Virgin Media ADSL High Ping

[will101]

As per the title really.

I've been experiencing periodic high pings when attempting to connect to game servers, even in the UK. Usually I get kicked from servers for having an average ping of over 200ms which is no fun. I have run PingPlotter at various times of the week and during high usage periods (pretty much most evenings and weekends) my ping to servers, web pages, Google etc is in the 100 to 200+ range with some packet loss and occasional ping spikes to 1000ms+.

I'm using a wireless router (Virgin Media's ADSL netgear) but the hop from my PC to the router login is a steady 2-3ms.

Before I waste my time and money engaging in a battle of intellects with Virgin's support staff does anyone have any knowledge of issues like this being improved upon or am I doomed to having a largely useless internet connection during the times I am actually at home?

Just to note: I get around 3mb bandwidth which is what www.samknows.com predicts and have probably only had to reboot the router at most twice in the 6 months it's been up and running. Which is great in some ways but I want less ping. Please.

[adam1701]

get rid of vm adsl ? (asap)

[Zak33]

is this a wireless connection to your PC?

If so, have you tried a cable just to see the improvement, even if it's just temporary?

[will101]

I connected to the router via ethernet and compared ping plotter graphs before and after (wired vs wireless).



Wired eliminated the 1000ms+ spikes I was getting every minute on the minute (odd as ping plotter had been showing the ping spike starting several hops up the trace route). These spikes didn't usually cause any problems but not having them is better than with I guess! Pings to BF2 servers at 10-11pm were still in the 150 and up range. Sorting the server list by ping showed only a handful under 150 which fluctuated up to over 200 when refreshing the server. www.speedtest.net tests showed a ping fluctuating between ~150 to ~225 at this time with bandwidth (with no other usage my end) to be down from a normal off peak 3MB to 1.5MB.

Unfortunately I am tied in to a 12 month minimum contract with Virgin. I was looking around at other ISPs when I moved but as I still had 6 months of a previous contract to run at my last house I was faced with having to pay the rest of my contract service charges to leave Virgin. Tbh, whether it's the line at my current flat or due to the ISP, Virgin's ADSL BB service has been rock solid with no regular connection drops or major slow downs. Even with the current ping issues it still rates better than both BT and Sky, although they were both in separate locations so again, it could have been the line. A non-gaming user would have no issues with the service I currently have whatsoever.

What would you suggest my next step is?

As a side note samknows shows a 30/09/08 date for O2/BE LLU enablement. I don't know how accurate these dates have proved to be in the past but Oooo, BE are coming

Unfortunately that's a £90 bail out fee from Virgin tho

[moogle]

Unfortunately that's a £90 bail out fee from Virgin tho

£50 if you find Blitzen's post about £40 cashback on Be from quidco