Need some advice about my internet connection.

[Twilight Wolf]

I finally got fed up enough with my near-constant ping spiking while playing games that I broke down and moved the 2wire modem/router into my room and connected my computer to it with an Ethernet cable. It looked like it solved my problem at first -- my ping was reduced, not as much jitter, etc, plus my download speed was much higher on average. But in the middle of a TF2 match with Thursty, my ping, which had been down around 25 for the past 15 minutes or so, spiked to over 300 and made the game flux to play. Thinking I was still connected wirelessly, I disabled my wireless card so I couldn't connect wirelessly any more... Then I discovered that even with a wired connection I'm getting horrendous ping spikes. It's absolutely no different than if I were back on a wireless connection. Worst of all about these Dang spikes, if they don't go away within five minutes, they usually stick around for at least an hour or two, if not more, and this was the case tonight. I played around with Gmod 10 for an hour or so, saw my spike had gone away, and joined a TF2 match. I got to play for an hour or so before the spikes came back.

So... what should I do? Since the ping spikes obviously weren't fixed by setting up a wired connection (or by any of the tweaks I've done to Windows 7 that are supposed to help), does that mean I'm just flux out of luck?

 

[Aguiluz]

Can you try connecting directly? As in: Modem to PC?

Connecting directly cuts the router out of the loop.

 

[Twilight Wolf]

I can't, the 2wire box is a combined router/modem in one unit.

 

[Twilight Wolf]

...Nobody else has any suggestions? Really? ._.

Well, I'll throw a new problem into the mix -- the wired connection doesn't even work any more. Whenever I'm connected with just the ethernet cable, it tells me I'm connected to an unidentified network and have no internet access.

What. The. flax.

 

[Tibia]

I really don't know what to suggest to fix that. I had so much trouble with a 2Wire box here at work. It was a relief when it finally died. An off-the-shelf Netgear modem and router have performed so much better.

 

[Twilight Wolf]

I have the feeling that it's dying, myself. It's not exactly new -- it's at least six years old. But at the same time, I don't know if replacing it would fix the problems or not. Either way, I have an unused wireless router sitting in the basement, but I don't have a separate modem aside from a cheap one I picked up at Goodwill.

 

[Mako321]

Try that setup and see how good performance is :S

 

[Twilight Wolf]

Well, I just finished hooking up this other internet hardware (which is surprisingly smaller than I thought it would be; everything fits on my desk no sweat! ), and so far everything seems to work. My wired connection is better, at least! Wireless isn't as fast as it used to be, but far better than it was recently. I think the laptop users will live.

Not gonna know for sure just how well everything works until I start playing some games. Wish me luck, everyone.

 

[Mako321]

  ▲
▲ ▲
unLUCK!

 

[Twilight Wolf]

Thank you, Mako. <3

Well... I'm not sure what's going on. I played TF2 for a while last night, and I was very pleasantly surprised: no ping spikes! I was pretty happy. Then I decided to play around with Mirror's Edge, tweak the video settings, all that. Then I noticed... it said I was connected to an unidentified network and had no internet connection. As it turns out nobody else had any sort of connection either until I unplugged the phone cable from this new modem from the wall and plugged our old 2wire box in.

I don't know what could be going wrong. It never used to do this. The only thing I can think of that might be causing the instability is the fact that I've got my modem connected to the wall with a very old extension phone cord and a newer one plugged into that. I'm gonna try buying a new phone cable as soon as I get the chance since it couldn't hurt things and shouldn't cost much, but... our internet's been steadily taking a flax for the past month. I'm not sure if that's related to a dying 2wire box (which I suspect since things worked WAY better with this new hardware) or if AT&T are slacking off. If all else fails, I guess the only thing we can do is call AT&T and ask them to fix it... or switch to Charter or something, except it costs more money...

 

[Twilight Wolf]

Well... I might have fixed it. Might have.

