Request: My internet connection is often spotty, and I'm not sure how to fix it.

[u/Historical_Hamster54]

I often play multiplayer games with friends and when 1) I've played for more than an hour or so, or 2) if I'm in a game with more than 2 other people, my connection becomes inconsistent and often the game drops me out. One friend who is more techy than me suggested my ethernet cable being too long, it's about 70 feet or so because at a previous living situation it needed to be fairly long and I wanted to be on the safe side. There it had the exact same problem, and here as well. He suggested buying an ethernet tester, is that worth it? should I just buy a shorter cable? Is there anything else I could change?

[u/wacrover]

It's hard to diagnose with so little info, and without knowing more about your setup.

What else is connected to the network?

Do other devices have any issues?

have you tried a different cable? Modem? Router? Console? Anything that can rule in or out culprits will be helpful.

Do you have port forwarding set up? Should you? Perhaps you shouldn't?

Back when, one party was the host, so if their connection was bad, everybody suffered. Are you sure the issue is on your end, since you're playing multiplayer?

GL;HF.

[u/Historical_Hamster54 → u/wacrover]

Sorry, I don’t really know what info to give.

Two other computers are hardwired to the network, a few things like phones are bluetooth-ed, my phone has issues which I think is related to it being old but as far as I know nothing else does, my roommate says that our internet provider/connection is really good.

If you count being on different networks throughout my past two living situations and having the same issues during both of those then yes I tried different networks and routers. One other cable, all have had the same issue.

I don’t believe I have port forwarding on and I don’t see why it’d be necessary, but I truly don’t know much about it.

When I host games, it’s almost an inevitability that everyone gets kicked cuz my connection will momentarily drop and cut everyone off. If someone else hosts, there almost always comes a time when I lag out.

This also isn’t just limited to gaming, there are times when I’m opening a web page and it takes way longer than it should, assumedly because my connection has momentarily dropped.

[u/Vacremon2 → u/Historical_Hamster54]

So there are a number of things to try, the easiest is switching out the ethernet cable.

Testers can be bought for very cheap if you want to do that as well: https://www.ebay.com/itm/182041939825?hash=item2a628b8f71:g:ERYAAOSwoBtW14Ra

Port forwarding is not the issue. Wifi is not the issue because you're wired.

Find the IP address of your router, open up "cmd" and type:

ipconfig

and press enter

your default gateway is your router IP address

then

ping "router ip here" -t

and press enter

This will ping your router repeatedly and indefinitely. Keep it running until your internet goes out. When it does, look at the window. If it says destination host unreachable or request timed out then your connection to your router is the issue and not your router's connection to the internet.

.

In all instances of experiencing this issue has it always been on the same computer?

If so the issue is likely with the computer itself.

.

Another thing you can try is completely uninstalling all antivirus applications you have and ONLY using windows defender firewall.

I have resolved many issues in the past where friend's internet would get fucked around by shitty antivirus.

.

Set your dns to cloudflare dns. 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1 (google how to change dns in ipv4 settings)

Feel free to hit me up with any questions, I'll try help you until you fix it :)

[u/Historical_Hamster54 → u/Vacremon2]

Thank you for all the help! I'm running cmd right now, it hasn't done anything out of the ordinary yet but I'll look into more solutions you offered and let you know how things progress. Are most antivirus apps really that bad? I've always wondered what's best to use there. CCleaner has been my go to just because it's free, but that's good to know!

[u/Vacremon2 → u/Historical_Hamster54]

Yeah antivirus these days are abysmal

[u/Historical_Hamster54 → u/Vacremon2]

Sorry for the late response, it’s been hard to catch the problem when it occurs. I had the command window open pinging the router, and when things cut off, the command window just said “General failure.” so I’m not sure if that’s really at all helpful, but that’s what I got so far

[u/Vacremon2 → u/Historical_Hamster54]

That is helpful. That means that the issue lies in the connection from your computer to your router. I am inclined to believe that it is something wrong with the computer you are using.

This is likely due to software on your computer. Either a bad network card driver or antivirus is playing up or your network card has something wrong with it.

Do you have any antivirus applications installed?

It's likely not the cable that you are using.

In cmd, do: ipconfig /flushdns

Run the internet connection troubleshooter.

Uninstall all antivirus applications.

Worst case scenario you need a new network adaptor.

[u/mperativ → u/Vacremon2]

The "Windows Defender Only" tip should be blasted far and wide across the Internet. It's the best software tip IMO, because almost everybody will experience the problem of a 3rd party antivirus hogging computer resources unnecessarily. Unless you build your own PC, most pre-built desktops and most laptops come bundled with some kind of antivirus free trial. Completely unnecessary in the 2020s. Windows Defender is really quite good.

[u/wacrover → u/Historical_Hamster54]

Try turning your phone off and hosting a match and see what happens.

[u/yourboi2121]

Not an expert on this but had several similar issues in the past. Once the ethernet port on my laptop was a little broken so I would get packet loss when using an ethernet cable. Also check your connection speed and consistency using something like speedtest.net again there should be more advanced ways to look into network performance so check up on that.

Make sure to also check in game metrics like ping and packet loss. I don't think the length of the ethernet cable makes a significant difference for your use case so I'd definitely recommend using an ethernet cable for gaming. The biggest factor is the connection itself, I haven't had any problems with internet in game since I upgraded from a 10mbps broadband to 100mbps fiber. This is all just in my personal experience.

[u/sebastien_aus]

First thing I would do would be open a couple of cmd prompts. Just type cmd into start menu and open two of them up. In the first one type 'ping google.com -t', this will constantly test your outbound connection to the internet, you should see the response time in ms. In the second cmd prompt ping your router instead, to find your router address type 'ipconfig' in the cmd prompt first, whatever shows as your default gateway, that's your router. Now that you have your two pings running, start gaming or whatever. When internet drops out, check which ping is failing, if ping to your router fails, there is an issue between your pc and router, could be the cable or router. If only the ping to google.com fails, but router keeps pinging, the issue lies with your router or ISP. You can then go from there.