Perhaps two weeks ago or so, I began having terrible latency problems whenever I began playing online. At first, I thought the wireless receiver (a USB device) on my computer was simply failing, but these problems also occur when using my laptop, and for my brother on his laptop (we share the same wireless network for about a month or so).
There doesn't seem to be a problem with internet connectivity in general (i.e., I have no problem browsing the net, streaming a movie, or downloading a file), but random spikes of lag, which would be much more noticeable when attempting to play, say, Team Fortress 2.
I'm trying to diagnose the problem, and my first idea was to check the consistency of the signal strength (i.e., a problem with my wireless router) vs. consistency of ping (i.e., a problem with my wireless provider).
Are there any programs I could use to test one or both of these? Note: I would like to be able to test over a period of time, because the problem is not consistent.
Best Answer
So, observing last mile internet performance is notoriously hard.
Depending on your wireless card you may be able to monitor signal strength over time (you'll also want to watch for noise, in many wireless environments this is a limiting factor). Additionally, you could plug a computer into a land line to compare performance.
However, if this is a down stream problem neither of these things will correctly identify the source, what you really need is route tracing. On a Windows computer this can be done by running tracert:
This will create a packet train with varying TTL (time to live) based on the number of "hops." Because of the shortened TTL you'll be able to see network data from along your route:
By running this consistently over time you can identify common bottle necks.
An example of this came from when I lived in Canada, and I'd have intermittent issues connecting to WoW server. Tracert showed that occasionally (probably due to peering agreements) the path would route through Texas. In that case I was able to talk to my ISP and get them to fix the issue, but that's not always feasible.