Lag spikes while gaming

[smeghead]

Hey folks,

Ever since I switched to Sky from Pipex I've been getting lag spikes while gaming which manifest as 2 to 3 second pauses while playing anything from Team fortress 2 to Battlefield 2142. In TF2 my screen freezes for a second and then reverts me back to a previous position while in BF2142 I just get "There is a problem with your connection" and then everything goes back to normal for any period ranging from 30 seconds to 2 minutes and then the problem repeats itself.

I'm on ethernet and not wireless for reference, here are my line stats at this moment from the test socket (all I can get on v2 router) :

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 7616 kbps 768 kbps
Line Attenuation 34 db 9 db
Noise Margin 3 db 10 db

I realise the noise margin is low however during the day it is at 10db+ and yet I still get the exact same problem.

I managed to get through to CST where the nice chap lowered the ping times (max delays I assume) for me which decreased ping by about 20ms to a 30ms average since he thought this would fix the issue however it hasn't. He will be ringing back tomorrow so I would like to know if there is anything I can ask him to do that would help fix this?

Thanks in advance

P.S I also tried DMZ in the hope that it was a port forwarding issue however it did not help. I also disabled my software firewall, again to no avail.

[jonny1310]

I managed to get through to tier 3

There is no more tier 3 lol

[smeghead]

OP edited.

[jonny1310]

Read my sig lol

[Devil_Spawn]

are you running vista and on wireless?

[smeghead]

Yes I'm on vista but I am using a wired connection. I've also tried XP and the problem persists.

[hbdgaz]

are you running vista and on wireless?

I'm getting exactly the same problem in games as Smeghead, had it with my last ISP too. I'm using vista and a wireless connection - is there a known connection between this problem and setup?

[dholdi]

I'm getting exactly the same problem in games as Smeghead, had it with my last ISP too. I'm using vista and a wireless connection - is there a known connection between this problem and setup?

Hbdgaz - in your case I think this could well be the problem. If you must use wireless try a different channel or experiment with router/ariel position. Wired is the ultimate solution imho.

[hbdgaz]

Hbdgaz - in your case I think this could well be the problem. If you must use wireless try a different channel or experiment with router/ariel position. Wired is the ultimate soution imho.

Thanks I'll give that a try if nothing improves after my max delays are changed. All I can say at the moment is that, if it is a problem my end, it's not related to signal quality - I've just moved the router downstairs and the signal quality on my PC (upstairs) has fallen from 5/5 bars to 3/5 bars, but the connection is exactly the same in games.

I'll give changing the channel a try and have a look around to see what I can find about optimizing my wireless connection in vista. Thanks.

[dholdi]

Unfortunately high signal quality does not neccesarily equate to high throughput. You can have excellent signal quality but still suffer from poor throughput which would effect your gaming. You could try the powerlink adapters which have received good reports on here. I'll try and post a link later when I get home.

BT Vision Comtrend Powerline Adaptors - NO RESERVE on eBay, also, Adaptors, Networking, Computing (end time 04-Apr-08 15:46:16 BST)

Thats just an example I found on ebay, if you google it there are plenty of other manufacturers of similar.