Ping plotter, advice please Options

[Bargod]

So, I've got some guys from the cable company coming over this afternoon, the result of my call about high ping since changing from Comcast to Time Warner. I ran ping plotter last nite and see that I'm getting lots of packet loss in steps 2, 3, and 4, mostly. At time up to 60%, but there is always some. Currently it's 15% in step 2, 15% in step 3 and 50% in step 4. These are all my local cable company.
How should I go about explaining this to the guys and not get the run around like I did form the IT guy when I called earlier in the week? I know just enough about this stuff to be dangerous.
Thanks in advance.

Here are some samples:

Target Name: N/A
IP: 8.9.4.77
Date/Time: 3/2/2007 12:02:39 PM to 3/2/2007 12:02:58 PM

Hop Sent Err PL% Min Max Avg Host Name / [IP]
1 20 0 0.0 7 28 10 cpe-76-184-16-1.tx.res.rr.com [76.184.16.1]
2 20 1 5.0 7 10 7 [70.125.216.17]
3 19 4 21.1 7 24 9 [70.125.217.8]
4 20 7 35.0 7 23 10 gig2-0-0.dllatxl3-rtr1.texas.rr.com [24.93.37.97]
5 9 0 0.0 13 14 13 gig2-2-0.hstqtxl3-rtr1.texas.rr.com [72.179.205.14]
6 9 0 0.0 13 22 15 te-2-4.car1.Houston1.Level3.net [4.79.88.25]
7 20 0 0.0 14 197 39 ae-11-11.car2.Houston1.Level3.net [4.69.132.234]
8 20 0 0.0 50 69 56 ae-5-5.ebr1.Atlanta2.Level3.net [4.69.132.238]
9 20 0 0.0 50 80 57 ae-1-100.ebr2.Atlanta2.Level3.net [4.69.132.34]
10 20 0 0.0 69 84 74 ae-3.ebr2.Chicago1.Level3.net [4.69.132.73]
11 20 0 0.0 69 192 83 ae-24-56.car4.Chicago1.Level3.net [4.68.101.168]
12 20 0 0.0 69 85 71 [4.79.66.146]
13 20 0 0.0 69 87 72 [8.9.4.77]

Target Name: N/A
IP: 8.9.4.77
Date/Time: 3/2/2007 12:04:24 PM to 3/2/2007 12:04:43 PM

Hop Sent Err PL% Min Max Avg Host Name / [IP]
1 20 0 0.0 7 12 8 cpe-76-184-16-1.tx.res.rr.com [76.184.16.1]
2 20 0 0.0 7 11 7 [70.125.216.17]
3 20 8 40.0 7 60 12 [70.125.217.8]
4 20 4 20.0 7 26 10 gig2-0-0.dllatxl3-rtr1.texas.rr.com [24.93.37.97]
5 9 0 0.0 13 75 20 gig2-2-0.hstqtxl3-rtr1.texas.rr.com [72.179.205.14]
6 8 0 0.0 13 17 14 te-2-3.car1.Houston1.Level3.net [4.79.88.29]
7 20 0 0.0 13 20 14 ae-11-11.car2.Houston1.Level3.net [4.69.132.234]
8 20 0 0.0 50 65 55 ae-5-5.ebr1.Atlanta2.Level3.net [4.69.132.238]
9 20 0 0.0 50 92 57 ae-1-100.ebr2.Atlanta2.Level3.net [4.69.132.34]
10 20 0 0.0 70 100 77 ae-3.ebr2.Chicago1.Level3.net [4.69.132.73]
11 20 0 0.0 70 73 70 ae-24-56.car4.Chicago1.Level3.net [4.68.101.168]
12 20 0 0.0 70 88 72 [4.79.66.146]
13 20 0 0.0 69 88 71 [8.9.4.77]

Target Name: N/A
IP: 8.9.4.77
Date/Time: 3/2/2007 12:05:05 PM to 3/2/2007 12:05:24 PM

