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[mstevens]

I've always had an issue with dropped connections (usually enough to boot me from an online game or PSN, not a drop like the router has to completely start the connection from scratch.) For example.. I get kicked out of probably one in three Overwatch games from disconnection, but then I can just click X and my internet is fine.

A couple months ago I decided to finally do something about it.

My first troubleshoot was to get rid of the crappy modem/router combo I was renting from comcast. I've been in a few living situation the past few years where this wasn't really avoidable, but now was the time. I upgraded my internet speed to 75 mb then went out and bought a motorola ARRIS surfboard and a netgear R7000 router. Hooked these bad boys up and the problem continued.

Then I read online that certain ports had to be opened up. Tried that, no avail. Next I tried going ethernet cable from the router to the ps4, bypassing wifi completely. That didn't help either. I messed with WAN settings, QoS setup, set NAT to open, set NAT to closed. Tried pretty much everything I read about online..... Still no dice.

I'm almost positive it is my router set up because I plugged directly into the modem for a few hours and everything was fine (although that is a small sample size and I've found that success with the router as well, although rarely).

The problem is that it is making me absolutely hate online games. I love Overwatch so far, but the cloud of "am I going to get disconnected in the next 10 seconds before we cap this win...... NOOOOO" hanging over me every single game is awful.

Can anyone relate to this or give any advice? Hell, if someone has a netgear R7000 purring like a kitten I'll just copy your settings. I want to be able to enjoy my games without that outside stress.

 

[vivftp]

Had pretty similar issues for years and even got the same Netgear router, but that didn't help.

In the end I found out the coaxial cable I had going into my modem was bad all along. Had my Rogers rep run some new cable and now my Internet is amazing.

And all my router settings are default

 

[Aselith]

Edit: Oh nm you bypassed wifi

 

[AlphaDump]

assuming you know what youre doing, it seems the problem is consistent regardless of tech. I'd say the root is probably on the infrastructure side supporting your internet.

 

[Aselith]

Are you using the same Ethernet cable when running it off of them modem as you do when you ran it off of the router? Or do you have two lengths of cable and just used the one from the modem to the router to plug into the PS4?

 

[oneils]

Had pretty similar issues for years and even got the same Netgear router, but that didn't help.

In the end I found out the coaxial cable I had going into my modem was bad all along. Had my Rogers rep run some new cable and now my Internet is amazing.

And all my router settings are default

Op, I had a problem similar to yours and the solution was similar to his. A cable installer had to come to my house and do some tests. He figured out that my connection was messed up. A bunch of houses in my block connect to some big pole in a lot. A tree had grown around the pole and messed up some of our connections. He rewired a lot of it and no more dropped connections. Well, there are some very rare outages but they are usually not specific to my house.

 

[Shadybiz]

Yeah I'm not a tech at all but I have done a good bit of research into a similar problem that I have at my place. A lot of the times it turns out to be that you need a new line dropped. Comcast might balk at coming out to do it though...may have to go back to their equipment, take consistent records of the problem when it occurs, and show it to them when they say "the problem is on your end."

 

[mstevens]

Are you using the same Ethernet cable when running it off of them modem as you do when you ran it off of the router? Or do you have two lengths of cable and just used the one from the modem to the router to plug into the PS4?

I'm have a cable plugged into the PS4. To use the modem, I unplug the other end (from the router) and plug it into the modem. I've tried two different ethernet cables.

edit: although, the ethernet cable I have running from the modem to the router has been consistent this whole time. I doubt it could be that simple, could it?

Edit: I'm hoping it's not a comcast issue. I've had several lengthy phone calls with them where they insist nothing is disconnecting ever (lol) and they want to charge me $70 if the guy comes out and nothing is wrong. Of course, I'm not going to have the guy sit and watch me play Overwatch so he probably won't find anything.

Another reason I'm hesitent to say it is on their end (or even the coaxial cable) is because the PS4 seems to work fine when plugged into the modem directly.

I'll be honest and say that even though I feel like I followed directions perfectly in setting up the router as recommended, I could have messed something up since I barely know what any of the acronyms (QoS, NAT, WAN, etc) in there even mean

 

[mAcOdIn]

In the end I found out the coaxial cable I had going into my modem was bad all along. Had my Rogers rep run some new cable and now my Internet is amazing.

