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What could cause my ping to look like

--- 192.168.0.1 ping statistics ---
121 packets transmitted, 118 packets received, 2.5% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 2.689/154.201/1128.263/193.576 ms

enter image description here

(Note: the ping stats and the image are from different ping ... sessions? Basically they don't summarise the same set of pings.)

As you can see, my ping is horribly inconsistent, with a minimum ping of 2.689, which is acceptable, but a maximum of 1128.263, which is definitely not acceptable for a ping to one's own router.

I have already tried restarting the router, even switching to a different router, which leads me to believe it's some kind of interference (it may not be)—but it's weird because the pings look the same from anywhere in my home! Even right next to the router.

All wireless computers show similarly horrible ping times, but all ethernet pings are consistently less than a millisecond.

The router is a Sky SR102, firmware version 2.91.2110.R and DSL firmware version A2pv6F039m1.d24m.

@Ramhound asked for my Bufferbloat score, these were the results (image)

I don't think it's the router neglecting ICMP, online games are suffering (which is what prompted me to start investigating my network in the first place) and also using traceroute with different protocols (ICMP, GRE, UDP) all show the same pings.

Neither of the routers support 5GHz.

The wireless connection to my own router is disgusting:

--- skyhub ping statistics ---
281 packets transmitted, 280 packets received, 0.4% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 1.885/43.345/2194.022/153.064 ms

enter image description here

(huge image you can click ^^)

I get similar pings on all the wifi-connected devices in this house, even right next to the router (a Sky SR102 with firmware 2.91.2110.R).

Ethernet devices have normal ping times.

How do I fix this so that all wifi-connected devices have low consistent pings?

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12
  • 1
    Many routers prirotise data packets automatically; some are even tuned to fulfill (not always practically relevant) marketing claims. An ICMP ECHO packet is really not important and also a horrible waste of bandwith on a wireless link. What's more is that some routers / access points have hardware acceleration for "followup packets" and involve the CPU only for "initial packets", which leads to a de-facto priorisation of followup traffic (stream, file transfer etc). This leads to a rather unbalanced pictures ometimes. Packet loss / repetition on transfer level could also be involved.
    – Run CMD
    Commented Jun 7, 2017 at 15:47
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    Have you conducted a WiFi analysis regarding other access point channels disturbing your channel? Are there clients which force the access points into slow compatibility mode? Is this 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz? Any pre-standard MIMO? Etc
    – Run CMD
    Commented Jun 7, 2017 at 16:05
  • In my research your router doesn't support MIMI so it doesn't matter
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jun 7, 2017 at 16:34
  • @theonlygusti - You are going to need to update your hardware. You need hardware that can support SQM to resolve your bufferbloat problem. Your horrible ping times are caused by bufferbloat.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jun 7, 2017 at 16:37
  • @Ramhound Bufferbloat measured at dslreports.com/speedtest tends to be on the broadband link. It probably doesn't apply to local pings.
    – Spiff
    Commented Jun 7, 2017 at 18:56

1 Answer 1

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Since we're talking about wireless devices, there's a number of potential causes. Having been through this, the first possible culprit is the medium: electromagnetic interference by other devices. Changing channels might help in that situation, i.e. in most of Europe trying channels 1, 6 or 11 might do something. I remember choosing channel 8 once (it was empty, so why not?) and after 4 hours of awful communication, on page 3-8 of this I saw my mistake (maximum interference). In another case, the antenna of the access point was badly soldered on the board and I had to open it and use a soldering iron on it. And of course the access point might have a faulty chip, but testing for such a thing without expensive equipment, which would buy you tens or even hundreds of ADSL routers, is practically impossible.

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8
  • Using channel 6 (instead of what it was on before which was called "Auto") seems to have improved the problem slightly, but ping times still fluctuate wildly, they just don't seem to go as high.
    – minseong
    Commented Jun 8, 2017 at 7:57
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    Can you scan the wifis around you and make a list of their respective channels? Somebody could have had the same silly idea I had, and used one of the "free" channels. He could be interfering with the channels around him and causing all sorts of connectivity issues. If possible, run that scan 3 or 4 times and mark down the channels.
    – gmelis
    Commented Jun 8, 2017 at 8:47
  • what kind of scan do I need to use? I have never scanned for anything like that and a quick google search wasn't helpful for me.
    – minseong
    Commented Jun 8, 2017 at 9:02
  • If you have a linux around you, you can try something like ''iw dev wlan0 scan''. "wlan0" should be the name of your wifi device. If you type "iw dev", a few lines down you will see a line like this: "Interface wlan0", in which case wlan0 is the device name on my laptop.
    – gmelis
    Commented Jun 8, 2017 at 9:30
  • /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/ Versions/Current/Resources/airport -s
    – gmelis
    Commented Jun 8, 2017 at 9:49

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