RT-AC68U Wireless ping spikes

[andy013]

Hey, I play online games and I've been getting really bad ping spikes for a while and I can't figure out why. I don't get them all the time but they happen every now and again. I'm certain it's the wireless connection between my pc and my router as when I ping the router directly the ping spikes are present. Here is a screenshot of what it looks like:

This makes games unplayable when it happens and often I get auto-kicked for ping jitter.

I have tried a whole bunch of stuff to fix this but nothing has worked.

I used to have an old wireless G device on the network, I thought that might have been slowing things down so I upgraded it to wireless N.

I tried changing channels on the network and connecting to 5Ghz band instead of 2.4Ghz.

I tried moving the position of the router to improve the signal, but it seems to be quite good now (-39dbm) and the ping spikes still happen.

I tried enabling QoS and installing the FreshJR script. This didn't help either. Most of the time the bandwidth use is very low when these ping spikes happen and on wired everything seems fine so I believe the problem is the wireless connection and not saturating the internet bandwidth.

I tried installing the latest merlin firmware + resetting to factory defaults.

My only guess is that maybe the other devices on my network (phones etc.) are taking up wireless time and slowing the rest of the devices down. Even if I only have a couple of devices connected the issue still is present though. I really wish I could know for certain what is causing this issue even if there is nothing I can do about it. If anyone has any ideas as to how to diagnose this problem I would appreciate it. The frustrating thing is that because these ping spikes don't happen all the time, it can be hard to know if it is fixed or not. I have to just keep using the connection and then wait for this to happen at some point.

 

[JDB]

Shot in the dark, but I found I get latency spikes whilst my computer is scanning for available wireless networks.
Once I realised that was the caused I stopped worrying about it as it didn’t actually affect my usage, I’d just noticed the spikes whilst testing ping to other devices for other reasons.
Maybe see if you can prevent the periodic scans and see if it stops the spikes?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[andy013]

I've tried disabling the scanning in windows 10, you can disable the service while still being connected to a network but the ping spikes remained. Thanks anyway.

 

[Chuckles67]

If your router supports Merlin firmware (link), and you are comfortable with "command line" tools, you could flash your router with Merlin FW then install "connmon" application (link) onto the router. This application will log the ping delay/latency/quality every five minutes - see attached from my setup. Then you could determine whether it's your ISP/router causing the spike (this log will not include the wireless connection).

 

[OzarkEdge]

I've tried disabling the scanning in windows 10, you can disable the service while still being connected to a network but the ping spikes remained. Thanks anyway.

Is that the same as going into your client's WiFi adapter settings and disabling 'keep looking for a better connection'?

OE

 

[andy013]

Yeah, I believe so. I tried a few different methods including the wifi adapter settings but none of them resolved the issue. I don't think it is caused by the wifi adapter querying for other networks since I can sometimes play for hours on end with no problem at all. Then at other times my ping will just start spiking up above 100ms for no good reason. Maybe it is interference on the 2.4ghz band, is it possible that would also slow down the 5ghz devices as well? Interference of some kind seems like it could be the cause but I have no idea what is causing it or how I could go about finding out.

Thanks Chuckles67 I will try that out. I'm pretty sure it is just the wifi connection as I have pinged from wired clients while the ping spikes have been happening and they are completely fine but I will try this and see if anything shows up.

 

[OzarkEdge]

Yeah, I believe so. I tried a few different methods including the wifi adapter settings but none of them resolved the issue. I don't think it is caused by the wifi adapter querying for other networks since I can sometimes play for hours on end with no problem at all. Then at other times my ping will just start spiking up above 100ms for no good reason. Maybe it is interference on the 2.4ghz band, is it possible that would also slow down the 5ghz devices as well? Interference of some kind seems like it could be the cause but I have no idea what is causing it or how I could go about finding out.

Thanks Chuckles67 I will try that out. I'm pretty sure it is just the wifi connection as I have pinged from wired clients while the ping spikes have been happening and they are completely fine but I will try this and see if anything shows up.

Maybe interference. I would not expect 2.4 and 5.0 interference to be in common. USB 3.0 devices can interfere with 2.4. Proprietary cordless peripherals/phones can interfere.

You could temporarily rename you SSID and client connection to remove all other clients from the equation.

OE

 

[RobinB]

Try unplugging the USB 3.0 thumb drive if you have one connected.