Please Please help me :[

[Deathcrush87]

hi there.

let me first explain the situation here.
we are 6 rooms and 7 people living in a shared house in Edgbaston Birmingham.
We have a Virgin internet 30mb with a super hub which is located in the Living room, ground floor.
there is one empty room on the ground floor and we have 3 rooms on the first floor and two rooms on the second floor.
Im living on the second floor.
given the nature of the location of the superhub, we all use wifi connection.
We (or better to say, I) have this problem with the internet for 2 years now, and day by day it gets worse.
I am the only one in the house who plays online multiplayer games, CoD BO2, CoD AW, BF3, BF4, BF Hardline and LoL, on a PC.

now the problem;
at first, i got high pings on weekends, ok no big deal, i know others are at home using internet. so i moved on playing my games on week days. was fine for a while. then after sometime could not get good, playable pings at the evenings after 17:00, ok no big deal, ppl came home and now are using internet. some other folks in the house also complained that they get no connection to the superhub and our landlord purchased them a NetGear Powerline+wifi thingy.
things got better for a while, but then, bad pings and disconnections started at weekdays mornings too (when no one is home). I got so frustrated that i went forward and purchased a BT Powerline Extender for me self.
was good for a while, then got worse than bad. went back to wifi, the same problems are there, that is:
on the weekdays, mornings or late nights when the ping is good (30~40 ms), i join servers and play for 2 to 5 minutes, some random lags here and there but thats ok. then my ping spikes first to 140, then comes back to 40. ok. then to 250 and back. ok. then to 400, 500, 600, 999, then to 1037!! then i get kicked from the servers though i am the top player. just feel my frustration!!!
http://imgur.com/06mAapw
http://imgur.com/IcU6PbV
can not play my games at any time at any day, the service just got worse and worse every day.

things i have done;

- turned down the router for 10 minutes then plug it in again.
- contacted Virgin Support
- reset the router to factory settings
- contacted Virgin Support
- rebooted the router
- contacted Virgin Support
- tried wifi connection to superhub, wifi connection to Netgear, powerline connection to superhub, all the same results
- contacted Virgin Support
- disabled IP Flood Detection in superhub
- contacted Virgin Support
- re-installed windows 8.1 64 bit
- contacted Virgin Support
- re-installed all the drivers
- contacted Virgin Support
- installed ASUS ROG GameFirst II
- contacted Virgin Support
- uninstalled ROG GameFirst II
- contacted Virgin Support
- whined to my landlord
- contacted Virgin Support
- cried to my landlord
- contacted Virgin Support
- called my landlord names behind his back
- contacted Virgin Support
- used my 3 mobile's internet and i got a steady 120 ms ping no spike
- stopped using my 3's mobile internet as my 500mb allowance got used in a jiffy
- contacted Virgin Support
- port forwarded UDP whatever it is
- contacted Virgin Support
- Prayed to Jesus
- contacted Virgin Support
- got dissapointed at Jesus as it seems he does not know/care about technology
- contacted Virgin Support


and everytime i contacted virgin support, they said "oh there is no fault on our side, try wire connection to the superhub", or "upgrade your contract to 100mb" or "buy this, do that"

totally a shut up and suffer situation with Virgin Support.

im hopeless, is there any way i can fix this and have a round finished without getting kicked?

if not, im gonna force my landlord to switch to BT instead of Virgin.
oh Lord...
sometimes my download speed is 7 bytes!!!! I swear, no joke!
my friends ask me if im joining the servers from Africa or something!
even there is a Vietnamese guy joining from vietnam in my server and he gets better ping than me.

anyone, any suggestions, any help? please?

p.s. i might as well move t Vietnam, seems they have better internet services there!

[Ignitionnet]

Sure you don't have housemates doing, well, pretty much anything with 7 people sharing 30Mb download and 2Mb upload, while you game?

Appreciate you've had issues with WiFi and Powerline in the past but this seems to make sense to me.

Perhaps your landlord could take a slight hit on his rental yield and upgrade to a service more appropriate for an HMO.

[Deathcrush87]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Sure you don't have housemates doing, well, pretty much anything with 7 people sharing 30Mb download and 2Mb upload, while you game?

Appreciate you've had issues with WiFi and Powerline in the past but this seems to make sense to me.

