improvement.

After the first month or so of these problems I called a Time Warner rep. out to my house and he plugged his testing device into our cable line. He said all his readings were normal and that if we wanted they could put our connection on "probation" so that they could monitor it (Not sure if this is a temporary thing or if we have to call and tell them to stop, which we haven't done. Not sure if it hurts bandwidth as well?). A few days later I exchanged our modem for a new one (The one mentioned above) and still no improvement. However, before the tech. left he noticed that our grounding wire wasn't connected. It hadn't been for about 5 years (It had to be moved when we had a pool built). He said that could be causing noise which could be messing up our connection. A couple of weeks later another tech. came down and grounded the wire to our backyard hose water pipes as he said they were made of the right metal and went to the right depth in the ground (I personally have no idea if that is sound or not). Now maybe it was a placebo effect, but for the next week or so the connection was great. However, it went back to being inconsistent again. :cry I've checked the grounding area and it looks like it did the day he fixed it so I don't think it's that.

The strangest thing is that, like I said earlier, nothing has changed since the connection quality decline. The same amount of devices are connected, the same game is being played, and I'm facing friends who are the same distance away using the same connection they always did. Yet now it's almost unplayable at times. It's almost like we downgraded our service, which is obviously not the case. I've also tried running various speed tests around the net. Using a site like Speedtest.net I generally get around 20/1 in terms of DL/UL. Another test a friend suggested was to ping Yahoo.com via my CMD. When I do this I see what may be an issue. The ping numbers will generally look like this: 15/18/14/20/22/18/80/14/24/18/75, etc... One high ping amount every few. Not sure if that may be an/the issue. A friend told me that the netcode for this particular game is more dependent on ping and general latency as opposed to DL/UL speeds. And this seems to be the case as I have friends who have $20/mo. DSL and getter better results than I do. But, like I said, everything was once great with this connection/setup, so I'm hoping there is something I or Time Warner can do to fix it.

If anyone has any suggestions then please let me know. I'm also open and willing to take any tests that may give you guys more information.

Thank you!

 

There are many factors out of your control to say "this is your problem..." The Internet is a series of tubes ya know & once that data leaves your router you have zero control which direction it takes or how much traffic it encounters out there.
Really you don't know "that nothing has changed" do you know no one else in the neighborhood got cable? Do you know that every router between you and that game service has remained the same?

Best you can do is run the TWC local speedtest.
If the bandwidth was a constant these numbers would never change.

Best you can do is check your local network cabling, look for kinks, running to close to lighting, running parallel to house wiring, the basic things that cause local network issues. Unless you want to invest in a cable verifier ($1000 from JDSU) just to check a few wires.

 

Do you really have two routers running? Or is the second one a hub/switch? As I've been reminded of on the board recently, two routers give you the potential for double NAT, a definite speed stealer.

I have had two of those exact routers that you have go bad (I have at least 5 running that I control at various places for years) and one that I thought went bad but then it wasn't the router after all. The last one was an issue in the line that the ISP chased for 4 months. I use those Linksys Rangemax routers almost exclusively now and I've gone through a lot of them but they give a great signal when they are running well. I even beam some wireless over to my in-laws across the street at the summer cabin. Everyone knows where to find us, we're that cabin with the strange blue blinking light in the window.

Funny thing about it all being setup exactly the same as always. There is firmware upgrades even if you had perfect performance out of the box. As foogoo pointed out, the environment can change too, others having wireless around you or other wireless devices too close to the router. I had my router slowed by the Wii bar for a while. Right now the router sitting by a wireless phone which is probably a dumb place for it too. I'll go move it now that I just realized it (THANKS!) In fact, my hubby just started to complain that netflix and hula aren't working on the bluray in the other room anymore and they had been working just fine for a few months. We rearranged the family room so maybe we made something worse even though we moved the TV and it's toys away from the router and further from the room with a networked bluray.

When you run tests through speedtest.net, what is the ping time? When you change locations for the test, does it get worse? Does your upload speed degrade? For a connection like that, I'd be more concerned with the upload rather than the download speed. Also, when you test as being the only device online, are the other devices turned off? Disconnected? Do you disconnect the second router? Could you be having a cable issue, a corroded end? a bad clip? Is there a kink, a crush or is a cable too long? Ethernet cable really hates to be kinked or crushed.

It might sound too basic and all things that you've tried but it's good to review all the easy (and cheap!) possibilities first in case something was missed.