Constant Ping Spikes Across all Devices?

Question

While I'm playing valorant I get ping spikes every 2 minutes or so. Sometimes it just goes to 100ms and I teleport a little bit, but other times it goes to 1000ms. My brother has the same problems when he plays on xbox at the same time. I don't think it's an internet speed issue as we always have 200mbsp download speed and video streaming is never slow. Also, we are both plugged straight into the modem, so I don't think that's the issue either.

Answer 1

Internet speed has nothing to do with ping times.  Ping time is just how long it takes a packet of data to go from the sender to the recipient and back.  It measures how far away something is electrically.  The signal can also be interfered with.  There is a non zero chance that this is what is happening.





Call your ISP.  It could be the modem or the wires that lead to your house and if they own the modem, they might swap it out. They also have a LOT of data on how your connection is performing.  They should be able to see that ping spike you refer to. 





The at home things to do are swap out the coax between the modem and the wall. Clean or swap out the wall plate.  Disassemble, clean wires, reassemble the wall plate.  There is a point where all cable connections meet the one from the provider. That needs to be clean too.  The ISP technician can measure things like signal strength as well.





If you do not own the modem/router, buy one.  saves you money and you can get a better one then the ISP provides.  I get the ones with as many down channels as possible.  (16 or 32 down, cant remember, and 8 up).  I figure that having more channels increases the odds of strong performance

Answer 2

You're plugged directly into the router.  Modems only have 1 Ethernet port.



In reality there is nothing you can do on your home network to improve ping times.  There are no performance guarantees on the Internet.  Think of the Internet as being sort of like the Interstate highway system, where at certain times, in certain places it can become congested.  If your route along on the Internet hits a spot of congestion, well "brown stuff" happens.  By their nature, video games don't deal well with periods of congestion (everything is constantly changing, nothing is consistent) where as video streaming can, to an extent, deal with brief periods of network congestion without the viewer noticing.  Video streaming and multiplayer games are not an apples to apples comparison from a network application perspective.Ping is one time measurement of delay from your video game console to the server the game is running on and back.  The game console sends an "hello" and starts counting time until it receives the servers "hello" back.  If the network is  super busy (across all of the Internet between you and the game server) your "hello" may be delayed at a few of the router hops along the path.  Also, if the server itself is super busy (peak time) it may not respond to ping requests as quickly as it would other times.   Point being a delayed ping reply may have nothing to do with the "network" itself.Be aware that ping (technically known as ICMP echo request) is not intended to be used a performance measurement, it's intended to be used as a tool to determine "reachability".



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Control_Message_Protocol

Actual standard document = https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc792

Answer 3

The most likely solution is that you have some kind of bad connection on your line. This could be a faulty exchange card or something else.