I would look into this. As we have more and more wires all tangled up behind our shit and more and more wireless shit throwing out their own interference the quality of cable's becoming more and more important.

I also find that the DOCSIS 3 modems are more picky and susceptible to interference on their line than their older counterparts. A good shielded cable's not a bad investment if you don't already have one.

But moving from that something that I'm starting to get is that the latency and overhead created by all these devices behind my router adds up. I recommend checking into bufferbloat. https://www.dslreports.com/faq/17883

When I upgraded to my DOCSIS 3 modem ultimately it was flashing my router to openwrt and fiddling with its traffic shaping that resolved my issues. Though the new shielded cable did improve my signal strength in the cable modem's diagnostic screen.

 

[clav]

Have you tried updating the router's firmware?

Otherwise, without diagnostics like stats from the cable modem's page, difficult to diagnose.

 

[LordCanti]

I would go into the modem's config and compare the stats (how many channels you're bonding, Signal to Noise ratio, power, etc) against what is within spec (will have to google to find the IP to log-in and the numbers you should be seeing). I'd also check the logs for critical errors and the like.

 

[mstevens]

Have you tried updating the router's firmware?

Otherwise, without diagnostics like stats from the cable modem's page, difficult to diagnose.

Firmware is up to date

 

[Mineshaft_Gap]

I know a thing or two about this...

1. Look around your house for bad coax fittings or unterminated coax lines. For example, do you have a line going into a room without a TV? If so, terminate the line. Try to look for and eliminate any possible source of egress which can wreak havoc on a variety of wireless devices.

2. Check the lines coming into your house. Try to slightly bend the drop cable and the in-feed cable to feel for any sort of crunchiness. A crunchy cable is a water damaged cable and it will need to be replaced.

3. Look for any excessive bends or kinks in the cable run you have going to your modem/router. A bent cable can cause signal loss. Bare in mind that these last two won't affect WiFi signal as much as they'll affect the cable signal itself.

4. Download and install an app like WiFi analyzer on your phone. Look to see which channels are the most crowded and set your channel to one less crowded. Set channel width to 20MHz. Set your channel to 1, 6, or 9. The reason this is important is because at 20/40MHz your signal will overlap any adjacent channels regardless of which channel you select which is worse than being stacked directly on top of several other devices. You'll see what I mean when you look at WiFi analyzer. The takeaway here should be to pick a channel that doesn't overlap any of your neighbors devices, ideally on channels 1, 6, or 11. Old devices that only support old standards (like 54G) will bottleneck your wireless connection. The fun thing about this is that this isn't just true for devices on your network - it's true for all devices on the same channel. Which means your neighbors iPhone 4S has the potential to bottleneck your WiFi. This is, among other reasons, why you don't want to overlap adjacent channels.
Run speed tests on WiFi as you try to determine the best channel.

5. If your router shares a wall with a bathroom or a kitchen I strongly suggest moving the router as the glass, metal, tile, piping etc can all interfere with your wireless devices signal.

6. Move anything you possibly can over to the high band. The 5Ghz bandwidth is ideal for things like media streaming devices or other such devices which require a lot of bandwidth and don't move around your home. The high band doesn't have as good a range as the low band but it supports faster speeds and more devices. 2.4Ghz band is crowded with all sorts of shit, even outside of your WiFi devices (baby monitors, cordless telephones).

7. WiFi has its limits. If you have 15 devices and you expect to be able to stream 4K video to multiple devices at the same time while Steam streaming 1080P/60Hz than do yourself a favor and lower your expectations OR buy a very high end router.

 

[mstevens]

So I just went into my modem log (didn't even know I could do that, been only messing around with the router page) and I see this is happening several times a day:

3-Critical R02.0 No Ranging Response received - T3 time-ou

 

[Primus]

Do you have a coax splitter between wall and modem? I had issues much like you had for a while, and the tech that came out to my house fingered the crappy splitter I'd bought from Radio Shack. He swapped it out with a much beefier one (at least up to 1000 MHz, preferably higher), and the problems disappeared.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

This does sound like a problem with the cable wiring in your house, or even further upstream.

