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Hi guys,
I've been having a wierd problem lately with lag spikes. Every so often while using the internet, I will start to get 2-3 second lag spikes. (Internet connectivity lag, not FPS lag). These lag spikes happen regularly, and by regularly I mean every 30 seconds pretty much on the dot. (See screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/0dq42.png). Sometimes while this is going on, it will skip a ping spike or two in a row, but normally it resumes its spiking every 30 seconds.
The problem comes and goes with seemingly no input from myself, and lasts an indeterminate time, from a few minutes to several hours. Right now for example I am currently having no problems and the connection is smooth. This makes it difficult to troubleshoot, as I cannot run any tests right now until the lag starts up again. I am running a new PC that I only just got last week, so I'm disinclined to beleive it is spyware or malware.
I am inclined to beleive however that this new PC is the root of the problem. I am currently running windows 7 on this PC, while the other PCs on the network are running Windows XP. When I run the same ping -t command on one of the other machines while the problem is occuring, they get the same lag spike. However if I turn my new PC off, the lag spike seems to go away for the other machines. Turn my new PC on again and sometimes the problem has sorted itself, but other times it returns after a short while. Edit: the strikethrough is because i no longer beleive this to be the case, just now i was using my laptop, which was the only powered on system in the house, and the problem was still occuring. my laptop is windows 7 too however.
I am connected via a cable, and not wireless, and the WLAN autoconfig is disabled by default in windows 7 (A google search revealed that many windows vista users suffered a similar problem because they were connected wirelessly and the WLAN autoconfig was enabled). I have tried disabling the wireless feature on the router entirely, but this did not appear to have any effect. I have also downloaded and installed the latest NIC drivers for my onboard network card, but that also did not change anything.
I have downloaded Wireshark and I am going to start recording the internet traffic the next time the problem occurs, however I am not very experianced with networking and I don't really know what I'm looking for, so it may be best if I just upload them here when I get them.
The router I am using is a ZyXEL Prestige 600, It is worth noting that when using a different router, I did not experiance this particular problem (I can't go back to using that router however, as it has a completely different set of problems, namely causing the linespeed to drop dramatically when used). I have one more netgear router that I can try tomorrow if the problem persists, however that has no wireless capability at all, which would be a nuisance as I use the wireless network when on my laptop/phone.
Sorry for the long post, was trying to cram in all the information I had so far. If you smart people need any more information let me know! Thanks.
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU 550 @ 3.20GHz (4 CPUs), ~4.4GHz
Memory: 4096MB RAM
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series
Windows 7
ISP: Zen (www.zen.co.uk)
Bandwidth ~2mb/s
Edit: Wireshark Recordings:
http://www.mediafire.com/?1vi3rtcc38n44ot
http://www.mediafire.com/?g5nrs4t31juwtdo
http://www.mediafire.com/?eqdqbgqdyio6gqa
I don't know how to mark them properly so that I can indicate to other people viewing the recordings where the lag spikes took place.. for the record there was a line:
67 7.800069 192.168.11.1 192.168.11.255 RIPv1 Response
that line was always nearby (seemed to occur every 30 seconds/ish) whenever the lagspike occured. Although sometimes that line popped up and no lag spike happened.
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Have you tried using a work network as opposed to home?
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On April 15 2011 07:27 skyR wrote:
Have you tried using a work network as opposed to home?
I'm not sure what you mean. I'm currently at my parents house for a few weeks, and this is their home network. As the PC is new I havn't had the chance to try it on any other networks such as the one back at my house at uni.
An update though, shortly after I finished the OP the problem started up again, so I did some capturing with Wireshark, and I'll upload those captures in a second once I work out how. The method I used wasn't very scientific sadly, I just had /ping -t google running on my laptop, and Wireshark running on my main pc, and every time I saw the lag spike on the laptop, I'd insert a time reference. So it's not 100% accurate really (if anyone knows a better way of doing it, please let me know).
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Yeah those Wireshark logs will really help - we should be able to identify if a certain port(s) are being used when your ping spikes.
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updated the OP with the wireshark recordings.
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Hey, sorry I was pooping when you messaged me on IRC about that line.
RIP is a protocol used by routers to exchange routes to different networks. If your router is lagging while it processes RIP updates, I guess that could cause the spike you're seeing. RIP also happens to run every 30 seconds, which would explain the curious timing of your spikes.
hypothesis: your router is somehow pausing its routing for a few milliseconds as it snapshots the routing table and broadcasts its RIP updates, causing that seemingly random delay every 30 seconds.
If you see anything related to RIP in your router's control panel, you should be able to safely disable it. If it's required, you should notice quickly (your internet will stop working as soon as the router drops the routes, you can reboot to force this). If it isn't, you won't notice anything except those lag spikes disappearing.
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I tried disabling RIP: http://i.imgur.com/i9mV9.png and then restarted both my PC and the router, but the problem persisted. I've turned RIP back on for now but here is a wireshark of it running without it enabled: http://www.mediafire.com/?1wgede528d6l19c
With RIP turned back on, the RIPv1 Response line is now out of sync with the lag spike by several seconds, so maybe it was just coincidental timing.
edit: still very puzzling that when I turn this PC off, the problem goes away, and when I turn it on it comes back.
edit edit: actually i've changed my mind about that, just now i've been having the problem when only my laptop was turned on.
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EPT