Hop Sent Err PL% Min Max Avg Host Name / [IP]
1 20 0 0.0 7 26 9 cpe-76-184-16-1.tx.res.rr.com [76.184.16.1]
2 20 0 0.0 7 10 7 [70.125.216.17]
3 20 4 20.0 7 12 8 [70.125.217.8]
4 20 9 45.0 7 11 8 gig2-0-0.dllatxl3-rtr1.texas.rr.com [24.93.37.97]
5 11 0 0.0 14 19 15 gig2-2-0.hstqtxl3-rtr1.texas.rr.com [72.179.205.14]
6 8 0 0.0 13 116 46 [4.79.88.21]
7 20 0 0.0 13 196 47 ae-11-11.car2.Houston1.Level3.net [4.69.132.234]
8 20 0 0.0 50 72 58 ae-5-5.ebr1.Atlanta2.Level3.net [4.69.132.238]
9 20 0 0.0 51 73 58 ae-1-100.ebr2.Atlanta2.Level3.net [4.69.132.34]
10 20 0 0.0 70 84 75 ae-3.ebr2.Chicago1.Level3.net [4.69.132.73]
11 20 0 0.0 70 76 71 ae-24-56.car4.Chicago1.Level3.net [4.68.101.168]
12 20 0 0.0 70 92 73 [4.79.66.146]
13 20 0 0.0 69 73 70 [8.9.4.77]

[Bargod]

Here is an image for the more visually inclined...

[)--S@B0T-->]

Well BG, sad fact is that most of the "Technical Support" folks are former telemarketers that burned out and now work for your cable company.

They have a book in front of them that includes a troubleshooting tree (does this fix the problem? yes - you're done; NO- try this...etc.) and when all else fails they bump you up two or three "Tiers" until you might talk to the guy who knows something.........maybe.

Until then they will blame it on everything under the sun and you, sir, are gonna baffle the Hell outa them with your packet loss info. (Sorry, I'm not a pessimest, I'm a realist) Been where you're sitting a coupla times.

I hope you find that guy. I found him once! He worked for Adelphia a few years back. I hope he works for your company now.

It's definitely in their network - somewhere. Key is finding the guy that can find that problem.

Good luck with that!

This post has been edited by )--S@B0T-->: 03/02/07 3:00pm

[Bargod]

Personally, I believe I got a guy who knows what he is talking about, but whose job is to "deflect" blame. The first person I talked to had me run tracert and said, yeah, there is a problem on our end. So he transferred me to IT... where I sat on hold for nearly an hour. Then the IT guy I got told me that the guys that take the intitial calls don't know what the hell they are talking about and that tracert means absolutely nothing. He had me go to speakesy.com (which caused 15 minutes worth of delays since his accent was so heavy I went somewhere else that also had a speedtest button to push) to run a speed test. He told me that my speed was excellent. I pointed out that speed wasn't the problem. The problem was that my pings have doubled since Time Warner took over Comcast. He then blamed it on the server I played on. I pointed out that I play on servers all over the country and that by using xfire I can constantly check my pings and they aren't spiking, they are HIGH. He once again blamed it on the servers and said none of it was TWC's fault. I told him I wasn't satisfied with his answer and asked to talk to a different IT person. He offered his supervisor and I said "that would be great". He then transferred me to a line that had a message on it saying that "the new # is...". I hung up and dialed that number directly to get somebody who isn't in IT and told me that her # was changed so long ago she was suprised there was still a message on there. She said the message was only supposed to be on there for a month (I assume this is why the IT guy transferred me to it, because it wasn't supposed to go anywhere). But she wanted to help. So, that is why I've got guys coming to my house who probably won't be able to do anything.
Grrrrr....

[Major.Pain]

Actually the guys coming over just may be the ones that can help. Like maybe it's a bad cable modem or cable. When I switched to fiber optics (Verizon) I had nothing but problems for a week. Made the calls, did the hold thing, etc. Finally they sent a guy out. Turns out it was the major piece of equipment that runs FIOS. They replaced it and all is well for a year now (knock on wood). The thing is, this was brand new equipment that was faulty.



-Pain

[)--S@B0T-->]

Sorry to hear that BG!

Those must be some intense classes they send those people to so they can toss us around like a beach ball and never miss a beat! LOL!

Man, I HATE the probs that I cannot control. (their network) I can deal with sound cards, mobo's, routers, network cards, floppys, cd/dvd roms, firewire, ram, hard drives, kids, dogs, u name it, but the cable company is enough to make you wanna go postal! LMAO!

I really hope you can get through to someone that can help. Seriously, good luck!