You have an Arris Surfboard, you can go to http://192.168.100.1 and look at the various diagnostic information.

In the Signal tab, look at the Signal to Noise Ratio and the Power Level and use this FAQ to figure out if your values are good:
http://www.dslreports.com/faq/16085

 

[Mineshaft_Gap]

As someone else mentioned, check for bad splitters as well. A good way to know if your splitter is a piece of shit is if it came from Radioshack or Best Buy. Check for loose fittings in addition to bad fittings. A bad fitting will have the center conductor either too long or too short, sometimes the dialectic material in the center of the fitting gets sucked out. If a piece of the fire steel braid is touching the center conductor or is loose inside the fitting that's also a major possible cause of issues.

If there are DC9's or signal amplifiers inside your house that's also a good sign whoever cabled your home took shortcuts. Sometimes, amplifiers are a necessary evil but not when they're used because whomever installed your cable didn't feel like addressing signal problems at the tap, or if you have a long drop - replacing the drop with RG11.

 

[mstevens]

Here is downstream:
Channel ID 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 z
Signal to Noise Ratio 39 dB 39 dB 39 dB 39 dB 40 dB 39 dB 40 dB 40 dB
Downstream Modulation QAM256 QAM256 QAM256 QAM256 QAM256 QAM256 QAM256 QAM256
Power Level
5 dBmV 5 dBmV 5 dBmV 5 dBmV 5 dBmV 5 dBmV 5 dBmV 5 dBmV

Here is upstream:

Channel ID 1 2 3 4
Symbol Rate 5.120 Msym/sec 5.120 Msym/sec 5.120 Msym/sec 5.120 Msym/sec
Power Level 44 dBmV 44 dBmV 43 dBmV 41 dBmV

____________

edit: not currently using splitters. I'm very much ignorant when it comes to wiring. When you're talking about fitting, you're talking about the metal part of the coaxial cable that plugs into the wall and into the modem, correct?

 

[mAcOdIn]

I really would try checking into bufferbloat. You can run a test here: https://www.dslreports.com/speedtest

If you have an older router lying around to experiment with I'd try openwrt on it, not sure I'd recommend flashing a fancy router like the R7000, hell, I don't even know if that router works with it.

 

[mstevens]

I really would try checking into bufferbloat. You can run a test here: https://www.dslreports.com/speedtest

If you have an older router lying around to experiment with I'd try openwrt on it, not sure I'd recommend flashing a fancy router like the R7000, hell, I don't even know if that router works with it.

downloading was 70ms
uploading was 379ms

grade was D

 

[mstevens]

I'm using the same coaxial cable I was using with my comcast rented modem/router, so I guess the next step would be to buy a new cable? What about new ethernet cables to go from modem to router? Any types better than others?

 

[mAcOdIn]

downloading was 70ms
uploading was 379ms

grade was D

Ouch, a 379ms ping with upload, what settings did you do with your QOS on your Nighthawk?

 

[Mineshaft_Gap]

If you have these in your home (or just cables coming out of the floors/walls) and they aren't capped AND they're hooked up the the cable coming from outside your home... they're a source of noise. Ideally, everything should be capped/terminated if it's actually hooked up. This is an enormous source of noise which can affect you, your neighbors, and if it's bad enough - the cable company. It's possible for noise to backfeed into the tap which can cause issues for people in your neighborhood. If you have enough bad fittings/terminated lines and enough noise (say... if you grow weed and use grow lights) you can cause problems for everyone who shares a node with you.

These are some examples of bad fittings. Old fittings, fittings with the center conductor sucked out. A barrelled like with the braid exposed.

If you don't see anything like this than still make sure everything is tight. Ideally, finger tight to any wireless device, and wrench tight to any and all splitters or wall outlets.

I'm using the same coaxial cable I was using with my comcast rented modem/router, so I guess the next step would be to buy a new cable? What about new ethernet cables to go from modem to router? Any types better than others?

Just walk into your local cable office and ask for it. They should give it to you for free.

 

[LordCanti]

downloading was 70ms
uploading was 379ms

grade was D

Your modem stats seem fine to me when I compare them with my own (300mbit cable with no issues).

