Intermittent ping spikes in CSGO

[tracknumber7]

Heyo,

I live in an apartment in Sydney's CBD, I have FTTB with TPG, I have intermittent ping spikes in Counter-Strike making the game unplayable as it's based on PVP. I've seen a few other threads on here with my problem however they always end in someone asking for a dm and no solution is provided on the thread. I am thus asking how I might fix this as this only happens in this game specifically even while im on Sydney valve servers. It's random and intermittent, I've looked at network usage in system monitor and nothing is amiss for what I can tell. Please help me!

[Shane]

Hi @tracknumber7 

Let us help identify what causing these latency issue and rectify this ASAP. May we know if your desktop is connected via LAN or Wi-Fi? Also what troubleshooting steps you have taken so far?
 

Regards,

Heyo,

I live in an apartment in Sydney's CBD, I have FTTB with TPG, I have intermittent ping spikes in Counter-Strike making the game unplayable as it's based on PVP. I've seen a few other threads on here with my problem however they always end in someone asking for a dm and no solution is provided on the thread. I am thus asking how I might fix this as this only happens in this game specifically even while im on Sydney valve servers. It's random and intermittent, I've looked at network usage in system monitor and nothing is amiss for what I can tell. Please help me!

[tracknumber7]

Hi @Shane ,

My pc is connected via ethernet/lan via a 'powerline' adaptor for cable managment, I originally thought this was the problem so I ran an ethernet cable from my pc all the way to the router but experienced the same problem.

Troubleshooting steps are as follows;

• Rebooted pc multiple times
• Rebooted router multiple times
• Restarted game multiple times, sometimes this works and I don't have a problem for hours after rebooting the game between every match, even the whole night, but Friday nights it seems to be at it's worst and this does not work at all.
• Disabled wifi searching with "netsh wlan set autoconfig enabled=no interface="Wireless Network Connection"" in the Windows command prompt.
• As aforementioned used a long ethernet cable to connect rather than the powerline adaptor.

Also as aforementioned, this only happens (or so I've noticed) on CSGO, the same problem happening on other games would definitely be noticeable however because the ping 'spikes' render the other players in the game totally frozen, then after hitting the peak ping spike (between 80-1000) the players 'catch up' as it drops. I would have noticed it anywhere else.

Thanks for your help!

[david64]

Hi @tracknumber7 . Keep the ethernet connection while testing. Use the ping and tracert commands to investigate network delays.

Do you know the hostnames or ip addresses of the game servers?

Check for delays between your computer and the router, and then through the network to the game server.

ping -n 20 192.168.1.1          (whatever your router address is)

ping -n 20  gameserveraddress

tracert   gameserveraddress

Do it enough times to get a reliable view of network times.

Do the same commands when playing the game during normal operation.

When playing the game and you get ping spike, run the commands. 

[tracknumber7]

Hi @david64 !

Thanks for your comment.

I've pinged my router address; 

Pinging 192.168.1.102 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.1.102: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128

And that's what it says every time on each line after 3 tries.

As far as I know, Valve's csgo server ip adresses are hidden, I've googled a bit and most tell me to install third party software to find the IP to use a tracert on. Is this advised or would I be able to find the IP an easier way?

Cheers!

[david64]

@tracknumber7 . Reboot the computer but don't start the game. When it has settled down, open a command window and do

netstat -an

This shows all network connections.

Start the game. You might have to wait for a partner to start playing.

Open a second command window and do another netstat -an.

The extra sessions represent possible comnections to a game server.

If you run as administrator the second command window, you can do

netstat -anb

which shows the exe file creating the session.

[tracknumber7]

Thanks again @david64 

I followed your instructions to the letter, with -anb I was able to see only a bunch of ports opened by csgo.exe eg; 

[csgo.exe]
UDP 0.0.0.0:62239 *:*

I scoured the whole list and those are unfortunately all that's listed with csgo.exe while connected and in a game

[david64]

@tracknumber7 . No easy way to find game servers. You would need packet capture software like Wireshark to record connections to server.

Usually with bad response times with games, it's because of bad routing along the network path. But response time stays bad, doesn't spike like yours.

Windows task manager can show process cpu utilisation, memory use, network traffic.

The router might have a traffic monitor to show network use on other ports and wifi.

Is there any support for this game? They might have suggestions.

[Shane]

Hi @tracknumber7 ,

Appreciate the additional test details. Could you shoot me a PM with your details so we can proceed with the initial assessment?

How to send a PM? 

Regards,

Hi @Shane ,

My pc is connected via ethernet/lan via a 'powerline' adaptor for cable managment, I originally thought this was the problem so I ran an ethernet cable from my pc all the way to the router but experienced the same problem.

Troubleshooting steps are as follows;

Rebooted pc multiple times
Rebooted router multiple times
Restarted game multiple times, sometimes this works and I don't have a problem for hours after rebooting the game between every match, even the whole night, but Friday nights it seems to be at it's worst and this does not work at all.
Disabled wifi searching with "netsh wlan set autoconfig enabled=no interface="Wireless Network Connection"" in the Windows command prompt.
As aforementioned used a long ethernet cable to connect rather than the powerline adaptor.
Also as aforementioned, this only happens (or so I've noticed) on CSGO, the same problem happening on other games would definitely be noticeable however because the ping 'spikes' render the other players in the game totally frozen, then after hitting the peak ping spike (between 80-1000) the players 'catch up' as it drops. I would have noticed it anywhere else.

Thanks for your help!