Poor/High Wireless Pings

[Primulas]

Below is a SC of my pings from my Shield tab to my Archer C8 router; I am standing within a couple feet of the router and using the 5GHz band. Results are similar with my Iphone 5. I have never really had any performance issues because of this until now. GameStreaming from my PC wants <10ms pings.......I'm closer to 30ms. I've narrowed it down to wifi....my PC to router pings via POE are 3ms. I feel like my wifi pings should not be this high, are my expectations just to high?

Any suggestions of tweaks that i could be making to get this number lower? I have already tried less busy channels and updated my router's firmware, as well as various other educated-guess-type router tweaks.

Thanks!



-Prim

 

[coxhaus]

Here are my wireless ping times running across a home plug power adapter to my router. I think your ping times should be smaller.


Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\lee>ping 192.168.0.1

Pinging 192.168.0.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time=5ms TTL=62
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time=5ms TTL=62
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time=5ms TTL=62
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=62

Ping statistics for 192.168.0.1:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 3ms, Maximum = 5ms, Average = 4ms

 

[Nullity]

Shield tab is a mobile device, right? In my experience, mobile devices do not have good wireless hardware. You might try disabling all wireless power-saving features.

Here are some pings from my RT-N66U to 2 different wireless devices.
These results from pinging my ancient laptop (USB-N53 WiFi);

admin@merlin:/tmp/home/root# ping 192.168.1.3
PING 192.168.1.3 (192.168.1.3): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.1.3: seq=0 ttl=64 time=1.048 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.3: seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.966 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.3: seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.865 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.3: seq=3 ttl=64 time=1.017 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.3: seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.960 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.3: seq=5 ttl=64 time=0.853 ms

These results are from the RT-N66U pinging my Nexus 7;

admin@merlin:/tmp/home/root# ping 192.168.1.7
PING 192.168.1.7 (192.168.1.7): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.1.7: seq=0 ttl=64 time=420.000 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.7: seq=1 ttl=64 time=358.363 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.7: seq=2 ttl=64 time=269.907 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.7: seq=3 ttl=64 time=179.555 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.7: seq=4 ttl=64 time=93.153 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.7: seq=5 ttl=64 time=1038.672 ms

 

[sfx2000]

WiFi has overhead that Ethernet doesn't...

Your ping times seem consistent... here's an example below...

sfx

 

[coxhaus]

WiFi has overhead that Ethernet doesn't...

Your ping times seem consistent... here's an example below...

sfx

View attachment 3631

I have never seen a router wireless with that high of ping times unless your router is under a heavy load but with nothing going on it should be lower. My wireless ping time is 2ms taking in account for the extra 2 ms for crossing the Homeplug Power adapter. I am using a Cisco WAP321 now but in the past when I had wireless routers they were always better than 25ms ping times. I would not accept that high of ping times.
I just tried with my wife's iPad using the downloaded ping app and I have high ping times also some are as high as 25ms. So if this is a mobile device this may be normal but a laptop should be a lot lower.

 

[sfx2000]

True, true... but let's keep Apples and Oranges in their respective buckets...

Desktop on ethernet...

ping 192.168.1.1
PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=1.03 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=0.441 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=255 time=0.703 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=255 time=1.34 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=255 time=0.610 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=6 ttl=255 time=1.18 ms
^C
--- 192.168.1.1 ping statistics ---
6 packets transmitted, 6 received, 0% packet loss, time 4999ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.441/0.886/1.346/0.325 ms

My primary laptop over wifi - this is a Core i7-2.3Ghz laptop on N450...

ping 192.168.1.1
PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=3.684 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=3.732 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=1.029 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=255 time=3.552 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=255 time=3.509 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=255 time=3.544 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=6 ttl=255 time=3.795 ms
^C
--- 192.168.1.1 ping statistics ---
7 packets transmitted, 7 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 1.029/3.264/3.795/0.918 ms

But these are desktop/laptops with Desktop/Workstation class processors and operating systems...

Going into portable/tablet/handheld space...

The attachment I provided is very similar to the OP's config - iPad Mini 2... not much different than his Android-based nVidia Shield device, and performance is very similar - see the screenshots for both...

sfx

 

[Primulas]

So, i also tested my tablet to an AP at work. <1ms ping. More and more i feel like either A: something in my home is creating alot of interference (5GHz band looks pretty clear as far as other SSIDs) or B:There is an issue with the wifi on the router. I'll try my AC Mac Book Pro on AC tonight as well and see how it fairs.

 

[azazel1024]

My Windows tablet has pretty low ping times, as does my laptop. In the 3-5ms range. My iPhone 5 is in the 25-30ms range. I haven't bothered to check my wife's iPad 2.

So, at a guess, "low power" client wifi chipset is causing the "lag". They are generally designed to dive to a pretty low power state when inactive. With ICMP pings, they aren't pumping them out in rapid succession, so you likely get enough lag time that the wifi chipset is put in to a low power state, and an ICMP ping pulls it back up, which I assume takes at least a few miliseconds to accomplish.

On a laptop wifi chipset and SOME mobile wifi chipsets, they are likely not nearly as agressive with power states, therefore you don't have significant lag time introduced.

 

[azazel1024]

One thing you could try is something that'll keep the wifi chipset active when you run a ping. Like maybe try streaming music and then run the ping test. The latency might actually go down.

 

[Primulas]

I'll give it a shot (i'll also turn all powersaving features on the tablet off.) Though, as i said, i pinged an AP at work from the same tablet and it was averaging ~1ms pings