Your ping test is bad though. I got A's across the board and pings closer to 20ms. It didn't give me a breakdown of DL/UL but 379 seems very high.

The ISP probably needs to come out and diagnose the problem (check lines and such). Something is sporadically causing the critical errors you're seeing and diagnosing exactly what it is will probably take someone that has the right equipment and ultimately access to the cable box outside if need be.

 

[mstevens]

Ouch, a 379ms ping with upload, what settings did you do with your QOS on your Nighthawk?

Before making this thread I rebooted the router to the factory settings, so I haven't done anything to the QoS tonight yet. Any recommendations?

 

[Mineshaft_Gap]

Before making this thread I rebooted the router to the factory settings, so I haven't done anything to the QoS tonight yet. Any recommendations?

Yes. Follow the directions I posted.

 

[mstevens]

Yes. Follow the directions I posted.

Trying to keep up with it all really appreciated. I'm going through the steps now. Anything specific that I should do with the QoS in my router settings? Didn't see that in your post.

 

[Mineshaft_Gap]

Trying to keep up with it all really appreciated. I'm going through the steps now. Anything specific that I should do with the QoS in my router settings? Didn't see that in your post.

I would leave QoS at default for right now. Most important is the channel/cable/fitting related stuff.

Personally, I have WPA2 Personal set as my security mode. Mixed G+N (no A) as network mode. I'm on channel 9 ONLY because in my specific circumstance, that's the only channel that doesn't overlap anyone elses router. Channel width 20 NOT 20/40. This is important. I have QoS turned off because that's the way I like it.

 

[Aselith]

Since you're getting really long ping times. Hit Win + R to bring up the run menu and type cmd then when the command prompt comes up type "tracert 8.8,8.8" and see if the ping times are really long really early in the hops or if it starts like 3 or 4 hops down the line.

With a modem and router first hop should be router then modem then your local node etc

 

[mAcOdIn]

Before making this thread I rebooted the router to the factory settings, so I haven't done anything to the QoS tonight yet. Any recommendations?

I was actually looking into that, you seem to be in a rough spot with the R700, if it is indeed bufferbloat causing your upload latency issue. That will get you kicked from games, 380 is high in this era, hell it was high in the past.

So far people are saying that QOS on that router degrades performance but does help with bufferbloat. I tried to see if Netgear was nice and had a firmware emulator I could play with but they don't so I'm still trying to find out what kind of settings and options it has. I'll probably be forced to look through its manual and hope the pictures and options in there are current with the current firmware.

Openwrt does not support the wireless radios of the r700 at all, so while I like Openwrt not having wireless in 2016 is, uh, I can't imagine it. I don't have experience with other third party firmware and am hesitant to recommend blindly that people try and install things I haven't used.

As far as trying QOS, if you already tried this I'm sorry, just went through the R700's manual. I guess the only thing you can do is try to go into QOS, enable upstream QOS and run its speedtest. Usually this should be done during peak hours because your speed on cable will be lower than what it is late at night. Upstream's all I'd mess with.

QOS is messy. I'd run that speedtest link from earlier with just your modem connected and see if the modem alone fares better. If it does, granted its one test it could be a fluke, but it could help indicate it really is the router causing the poor upload.

At that point I think you have a couple of options.

1. Get a router that gives you more control over your traffic or try 3rd party firmware on the r700. I'm hesitant to recommend the latter because the R700 is a feature rich router, expensive, and if you fuck it up you're likely out that money if you can't get it back working.

2. Badger Comcast to look at your shit. Even if you can alleviate the problem with traffic shaping on your router it doesn't mean that your lines are perfect. Since you're likely not going to be able to monitor your connection at all times.

You're in a tough spot because cable companies are dicks and don't care about your line that much, you have to be prepared to fight and pay if you're connection's "acceptable" just not great. Your previous router/modem unit also doesn't help because they usually suck but it could also still be the line, so it doesn't really point to anything. If you had a different setup prior that also sucked I might lean more towards the line but with the all in ones I don't really draw anything from them.