After screwing around with both the router and the modem, I decided to reset both of them to their factory default settings. I entered our account information into the modem and nothing more -- it was all I needed to actually get on the internet. I set the router back up, but this time, instead of using the setup wizard, I just entered the information by hand, then changed the router's IP address since it and the modem's were the same. The wireless connection has been working fine all day, and I'm currently testing my wired connection.

Please, God, don't let this fail, too! D:

 

[J.D]

TF2 now? lol

 

[Twilight Wolf]

You wanting to play? I was just about to hit up some Prophunt with Thursty. You can come too!

 

[J.D]

In a bit, sure.

 

[Twilight Wolf]

Um... I'm not sure what's going on. I'm still getting ping spikes, but resetting my modem makes them go away for a while. They keep coming back, though, so I don't know whether the culprit is the modem or my DSL service itself...

 

[Twilight Wolf]

Well, I knew it was too okay to last. ._.

Right in the middle of a conversation with a Steam friend, my internet decides to take a flux on me, and I'm left with the "No internet access" notification whenever I mouse over the network icon on the bottom right of my screen. I did NOTHING to either the modem or the router... it just quit. To get it working again, I had to, once again, reset both the modem and the router to factory default settings and reenter all the information again. And of course this would happen on a weekend, when customer service can't be contacted.

As soon as they're open once again, I'm gonna have my Dad call AT&T (he's the one with the billing information, so he knows what we're paying for and what we SHOULD be getting) and see if they can test our connection and give us some new internet hardware. If that doesn't fix the issue... well, I guess there's always Charter. :/

 

[Tibia]

If you get ATT to cough up some new hardware, let me know how you do it. Those cheapskates will try ANYTHING to get out of handing out hardware. Still, I hate Charter. Absolute flax connection in my area.

 

[Twilight Wolf]

If you get ATT to cough up some new hardware, let me know how you do it. Those cheapskates will try ANYTHING to get out of handing out hardware.

...Dang.

Maybe the threat of switching ISPs would be enough. I hope so...

Still, I hate Charter. Absolute flax connection in my area.

Yeah, not everyone seems really pleased with them, but considering they're basically the only other ISP in the area that isn't dial-up or overpriced, high-latency satellite internet, we really don't have much of a choice there...

I'd love to get some Verizon fiber optic internet, but it's not available out here. ;_;

 

[Aguiluz]

Does the modem/router combination heat up? I had to drill holes on my router and stick a computer fan on it to make it work. When my router heats up it drops packets, lag, ping spikes, etc. so I said "screw it" and just drilled the case and stuck a fan on it.

 

[Twilight Wolf]

It gets pretty warm, but resetting the modem makes the issue go away, at least for a little while. Not sure why heat would screw up something that can be somewhat resolved by rebooting.

Well, my luck gets worse by the day with this stuff. As a few of you know, I bought a Linksys WRT54GS router at a garage sale on Saturday. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't fix my ping spikes, but it would give everyone else better wireless access, at the very least. That is... if it worked. No matter what I do, I can't get any sort of response from the Dang thing. All the appropriate lights turn on when stuff's plugged into it, but I can't access the admin page at all. I've tried different IP addresses, doing an ipconfig on it, restoring it to factory settings, messing with my computer's internet settings... nothing worked. It wouldn't be so bad if the guy I bought it from hadn't insisted that I pay the price he was asking and wouldn't bargain with me at all. Now I'm wondering if the jackass scammed me. ._.

Meanwhile, our internet connection has been getting worse and worse, especially at night. It's been going out, and a recent Pingtest.net test showed me pings of over 1000 and jitter of ~600 to a San Francisco server, along with 15% packet loss, on a wired connection. But... there's really nothing that can be done about it. We can't very well switch ISPs as aside from AT&T, we have Charter, which not only costs more but is Charter, overpriced satellite internet, and local ISPs who charge double for what we're already getting. There's also Sprint's internet plan, but as I'm pretty sure there's no 4G out here, it would be pointless, not to mention it's wireless, which sucks for gaming. This is one of the many things I hate about Reno: It's a big enough town that we get tourists, but it's too small for anything worthwhile to consider setting up shop here.

What should I do now? Cut my wrists while I listen to some Linkin Park?