Perhaps your landlord could take a slight hit on his rental yield and upgrade to a service more appropriate for an HMO.

you see, i understand if my housemates are at home using the internet, but when they are not at home - Monday morning, Tuesday morning, Wednesday morning, Thursday morning - then there is no excuse for bad pings and getting kicked from the servers now, right?
when im joining a server on the times i mentioned my ping is like 30~40 ms, but then sky rockets after some minutes of playing. i did not have this issue at first, its a recent issue. read my post carefully, im using this internet for 2 years now.

one thing i forgot to mention is the random disconnections, meaning that for 2 to 4 minutes the internet connection goes out, so i would be still connected to the super hub but there is no internet, it comes and goes sometimes by seconds but that is enough to ruin my game.

---------- Post added at 15:06 ---------- Previous post was at 14:55 ----------

see these:
ping before joining a server;
http://imgur.com/j5CsSlS
ping after 5 minutes of joining the server;
http://imgur.com/fpi6Mcg&DnCenkd

[Ignitionnet]

Get yourself one of these going

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping

[Deathcrush87]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Get yourself one of these going

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping

how this would help me?

[v0id]

Originally Posted by Deathcrush87

you see, i understand if my housemates are at home using the internet, but when they are not at home - Monday morning, Tuesday morning, Wednesday morning, Thursday morning - then there is no excuse for bad pings and getting kicked from the servers now, right?

Your room mates don't have to be home if they have a torrent client seeding/downloading

[Deathcrush87]

Originally Posted by v0id

Your room mates don't have to be home if they have a torrent client seeding/downloading

i promise you, my housemates dont even know what torrent is.

[techguyone]

buy a router? and put the superhub in modem mode, especially as you say you're all on wi-fi spread out over several floors.

[jb66]

Its only an extra £5 per month for 100/6meg. I didnt know the sh1 could work two floors up!

[General Maximus]

yeah that is what I was going to say. There are multiple factors which can affect your connection and the fact that you are getting sporadic spikes means there is a utilisation issue somewhere like Igni has intimated. The ping monitor he wants you to setup tracks the pings over the internet to your shub (not pc) and will let us see if there is an issue with your internet connection or your network connection (lan) between the shub and pc. It will look something like this:



The biggest problem you have got, like jb has suggested, is that the shub is absolutely diabolical for wireless. I know you have probably been told it is the bees knees and seen the advert on tv for perfect at home multi user use but it isn't. If you are all going to use wireless you really need to buy a proper router which can sit next to the shub and the wireless on it will be far superior. We can recommend some good ones for £50-60 if you want to get your housemates to chip in. The powerline adapters can be a bit flakey as well because the connection/speed you get is entirely dependant on the quality of the electrical cabling in the house.

The best thing you can do to satisfy your curiosity is wait for a morning when everyone is out the house, disable wireless on the shub (so you know no dodgy downloads are going on) and run a patch cable from your pc to the shub so you have got a direct wired connection. Your connection to the shub will be faultless for all intents and purposes and any ping issues and reduced download speed will be to do with your wan connection on the VM side. If you are in a student area you might find your local node is massively congested and that is why you'll notice such huge swings in performance between morning (when nobody is home) and the evenings and weekends.

[Ignitionnet]

It's probably not a utilisation issue. Utilisation doesn't cause apparent disconnects or ping spikes in the morning unless incredibly bad.

Go to http://192.168.100.1 and you should see in the top corner a link for the modem stats. Please post them. I suspect your upstream power levels might be too high.

[General Maximus]

My bad, should have been clearer. When i said utilisation issue i was referring to high lan usage resulting in saturation on the wan link. i.e he could be playing a game quite happily and as soon as somebody in another gets the torrents going his connection is screwed. Tbh if you can get 100/152 for ax extra £5/month i would go for it because it is oodles more juice for the 7 of you.

[Deathcrush87]

all right, thats better now, i get quite some useful answers here, many thanx.

dear General Maximus,
- ok i am going to run that tool and post the results here asap.
- please recommend me a good router (£50~60 price range or a tad bit higher) so i can force my landlord to get one and please tell me if switching to 5Ghz would help. (my current PCI-E wifi card is a TP-Link TL-WN881ND 300Mgps 2.4 Ghz, and i use a ultra gain wifi antenna thats probably why i can connect to superhub 2 floors below. note that switching to 5Ghz will cost me a lot of money and if it does not help then maybe it would be better for me to know before-hand.
- what you say is completely true about powerlines
- i can not connect my pc wired to the superhub, i need a stupidly long CAT5 cable to the living room (50 meters?) and taking my pc to the living room is such a headache (2 floors up and down).
- as i said before, this is totally a new situation. before i could play on weekdays mornings but now i can no longer do that. so in the last 2 months something happened that stops me from playing my games. the question is what would it be?
- last time i called Virgin Support they said a 100mb internet would probably cost us £100 a month, that why we have not upgraded it yet. my landlord pays something like £20 ~ £30 a month for our internet.