So for giggles I'd run the speedtest I linked earlier for bufferbloat with just the modem, with your r700 without QOS(which you did) and with QOS upstream enabled and see if they differ greatly. I'd also try and rerun those tests during peak hours and see what you get for each of the three.

If the modem alone actually tests well I'd be hesitant on bugging Comcast because then you're likely going to have to fight, be nasty and persistent because they're going to blame your setup. So if that's the case I'd look into buying a cheap router that's flashable with OpenWRT(this is cheaper than paying Comcast 70 bucks to come out). I have this guy: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0088CJT4U/?tag=neogaf0e-20 it's around 50 bucks. I'd then try using SQM option of OpenWRT and see if that alleviates the issue. If it does I'd probably drop the issue.

Now if the modem also tests poorly I'd decide then to fight Comcast and not buy or try anything else. Hound them like a fucking dog.

 

[littlerat]

Do you have anything else running in the background that may be using internet, like torrents, or automatic updates on other devices?

 

[Iorv3th]

Just googled and found this

In your router admin settings make sure QoS is enabled and set your Upstream (or uplink) to manual. Enter in 40,000 Kbps and then be sure to save your settings. I am a Comcast customer with the same internet plan as you and this fixed my problem with upload speeds through the router. I was getting 1.35mbps and now I am seeing 3.75mbps for upload speeds. Hope this works for you too!

This was from another forum about comcast and slow upload speeds. http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/39748-42-slow-upload-speed-router

Unless there's a bug in the router that's a different thing. That's in response to a case where the poster's upload was slow in the sense of throughput. This is about latency. To reduce latency using QOS you want to set the values somewhere around 10% under your actual upload and download figures. If he just wanted speed and latency wasn't an issue at all you'd just turn QOS off as it's usually better off.

Yea your right. Though there shouldn't be a bug in the router that's doing this, I have the same router. Unless it's a faulty unit.

After updating the firmware did you do a hard reset on the router?

 

[mAcOdIn]

Just googled and found this



This was from another forum about comcast and slow upload speeds. http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/39748-42-slow-upload-speed-router

Unless there's a bug in the router that's a different thing. That's in response to a case where the poster's upload was slow in the sense of throughput. This is about latency. To reduce latency using QOS you want to set the values somewhere around 10% under your actual upload and download figures. If he just wanted speed and latency wasn't an issue at all you'd just turn QOS off as it's usually better off.

 

[Lionheart1827]

A buddy of mine had an issue like this, it ended up being a poor signal coming into the building. Once it was replaced it was good to go.

 

[mstevens]

Okay, I've checked all the cable outlets in the house. There are only two, and I ordered a terminator for the unused one. I bought new cables for everything to eliminate that as one of the problems. I obviously have not checked internal wires, but I'll check the outside soon. Where are those normally? I've never looked.

I put my wireless on channel 11 because that seemed to be the least crowded. Wireless won't help me though, since it is happening with a LAN connection as well.

As far as I can tell, the only two options I have moving forward would be to either get comcast out here (I called them and they want $70 to come out if they don't find anything... and it's such a sporadic, once every 4 minute quick drop that I doubt they will be meticulous enough to figure it out) OR I could try buying a different, more flexible router?

 

[mstevens]

I'm checking bufferbloat again - the average bufferbloat lag for downloading now is like 100ms (during the stress test) but uploading seems to be better after I messed with QoS (32ms under load). I wish there was a way to do the same thing for downloading within the netgear r7000 QoS page.

Just tested again after moving the modem/router closer and I got an A for bufferbloat test twice in a row... Go figure..

 

[mAcOdIn]

I'm checking bufferbloat again - the average bufferbloat lag for downloading now is like 100ms (during the stress test) but uploading seems to be better after I messed with QoS (32ms under load). I wish there was a way to do the same thing for downloading within the netgear r7000 QoS page.

Just tested again after moving the modem/router closer and I got an A for bufferbloat test twice in a row... Go figure..

Since I really don't know you're router I can't help much more on that front but here'd be my moves going forward.

First I'd still try and run that test three times and multiple times a day(during peak and non-peak hours), with just the modem, the router without QOS and the router with and keep track of your figures somewhere. I'd do this for several days, but after I've run the tests I'd leave QOS enabled and try and get a feel for if it's really working. Are your games better? Is streaming smoother?