(It makes you feel like there's a conspiracy, doesn't it? LOL!)

[T/A6Pak]

Hey Bar,

We're feeling for you!! Hope all works out....soon!!

Just put him in his place.

T/A6Pak

[HammaTime]

Actually the guys coming over just may be the ones that can help. Like maybe it's a bad cable modem or cable. When I switched to fiber optics (Verizon) I had nothing but problems for a week. Made the calls, did the hold thing, etc. Finally they sent a guy out. Turns out it was the major piece of equipment that runs FIOS. They replaced it and all is well for a year now (knock on wood). The thing is, this was brand new equipment that was faulty.


-Pain

I had the same experience as Pain. T/W took over our Adelphia service and immediately strung new cable from a neighboring town. Initially, I had horrible problems with download times half of what they had been. I called a couple of times, had a guy come out, not much changed, until I found the right person at the right time. A day or so later, my service doubled in speed.

Keep pushing Chris, you'll get the desired results one of these days. Perhaps we should call your local service number and complain that they are inhibiting our access to our God! That should get them to sit up and take notice!

[Bargod]

My speeds are good. It's the dropped packets in the first few hops.

[-priority(+)target-]

Faulty or maxxed out router most likely... provider will have to decide what to do... good thing for you is they likely have contracts for the use of the network... If it isn't part of your ISP network tough sell. What I did was started to talk about downstream contracts for service, and service expectation. At the very least it made the tier 1 support flint escalate it to someone who knew something about networks and service contracts and my problem got fixed. Might work for ya...

I suspect that once they are aware of the problem they will be looking at solutions.

[Bargod]

Latest IT guy I just got off the phone with said my transit power is too high, and the guy coming to the house should be able to fix that. Of course, it's 4:30 and the guy was supposed to be here between 12 and 3...

[Cero]

comcast bought out adelphia for me, ever since then, you guys seen it, my ping at night time goes up, i feel like cross playing, lol.

[Bargod]

There is the image from earlier.

Just got a new modem from the tech guy that came out. The problem is still there...


Here is the latest. The huge spike is me uploading to photobucket.

[Bargod]

I called the guy back and he came around to test the lines. He said there is a lot of interference on the lines, possibly from squirrels biting into the cable wire. He said he didn't think that would effect packet loss. I once again pointed out that I was losing the packets mostly on the 3rd and 4th hops. He thought I might be losing my connection, but my modem lights are steady on (no power loss or connection loss). He gave me a female to female connector and told me to take my computer line off the splitter for the tv. I looked at it and it just doesn't seem to make sense. If I take the cable for internet off the splitter I lose half my TV connection. So that solution made no sense.
On the plus side, I found the wrench that I used the last time I was messing with the cable wires in the attic. LOL.

[steel]

Bargod,
I think that unless that hop's packet loss is steady, that every ping returns >50% packet loss, then it's probably normal loss and not a problem. If it is steady packet loss, then it is a problem, but not at your house, and I doubt your local techs can bump it up high enough to get you any satisfaction - you might want to send your pingplot to their corporate offices or something like that.

I didn't see anything in your pingplots to indicate that your cable modem or your home connection are/were having any troubles. And ha, if squirrels were munching on your cable line, you'd have a lot worse problem than bad ping to gameservers, lol. Plus, you'd have a ratty TV picture too. Matter of fact, if squirrels bit through a fiber-optic line, you'd get absolutely no reception of any kind.

In your last pingplot, to 8.9.4.80, your high ping is due to the Atlanta and Chicago hops. But overall, 70-71 is not a bad ping at all, from Texas to a Chicago server.

Here's something to look at. Run your pingplotter to our server and see what it is (your pingplotter results changes throughout the day, so you'll want a fresh run to compare). Let's say you get 70-71 again. Now, go straight into the game and to that same server you just pinged, and look at your ping. If it's around 80, then that's just about right, cause the game itself will add some overhead to your ping. If it's really far off from the pingplot number, then you may want to do some tweaking to your computer (like run TZ Connection Booster) or the game itself (but I'm sure you've already done all that maxpacket, etc, tweaks, yes?).

Good luck with it. I get pretty lousy pings and lots of stuttering to the server from here in Austin, due to congestion in the same hubs you are showing in your graphs.