Xfinity and Ping? Night and day

[Chf Wiggum]

So I have Xfinity gigabit cable internet (750-950Mbps down, 35-45Mbps up) Fastest I can get. Every night around 9pm. My gaming is fantastic, clearly a huge difference in performance. I have tried pretty much everything I can to duplicate this performance from calling Xfinity and having techs that say my line is fine. To purchasing every router Asus, TP-Link, Lynksys, and now a R2 I have also paid for a separate adapter so that I can plug the console to the modem directly and have no other members on my network.  It does seem like I get the best performance plugged directly into the modem with no router at all but this only works late at night. 

By performance, I think everyone will know what I mean playing FPS. I can maneuver, get away, get shots off that connect see bullets coming at me. During the day however it is like I get shot once and I am dead, says I got shot way more than I see, can't maneuver, can't get away, shots seem like every other bullet connects. It is literally night and day! 

Here is my question, I know Xfinity is a shared cable line and that the reason is congestion and sharing the line. But why is it that on the R2 day or night the PING (ms) is the same? There is a huge difference in performance and yet the numbers on the router are totally the same day and night. There has to be some other measurement that determines this. Maybe jitter although this also seems fine. Both day and night the router measures around 30-35 ms which is faster than the human eye can respond to yet it feels like I am a full second off during the day. I am confused on this as it should feel the same if the ping is the same but trust me it's night and day difference. 

[Tai N]

I have the same issue with Xfinity and I now live in Illinois, actually I live like 2-5 miles away from the data center lol. My ping goes anywhere from 8-11 ms. I have tried figuring out why late at night the gaming is amazing and during the day it's not so good.

I wish xfinity offered me fiber optic line/gigabit pro plan where I am so it would be just a direct line and possibly better amazing shots registering etc. The only thing I could think of is during the day the shared lines are congested or it's just an over subscribed isp issue where many people are on during the day.

 

Best gaming at night, not so good during the day with xfinity.

[Netduma Liam]

Interesting observation guys!

The fact that the R2 is getting the same ping would definitely suggest some other kind of interference, but you would have to assume its either upstream or unrelated.

How do you guys have QoS setup?

[Soenda]

I actually have this problem, kind of aswell. but i'm in the Netherlands. Cable connection and its slow gameplay/sluggish compared to late at night. it's very frustrating 

[Netduma Fraser]

It's to do with peak/non peak times unfortunately, if you have a dedicated line then this issue could be reduced and perhaps you'd have that experience much more consistently over the day.

[Chf Wiggum]

I understand peak and non peak times but if the ping is the same wouldn't the performance be the same??

[Chf Wiggum]

2 hours ago, Netduma Liam said:

Interesting observation guys!

The fact that the R2 is getting the same ping would definitely suggest some other kind of interference, but you would have to assume its either upstream or unrelated.

How do you guys have QoS setup?

I usually dont use QOS as my bandwidth is extremely  high. I have played around with it some but does not seem to make a difference. The only noticeable difference in performance is the time of day.  

[Chf Wiggum]

1 hour ago, Netduma Fraser said:

It's to do with peak/non peak times unfortunately, if you have a dedicated line then this issue could be reduced and perhaps you'd have that experience much more consistently over the day.

Dedicated line? I believe comcast's infrastructure is all shared. What I don't understand is the difference in performance yet the R2 saying 30ms pings. This should be so fast that it is crystal clear gaming. 

[Netduma Fraser]

Have you measured to see if there is any jitter/spikes? It might be they're routing you differently in peak times.

[Chf Wiggum]

34 minutes ago, Netduma Fraser said:

Have you measured to see if there is any jitter/spikes? It might be they're routing you differently in peak times.

Not sure, How would I go about doing this to see if these are happening?

 

[Chf Wiggum]

[Chf Wiggum]

Feels like garbage!

 

[Netduma Fraser]

Using Ping Plotter or Connection Benchmark could indicate jitter/spikes. Odd the graph shows differently to the ping value, is it like that all the time?

[Chf Wiggum]

All the time yes

 

[Chf Wiggum]

Ping Test (Under Load)

 

Download

16.63ms

 

Upload

101.72ms

 

Idle

12.55ms

[Chf Wiggum]

[Netduma Fraser]

Okay so you do have some packet loss and spikes on your main line. I'd suggest now using PingPlotter to run a longer plot and see if you see that to Google 8.8.8.8 and any local sites

[Chf Wiggum]

On paper everything looks good. That is my point why is the performance so different, yet everything looks the same and pretty good?

[Chf Wiggum]

[Chf Wiggum]

What does this mean??

[Chf Wiggum]

3 hours ago, Netduma Fraser said:

Using Ping Plotter or Connection Benchmark could indicate jitter/spikes. Odd the graph shows differently to the ping value, is it like that all the time?

Why is the receive rate sooo high? Just played a game where it was low and felt pretty good?

[Netduma Fraser]

You do have some jitter and a spike at the very least, the plot isn't too long so hard to say if it's a pattern, can you do one for 10 minutes? We don't set the rates so that's down to the game

[Chf Wiggum]

So what can you do about jitter and spikes?

 

[Netduma Liam]

13 hours ago, Chf Wiggum said:

So what can you do about jitter and spikes?

 

This is one of the things that QoS works to alleviate!

[fuzzy clam]

17 hours ago, Chf Wiggum said:

So what can you do about jitter and spikes?

 

You are more than likely suffering from node overload on your line. Comcast, Spectrum etc all have a very saturated network because it's oversold in neighborhoods. I have dealt with it for over 12 years with Spectrum as my ISP, it's a share hub and unfortunately what your neighbors are doing will affect your quality. And remember that there is extremely heavy traffic during the day with Covid...people working from home and having 6-8 people on a chat for meetings, kids being home from school and doing virtual learning and just more usage during the day. I would run PingPlotter on a quiet network (at night) and then run it during the day for the same amount of time and you'll see which hops are giving you the issues.

And to get around it I actually had a dedicated line for gaming. I used AT&T and my speeds were like 12 / 2 which was plenty because I only used it for gaming and gaming uses very little bandwidth. So I had Spectrum ( Charter at the time ) for my entire house and used AT&T for my PS4 which was a lot lower speeds but night and day difference when it came to line quality (spikes, jitter, and packet loss) and of course my gaming was much improved. But unfortunately most large ISP's all suffer the same issues which sounds like you are suffering from but I would definitely use the congestion control to try and help stabilize and optimize your home network as much as possible.