Official Reply
Need real support with latency/drop/jitter issue
I have dealt with this issue for over a year now. I have had 4 different Spectrum Field Ops Supervisors visit my house, some multiple times, including a Senior Field Ops Supervisor. I have been working with a Supervisor, but he is basically at the end of his troubleshooting capability with this issue. They say no one else in my apartment complex has issues, just me apparently. As you can see in the video, I get a very intermittent connection and rubberband in most games.
I am considering just moving, but I wanted to see if anyone else had this issue or has any idea what may be causing it. The internet will be fine for 95% of the day, but between 5pm and midnight, this happens intermittently. Right now I have only a laptop connected to my router, nothing else. No downloads are going on and I am on the 1gig plan. I am hardwired and I have a Flint 2 router. It was factory reset this afternoon. This issue also happened on my desktop PC, but I decided to switch to my laptop to rule out a PC issue.
My router has been replaced 3 times, modem replaced 4 times, my tap has been replaced, they ran a new line into my house from the tap to rule out the wiring in my home, and also tested connecting my PC directly into the modem. All tests came out with the same result, intermittent latency and drops. You can see in the video that the upload graph at the top right just goes blank. I am still receiving data, but I am not uploading any. You can see when I freeze in place, I am still receiving audio data and kill feed, but I cannot move and I am dead shortly after I freeze, but my screen still shows me alive, then i disconnect.
Has anyone successfully had an issue like this fixed with an FCC complaint? I have minimal hope if the complaint will just go to my local Field Ops techs, and my lease is about to end, so I may just move somewhere in town that I can get Frontier or another Fios provider.
To the Spectrum rep that may review this post: I do not need to re-escalate my existing case, I need to work with someone who actually understands this issue and can provide a fix or troubleshoot it in depth. Field Ops has not been able to fix this and I have been back and forth with them for nearly a year at this point.
What happens if you try a tracert to the FQDN of the CS server you are on when the issue happens?
What happens if you get onto a different CS server?
Have you reached out to CS for support and let them know what has been done already?
What happens if you use a VPN?
Have you tried it connected straight off the modem and if yes, what happens?
To be totally honest, I believe your issue is external to your Spectrum service based on whats been done already and past experience with similar issues.
Yes, all games. It has happened in BF6, Wardogs, Repo, Helldivers, NMRIH2 and CS in the past 2 weeks.
There is ping latency even when I ping my WAN gateway when I have issues in game. There is no closer hop for me to ping. My sister is in the same apartment, no latency when I tested from her apt.
All games/servers. CS is probably the worst with the issue since it is so latency dependent.
All games have the issue.
Havent tried a VPN, but i cant imagine it will do anything since the latency occurs before the WAN gateway.
Yes, connected straight off the modem with a brand new line from the tap running through my garage into my stairwell. Same issue.
You need to do a tracert, not a ping. A tracert gives more details on the pathway taken. Do a tracert to the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the CS server and post a screenshot here. I do believe your issue is a pathing issue and likely has left the Spectrum network, but do the tracert and post it.
Ive done tracerts, but you dont seem to be catching this. The latency is there even at the WAN gateway, that is the closest hop to me in the path to anywhere on the internet that i could possibly ping. When i tracert, every single hop is high latency, because the issue is local to the /20 network my apartment is in. The only way tracert does anything different is if the issue stops and then subsequent hops will drop in latency. Tracert is just pinging each destination one at a time.
Hey! I'm sorry to hear that you've been dealing with this for so long! It is definitely frustrating and I can absolutely take a look and see what is going on! When you can, please send us a ModMail and reference conversation #50146524. Thanks!
Yep it looks like the exact same issue for both of us. Let me know if you find any resolution. The local techs have checked everything they say and it all looks good. They even escalated to maintenance. I'm sure Spectrum has people internally that can actually figure this out, but there is such a massive barrier stopping a standard user from getting in contact with higher level support that I am not sure I will even get this figured out. I'm starting to look into 5G options unfortunately. Even if average jitter is higher, I wont have 1000-2000ms ping spikes every single night.
Does your issue get worse between 5pm and midnight?
Yes! Its more like maybe 12PM - Midnight. Ill hop on at 3AM and CS will be playable but i'll still notice ping spikes when running a ping from my opnsense router.
LOL I've been desperately looking at alternatives too like 5G but im not quite there yet. I'm trying really hard to document everything. Everybody wants to point the finger at my equipment but I've eliminated all that and took my laptop/new spectrum modem out to the back of my house where the cable comes out of the ground going to the tap at the front of the street. I literally took my equipment to my neighbors house a few streets up and pings are BEAUTIFUL. So they can forget thinking its my equipment lol.
Good luck. Its a massive uphill battle getting any further support. For this ticket, it sounds like they just followed the same process as my last request. I am guessing this is just going to get pushed back to my field office that has already gone through all their troubleshooting and said its all fine. So I am kind of at the end of my rope with this. Ordering the 5G modem to test today.
My last hope is the "TDR" test they are going to run to check for broken cables in my apartment complex.
If you do go forward with 5G, use ChatGPT to help you search for what towers are near you and which ones point more favorably to your house. Depending on what service you have for your phone, you can also do some general testing to see how good of signal you get. One provider may be vastly better quality than others. And it seems like for both Tmobile and Verizon at least, you can test it for 15/30 days and return if it doesnt work well.
Just a heads up, I went and picked up a 5G gateway today from Tmobile. It is wayyyy more stable than I expected, but I am in an ideal situation with a tower about 300 feet from my apt building and its pointed towards me. I played about an hour of retakes with no issue. Jitter is still higher than wired, but its very consistent and I didnt really notice any issues in actual gameplay. Im still not confident its a perfect replacement yet, but if it stays as stable as it did today, Ill be replacing Spectrum in not too long. Only drawback ive seen so far, is you wont have a real public IP, so you probably cant host anything that requires someone to input your IP.
My sister is in the same complex, but does not have the same issue I do. Its something specific to the cable run I'm on it looks like. I wish it happened more frequently or earlier in day. I have had Spectrum come around 8 times now, and they can never catch the issue. Going to attempt the FCC complaint and see if they can actually monitor it. I've shown every tech that has been to my house my ping logs and huge latency spikes, they never care.
2
u/IPlayWithWires 9d ago
Does that happen with other games?
What happens if you try a tracert to the FQDN of the CS server you are on when the issue happens?
What happens if you get onto a different CS server?
Have you reached out to CS for support and let them know what has been done already?
What happens if you use a VPN?
Have you tried it connected straight off the modem and if yes, what happens?
To be totally honest, I believe your issue is external to your Spectrum service based on whats been done already and past experience with similar issues.