EMERGENCY! Ok not quite..but what would cause this? (Internet issue)

[Poison Ivy]

My story really quick...

Lived in Vernon, BC had Shaw Extreme-I. Around last November started getting lag in every game I played... mostly MMOs like Warhammer, AOC type stuff. Talking about rubber banding, high latency type lag. Bought a new router, didn't help. Called Shaw, they said everything was fine.
On a whim I tried using a VPN, instantly fixed, no lag at all in any games!

Fast forward, I moved to another city, Kamloops BC. Have Shaw High Speed, new apartment, new modem. Log into Aion, get the rubber banding lag from hell. Noone else in the game getting lag...
So just to try it, I log into the VPN again, boom no lag.

WTF SHAW!!!!!!!!!

Is this a conspiracy or what? Very frustrating.

[Perineum]

Start doing trace routes, find out where the lag is. If the lag is on a shaw server, then nail 'em to the wall

[KeepSix]

AOC?!?!?!? I thought I was all alone!

And to answer your question: Yes. Yes, it is. I downgraded from the super-duper account to the "light" version, and it's dial-up speed. Actually, it seems worse than i remember dial-up being. Watching normal pages (like this one) loading line by line is ridiculous, at any price.

[Realityshift]

Just out of curiosity are you running any torrents in the background while you play? even if their throttled? Im on telus and I get the same lag spikes even if I have Utorrent paused in the background, it lag spikes harshly every few minutes then comes back down slowly. If I exit Utorrent completely I have 0 issues. Also I ran shaws top level internet for a while and its a waste of money, the mid level was much closer to rated speeds for a good amount less, when we had it it was the 25mbps rated speed and we where lucky to get 17mbps normally. Also remember lag comes from both upload and download so if your uploading anything (torrents) it will clog the tubes and slow you down as well.

I have alot of family in kamloops (was born there) hows the weather today?

[Poison Ivy]

Originally Posted by Realityshift

Just out of curiosity are you running any torrents in the background while you play? even if their throttled? Im on telus and I get the same lag spikes even if I have Utorrent paused in the background, it lag spikes harshly every few minutes then comes back down slowly. If I exit Utorrent completely I have 0 issues. Also I ran shaws top level internet for a while and its a waste of money, the mid level was much closer to rated speeds for a good amount less, when we had it it was the 25mbps rated speed and we where lucky to get 17mbps normally. Also remember lag comes from both upload and download so if your uploading anything (torrents) it will clog the tubes and slow you down as well.

I have alot of family in kamloops (was born there) hows the weather today?

Nope for my illegal downloading I mostly use Rapidshare..honestly Ive tried everything... this is an ongoing and frustrating issue that I can only resolve with a 15/month VPN

BTW the weathers pretty bad, rain, clouds, wind etc.. hope itll perk up soon! The beginning of June was great though.

[YukonTrooper]

Use PingPlotter and find out where the latency is coming from. I'm in the Yukon and have experienced the same problems from time to time over the last year and a half. Almost all of northwest Canada's routing goes through Washington State for gaming, if you're connecting to a west coast server that is. Having said that, most of the problems seem to be coming from the last gateway exiting Canada and the first gateway entering the States.

[Realityshift]

Yeah this week was a complete write off weather wise as well, rain rain rain, but from around april to the middle of june was BEAUTIFUL up here.

Hmm thats puzzling, I agree you should run a ping and see where your dropping off, also try running the speakeasy speedtest and test further south just to see what happens.. dont pick seattle go further south then that.

[GregH]

I'm in AB, but my main gateway was Vancouver and I had the exact same problems. Switched to TekSavvy & it's been fine ever since.

Spent a lot of time on the phone with Shaw and even sent them traceroute & ping plotter reports showing the latency spike going from 20 up to around 150 in Vancouver, but they insisted the issue was outside the Shaw system so there was nothing they could do.

I'd really suggest switching ISP's & see if that resolves your issues.