Cable is a shared service so your speeds and overall connection quality will vary throughout the day. Understanding QOS is important, like I said above you want the value to be around 10% below your upload speed. The reason this needs to be done lots of times is that if the quality of your connections dips below the value you enter(or let the built in speedtest pick) then QOS basically stops working because the value you put in is basically you telling the router that you guarantee that value to be your guaranteed speed, that it absolutely has that bandwidth to work with under all conditions and if it doesn't have that bandwidth then QOS quits working as intended and will usually be worse than having it disabled. The other important thing to know is that value you enter for your upload is essentially a cap, meaning your router will never even try to go faster than that value, ever, so long as QOS is enabled. So you don't want to really rob yourself of bandwidth and pick a lower value than necessary.

Before you start buying stuff willy nilly I would play with this a couple of days. If having QOS enabled and the lower bufferbloat and stable upload ping solves your problem awesome. If it's not making a lick of difference than it's just a correlation and you still have a different underlying problem as well(though a near 400ms upload ping will get you kicked from games so it's still a problem). If it's a lot better but you want even more control then there's some issues.

The FCC made some ruling that affects using custom firmware on routers moving forward with certain wireless radios. What this means is we're in a weird transitional period. Wireless is still evolving all the time with new standards constantly being added. If you are suffering from bufferbloat, your options as a consumer then are limited. If you want to buy something to address it, there are some routers that you can buy that can use third party firmware but any modern enough to support the very newest standards are on the way of being locked down. New models of pretty much everything except Linksys ancient WRTL line will be firmware locked. Which means you're only time to buy is now and even then you can't get the newest, you gotta be careful. And it means that you won't be able to upgrade again to a newer router until some of these Active Que Management systems employed by these third party firmwares are implemented by the hardware manufacturers. So know that you're locked in with that hardware for the foreseeable future. The next thing to know is there are tradeoffs to running 3rd party firmware. If you do a lot of traffic from port to port I don't know of any 3rd party firmware that runs as fast from one local port to another. So what that means is you'll be trading your local area network speed between devices for a stabler but slightly slower because even with third party firmware running better AQM than your Netgear's QOS you still have to set your max upload and download speeds slightly below your real average upload and download speeds which will make that your cap, you won't get better performance during non peak hours anymore.

If you decide that yes, it is this kicking you from games, you see and feel a noticeable difference with your Netgear while it's enabled and you want more control and can live with a slightly slower transfer speed between devices on your own network then you have two options.

If you're willing to risk it you can try third party firmware on your r700. I found two that now support fq_codel as their que management which is good against bufferbloat.
https://advancedtomato.com/
and
http://xvtx.ru/xwrt/features.htm
I'll say this, configuring the Tomato one's QOS looks a little complicated to me. The XWRT looks easier to set up. The issue with these are that they're both ports of someone elses' work meaning you wait twice as long if a bug is found and fixed because you'll have to wait for them to port it over. XWRT is supposedly the "faster" one on your router in regards to throughput.

Alternatively you can buy a router that works with OpenWRT as it's much easier to configure its fq_codel settings. I use this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0088CJT4U/?tag=neogaf0e-20
I can say it works well for gaming, I get two wifi networks from it and openwrt is stable on it. It's 90 dollar brother that's on the same amazon page, the C7, is faster and is also supposed to work well with OpenWRT.

 

[Izayoi]

Fantastic and informative thread.

Thanks everyone for all of this information - it is incredibly helpful.

 

[mstevens]

Yes, ditto to the sentiments above. Very helpful!

Day two after changing the coaxial cable and ethernet cables and setting up upstream QoS... Still getting A grades on bufferbloat. Two tests yesterday, two tests so far today. I'll keep testing every few hours over the next week or so and report back.

I did play about 5-6 matches of Overwatch last night without getting booted, which is great but I've gone that long in the past.

 

[mstevens]

I just had my girlfriend turn on her shows on netflix so I could test it like that. The tests are immediately now in the B-C range, with the upload buffering much worse than it was when she wasn't streaming. I'm going to try playing some Overwatch *LAN connected* to see if I get booted.