Strange problem (ping related I think).

[Istaria]

Hello people, I was wondering if anybody could offer me any advice on a strange problem I've been having the last 2 weeks as its really baffled me and I don't really want to trouble VM if its just a silly problem caused by me.

The problem is ping, I play a few different casual online games. The last 2 weeks(perhaps longer) they've basically become unplayable at times (really high latency). It happens for about 5 hours at a time then goes back to normal.

At first I thought.. maybe just its my connection droping out, so I ran various tracerts & speedtests & ping tests .. but they seem to look ok.

I've run the various speedtests on speedtest.net & everything looks fine.. pings are ok + speed is registering what I pay for (20mb).

I ran the speedtest on here and that also looks fine.

I downloaded a file from virginmedias game section.. speed was fine, also tested it via rapidshare.com.. speed was fine again.

So the problem seems to be something to do with ping, yet when I test the ping on speedtest.net & pingtest & myvoipspeed... its looks fine. (usually around 20 - 25).

When I run ping tests such as ping bbc.co.uk -t I get good results such as:

Pinging bbc.co.uk with 32 bytes of data:
bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=118
bytes=32 time=19ms TTL=118
bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=118
bytes=32 time=33ms TTL=118
bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=118
bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=118
bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=118
bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=118
bytes=32 time=19ms TTL=118


The only thing I notice is.. normally I use that bbmax speedtest, it constantly registers a speed of 20mb (just about) & a ping of between 25 & 35

Now when the problem arises... & I test my connection using that website - it registers a speed of about 6mb & a ping of 135 constantly during the 5 hour period when im having this problem... as soon as I notice the problem has gone away.. the bbmax speedtest goes back to giving me good results.
Its the only speedtest that shows the problem when im experiencing it.

I feel silly as I don't really want to phone VM and say .. im having a ping/latency problem but every speedtest on the net except bbmax says im fine.

I was thinking it could possibly be a routeing issue, but when I do tracerts they look fine.

Could anybody please suggest any tests I can do to understand why every speedtest/ping test looks ok.. yet only bbmax shows me I am experiencing a problem (when I am also seeing a game unplayable).

I thought maybe doing a tracert to the server bbmax uses to test? would that be practical?

Additional info:

o/s = windows 7
No programs running in task manager that shouldnt be.
AVG f/w + A/V

Downstream Lock : Locked
Downstream Channel Id : 6
Downstream Frequency : 402750000 Hz
Downstream Modulation : QAM256
Downstream Symbol Rate : 5360.537 Ksym/sec
Downstream Interleave Depth : taps32Increment4
Downstream Receive Power Level : 0.1 dBmV
Downstream SNR : 38.6 dB

Upstream Lock : Locked
Upstream Channel ID : 4
Upstream Frequency : 29200000 Hz
Upstream Modulation : QAM16
Upstream Symbol Rate : 2560 Ksym/sec
Upstream transmit Power Level : 43.0 dBmV
Upstream Mini-Slot Size : 2


Thankyou for reading & sorry for the wall of text, im just really confused and unsure how to explain it correctly.

[Sephiroth]

You say for about 5 hours at a time .....

The most obvious thing that comes to mind is that the shared component of the link is heavily loaded at that time.

Yet you say that the most demanding of the speed tests work fine when the games don't.

So it could be that the bottleneck is at the games server end. It could be anything. If mail downloads and web sites come up quickly, it's not your line that's got a problem But I think you knew that.

As for the speed tests - there are plenty of articles here about that.

[bomber_g]

How is your machine connected to your internet connection?