Ping increases after couple of hours of the modem being on

[Loukios]

I'm currently having an issue where the ping increases after the modem being on for 3 hours+.
I'm currently running VDSL (PTM) on Zyxel VMG4005-B50A PPPoE passthrough to my RT-AX86U running Asuswrt.
After a fresh reboot on my modem, I get around 5ms (pinging 1.1.1.1) but after a couple of hours it increases to 8-10ms and I can't seem to understand what the problem is.
Note that rebooting the router alone does not solve the issue, I must reboot the modem. I have an outlet cable extension beside the router/modem could that cause this issue somehow?

 

[jetpack42]

I am not an expert when it comes to DSL service, however, are you sure that there actually is a problem? Please correct me if I am misunderstanding your post, but a jump from 5ms to 8-10ms is not a substantial jump at all and could be caused by a number of things, including how loaded down your network is? There could also be issues with your ISP, or, there could be a wide variety of things causing the increase in latency from your router to destination that is out of your control.

I have Cable internet service and if I have a ping of 30ms to a server, it is not unusual for it to jump up 5-10ms from time to time.

 

[Loukios]

I am not an expert when it comes to DSL service, however, are you sure that there actually is a problem? Please correct me if I am misunderstanding your post, but a jump from 5ms to 8-10ms is not a substantial jump at all and could be caused by a number of things, including how loaded down your network is? There could also be issues with your ISP, or, there could be a wide variety of things causing the increase in latency from your router to destination that is out of your control.

I have Cable internet service and if I have a ping of 30ms to a server, it is not unusual for it to jump up 5-10ms from time to time.

Yeah definitely there's an issue. The ping jumps are permanent, I'm not talking about ping spikes, it's permanent increase and no it's not that the router is overloaded as I said rebooting the router doesn't help, the issue is within the modem as the only way to fix it is rebooting it. 5ms difference may not be significant but the game I play competitively is very ping dependent and 5ms would actually make a difference.

 

[jetpack42]

How long has this been going on for? If the issue persists after you restart your modem and router, may I suggest you factory reset your AX86U and re-configure from scratch? (if you haven't already done so?)

If the latency increase continues to occur, perhaps the issue is on your ISP end. As I mentioned above, there can be a mountain of factors that can be outside of your control that can cause a latency increase from your router to the destination.

I also play many "competitive" FPS/MOBA games in my spare time. I do not think that a 5ms increase is significant enough increase to really cause issues with most modern games. As you mentioned, the 5ms increase is permanent and won't be as noticeable as a larger ping spike would be, especially since most server and p2p-based games have some form of lag compensation nowadays. This is not to disqualify your experience, however. We may be playing different games, so my mileage could very well be different from yours.

 

[Loukios]

How long has this been going on for? If the issue persists after you restart your modem and router, may I suggest you factory reset your AX86U and re-configure from scratch? (if you haven't already done so?)

If the latency increase continues to occur, perhaps the issue is on your ISP end. As I mentioned above, there can be a mountain of factors that can be outside of your control that can cause a latency increase from your router to the destination.

I also play many "competitive" FPS/MOBA games in my spare time. I do not think that a 5ms increase is significant enough increase to really cause issues with most modern games. As you mentioned, the 5ms increase is permanent and won't be as noticeable as a larger ping spike would be, especially since most server and p2p-based games have some form of lag compensation nowadays. This is not to disqualify your experience, however. We may be playing different games, so my mileage could very well be different from yours.

The issue persist after restarted my router ONLY. Restarting the modem always fixes it. This has been going on ever since I changed my ISP. I've been used to same hardware the whole time. I've already reset my router but that doesn't help.

I play Fortnite competitively and believe me 5ms can be the difference between taking the enemy wall and failing to do so.

So from your answer I understand that it might be ISP related issue? That sucks.

 

[Tech9]

I play Fortnite competitively and believe me 5ms can be the difference between taking the enemy wall and failing to do so.

Average human reaction time to visual stimulus is around 250ms. It's defined by the speed our nerves transfer signals to the brain, the speed our brain responds and the speed our muscles can contract. This is called science. Additionally your monitor has to work @200Hz refresh rate in order to display one frame every 5ms. This is called math.

What you believe in is science fiction category, basically.

 

[Loukios]

Average human reaction time to visual stimulus is around 250ms. It's defined by the speed our nerves transfer signals to the brain, the speed our brain responds and the speed our muscles can contract. This is called science. Additionally your monitor has to work @200Hz refresh rate in order to display one frame every 5ms. This is called math.

What you believe in is science fiction category, basically.