dear Ignitionnet:
I presumed you meant this;
http://imgur.com/QlxhVxj

[General Maximus]

Originally Posted by Deathcrush87

last time i called Virgin Support they said a 100mb internet would probably cost us £100 a month

that's not true, my 152/12 is £25/month. Like jb said above, it would only be another £5/month for 100mbits and it would be well worth the jump because it is less than £1 each.
5ghz is defo the way to go and the more of you that you can get to use 5ghz the better. For those that can't it doesn't matter because any good router you get these days will be simultaneous dual band. I was going to not recommend a Linksys router for the first time ever but I couldn't resist the temptation :p Have a look at these two. Either of them will offer a high level of future proofing and longevity for your landlord because they use the new ac wireless technology. I suggest you take the time for a quick google and read some reviews about wireless performance and stuff.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-LINK-Arch...437610&sr=1-11

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Linksys-EA67...linksys+ea6900

Rather than laying into your landlord and saying the shub is ***** I would suggest you go down the lines of "it is budget equipment supplied by an isp for free. The model you currently have is first generation and because of the problems we have been having I have found out that it is very very bad for wireless connectivity and unfortunately that is what we need the most as there are so many of us in such a large property". He/she might feel more comfortable trotting down to PC World and listening to the rubbish they come out with but warn them, they'll pay the same amount of money in PC World for a low end router compared to a more mid-range you'll get off the internet. E.g. what you can get off Amazon for £50 they'll probably charge you £70 for and for that price you can get something far better.
Tbh dude, depending on how long you are all planning on living there it would be worth you coughing up the dosh yourself and keeping the router when you move out. I would definitely have the discussion about the extra £5/month for 100mbit. 30mbits just isn't enough for 7 people.

[Deathcrush87]

Originally Posted by General Maximus

that's not true, my 152/12 is £25/month. Like jb said above, it would only be another £5/month for 100mbits and it would be well worth the jump because it is less than £1 each.
5ghz is defo the way to go and the more of you that you can get to use 5ghz the better. For those that can't it doesn't matter because any good router you get these days will be simultaneous dual band. I was going to not recommend a Linksys router for the first time ever but I couldn't resist the temptation :p Have a look at these two. Either of them will offer a high level of future proofing and longevity for your landlord because they use the new ac wireless technology. I suggest you take the time for a quick google and read some reviews about wireless performance and stuff.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-LINK-Arch...437610&sr=1-11

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Linksys-EA67...linksys+ea6900

Rather than laying into your landlord and saying the shub is ***** I would suggest you go down the lines of "it is budget equipment supplied by an isp for free. The model you currently have is first generation and because of the problems we have been having I have found out that it is very very bad for wireless connectivity and unfortunately that is what we need the most as there are so many of us in such a large property". He/she might feel more comfortable trotting down to PC World and listening to the rubbish they come out with but warn them, they'll pay the same amount of money in PC World for a low end router compared to a more mid-range you'll get off the internet. E.g. what you can get off Amazon for £50 they'll probably charge you £70 for and for that price you can get something far better.
Tbh dude, depending on how long you are all planning on living there it would be worth you coughing up the dosh yourself and keeping the router when you move out. I would definitely have the discussion about the extra £5/month for 100mbit. 30mbits just isn't enough for 7 people.

many thanks for the advice.
now im going to ask you about a different scenario. please tell me which would cost less; new router + plan upgrade or:
landlord pays for each room to have a wired connection. so each room will have a CAT sticking out through the wall.
in this case, do we need a new router?
how much approximately it would cost? is it more expensive than your suggestion? will it provide with better performance? what will the performance per £ be with wired plan?

by the way, the routers you did suggest are well above £50~60 price range, and given the fact that they are on sale at the moment prices may change in the future. are there any other suggestions?

about http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping ;
do i have to have java script installed? and how can i share my results with you? on my screen its just an empty graph, how does it work?