My monitor has 240Hz refresh rate. While I don't argue with your math, you're assumption of what I mean is completely wrong. I'm trying to find a solution for my problem and not argue on game mechanics but I'll humor you. The game has building mechanics. If one player is holding left click, it constantly keeps on building the same piece over and over (sending the server requests). Let's say player1 with 10ms ping (let's ignore game latency and focus only on network latency) while player2 has 15ms. If player2 tries to overtake to the wall from player1 he either has to get lucky with his packets reaching the server before player1's or just take it through human error (the player1 stopped holding the wall for 50ms or so). Let's say if a player1 makes no human error and has really stable internet, player2 has virtually 0 chance to overtake the wall. That's how important ping is. This has nothing to do with human reaction and purely network conditions. Also you're making an assumption that human reaction is what's important in this game, it's not. It's muscle memory.

 

[Tech9]

That's how important ping is.

If this game relies on low ping only the players with lowest ping will always win. Is this a known fact in Fortnite world?

You have 5-10ms ping to your local Cloudflare DNS server. What are your chances for 5-10ms ping to a remote Game server?

It's muscle memory.

Right.

 

[jetpack42]

The issue persist after restarted my router ONLY. Restarting the modem always fixes it. This has been going on ever since I changed my ISP. I've been used to same hardware the whole time. I've already reset my router but that doesn't help.

I play Fortnite competitively and believe me 5ms can be the difference between taking the enemy wall and failing to do so.

So from your answer I understand that it might be ISP related issue? That sucks.

If restarting your router does nothing but restarting your modem corrects the issue, my uneducated guess is that it has something to do with your ISP equipment or their routing. Again, I am not an expert when it comes to DSL connections (I haven't had a DSL connection in over a decade, long before I got into this hobby), so maybe someone with expertise could chime in.

My monitor has 240Hz refresh rate. While I don't argue with your math, you're assumption of what I mean is completely wrong. I'm trying to find a solution for my problem and not argue on game mechanics but I'll humor you. The game has building mechanics. If one player is holding left click, it constantly keeps on building the same piece over and over (sending the server requests). Let's say player1 with 10ms ping (let's ignore game latency and focus only on network latency) while player2 has 15ms. If player2 tries to overtake to the wall from player1 he either has to get lucky with his packets reaching the server before player1's or just take it through human error (the player1 stopped holding the wall for 50ms or so). Let's say if a player1 makes no human error and has really stable internet, player2 has virtually 0 chance to overtake the wall. That's how important ping is. This has nothing to do with human reaction and purely network conditions. Also you're making an assumption that human reaction is what's important in this game, it's not. It's muscle memory.

I do believe that Fortnite has lag compensation that helps predict and correct the movements of higher latency players (whether it is helpful maybe shouldn't be debated here, though I will agree with you that it does come down to luck, unfortunately). It is much more complicated than Player A has X ping and Player B has Y ping, rather there is stuff going on behind the scene to ensure fairness. Latency (whether it is a lot or very little) is an unfortunate reality of online gaming, especially in public ranked/competitive lobbies, because of things out of your control (distance to server, ISP routing, server performance, where other players are located, etc).

 

[Tech9]

What other Fortnite players say about gameplay experience and ping:

What's a good ping in Fortnite?

Answer (1 of 34): I’ll answer with a general answer, although I’m pretty sure in Fortnite you can play with 1000ping and still do fine. Around 10 ping: Effectively LAN, meaning you will face no delay between your actions (not noticeably). Difficult to get, you probably live in the server room if...

www.quora.com

Asking for 5-10ms to remote game server seems like not very realistic.

 

[Loukios]

What other Fortnite players say about gameplay experience and ping:

What's a good ping in Fortnite?

Answer (1 of 34): I’ll answer with a general answer, although I’m pretty sure in Fortnite you can play with 1000ping and still do fine. Around 10 ping: Effectively LAN, meaning you will face no delay between your actions (not noticeably). Difficult to get, you probably live in the server room if...

www.quora.com

Asking for 5-10ms to remote game server seems like not very realistic.

Quora is the worst place to lookup information.
Here, I can help you.
Link.

And many, many more. Simply looking up stuff posted on Quora where some people get actually paid to post answer and instead of providing quality instead of quantity, they spam answer to get paid more isn't the smartest thing to do. Also the average casual player's experience varies greatly from competitive players. Casuals can easily play on 100ms ping and won't be an issue, they are not competing with the top 5% of players after and they aren't playing tournaments for actual money.

Asking for 5-10ms to remote game server seems like not very realistic.

I haven't? My issue is with the ping increase GLOBALLY. I'm not trying to get 5ms to a game server but 5ms in the second hop in my traceroute. So again, you missed the point and filling it up with pointless assumptions. Please stay off the thread and let anyone with an actual knowledge help instead of arguing about game mechanics that you literally have 0 idea about yet somehow you want to argue about.

 

[thiggins]

@Loukios , @Tech9 Allright, you two, disengage.
@Tech9 You are trending back to old ways. Keep the insults and snark out of this forum and stick to simple factual answers or you'll get a permanent ban. I'm done with the uncivil behavior in these forums.