Hello!
Recently, my computer has been experiencing some insane lag spikes as I'm browsing the internet or playing online games.
They occur every 20 minutes or so, the time intervals are long and random.
I tried restarting the router and modem, resetting the router stats, contacting my ISP, and contacting the router support.

I used to think it was my router that caused these problems, but it turns out that even when I directly connect to the internet with my modem, I still get lag spikes.
This worried me and so did the fact that the other user connected to the router didn't experience lag. Therefore, I got Ad-Aware and did a scan. I removed the infected files (only 20ish) and I still get this problem.

I'd be very greatful if there was a solution to this!
Thanks in advance!

Hi Kwystina

What programs do you have installed and running with auto-update? (most likely security programs, mail notifiers and the like)

Next time you experience a lag-spike, try bring up the task-manager with ctrl-alt-del(ete) and see which if theres any program thats using CPU or bandwidth power. If its to quick, have it up all the time so you'll be able to notice right away.

Side-question: Does it occur only when you have your browser up?

Regards Abydos

Thanks for the reply!
I'm not sure because it just recently happened, all of a sudden. My computer is pretty new as well (Almost a year old now) and it doesn't alawys happen when my browser is up. It happens to anything that requires the internet..
Say something liek Ventrilo, it shows a ping-
Every now and then, I would be indicated that people are transmitting (talking) but I don't hear them. At the same time, my browser would lag and go to a 404 error. After a few seconds, ventrilo shows that the people aren't transmitting, but I hear their sounds/talking from before and I have to refresh my 404 page to get the page up.

Hi Kwystina

Hmm, think we need to take a look under "the hood" on your PC.

(Doug, I borrowed your canned text for PC-Pitstop. Thx in advance )


Please Run the PCPitstop Full Tests, here:
http://www.pcpitstop.com/pcpitstop/default.asp
Register and create a password
Accept the ActiveX component to allow your machine to run the Full Tests
Registering and accepting the ActiveX are both SAFE and FREE.
Full Tests is the first item in the left hand column of that page.

The Full Tests take less than 5 minutes for most machines.
Once you have your Results, please post the TechExpress Link back here into this thread for review.
TechExpress is the last item on the list in the yellow box in upper right area of any Results page.
Post the entire URL link information back here into this Forum thread.

Caution: During the testing of Video Adapter, a variety of patterns, shapes, colors and text are “flashed” onto the users monitor screen. In the many thousands of daily uses of the PCPitstop Full Tests over several years, two individuals who suffer epilepsy experienced discomfort and temporary dizziness when viewing the flashing patterns.
If you know that you are susceptible to photo driven seizure, look away from your screen during the Video Adapter testing sequence.


That will give us a quick view of what is going on your machine, and hopefully shed some light on the situation.

Don't be distracted by the many ad's and products for sale. We do it for free and without the need for payed programs.

Regards Abydos

ISPs and Traffic Management

Traffic shaping is of interest especially to Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Their high-cost, high-traffic networks are their major assets, and as such, are the focus of all their attentions. They often use traffic shaping as a method to optimize the use of their network, sometimes by intelligently shaping traffic according to importance, other times by discouraging uses of applications by harsh means.There are those who believe it is not the ISPs place to decide what is "important"; in such cases per-client traffic shaping is more effective without creating potential controversies about what traffic is being controlled.

To ISPs, mere protocol identification (classification) gives the intangible yet significant benefit of seeing what internet traffic is flowing through the network. From this they can see which subscribers are doing what on their network and can target services to the subscriber base they have attracted. However as time progresses, more and more protocols are using tunneling and encryption to defeat these methods. Also, many protocols are very difficult or impossible to detect. In such cases, per-client shaping is more effective. By establishing policies based on the IP or IP grouping of a client, end users cannot defeat shaping by disguising protocols or encrypting their traffic.

In addition, intelligent shaping schemes can guarantee a particular Quality of Service (often measured in jitter, packet loss, and latency) for an application or a user while still allowing other traffic to use all remaining bandwidth. This allows ISPs to offer Differentiated services and to upsell existing services to subscribers (such as offering minimum-latency computer gaming for an additional fee on top of basic internet).

More importantly, shaping allows ISPs to tier their services using software, reducing their costs and increasing the menu of products they can offer.

Source = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_shaping

If you are connected wireless are you using encryption such as WEP WPA WPA-2 or MAC filter .It may be as simple as moving your router or encrypting your connection . If you are connected wireless check the log files in your router specifically the wireless logs and note which MAC addresses are connected . Lets hope it's that simple . If you are in fact hard wired turn off your wireless . If after you run scans and nothing is found that is suspect such as a virus malware or hijacker then suspect that your ISP is shaping your traffic . They won't admit to it but typically you'll find that your spikes occur at nearly the same time everyday . I hope some of this will help you . Have a great day .

Sorry, but I'm using a wired connection
Here are my results:
http://www.pcpitstop.com/TechExpress.asp?id=PDWETWG1BVGSK6B9

Hi again Kwystina

Looking at your test, there may be some issues that will remedy the situation.

I recommend you go through the tune-up tips for:

* Suboptimal Internet performance
* Adjust IE browser cache size

Those are the two that most likely could cause this behavior. Otherwise your test looks fine. Although you may wanna
defragment your C:\ drive. Dependent on preferences, you might wanna reduce restore space also. These tune-ups
are not important for your problem, just if you wanna look into it.

Once done with the tune-ups, please report a status for how it goes.

Regards Abydos

Okay, I've followed the instructions from PC Pitstop.
I'm gonna try defragging and we'll see what happens.
Thanks for the help!
I'll post my results later~

One thing tho.

I looked up Ventrilo via Google, and found that a lot of people have these lag spikes when Ventrilo runs. With 5-20 sec's intervals.
Try close down Ventrilo when playing and browsing. Just to eliminate if thats the culprit.

Regards Abydos

The thing is that it has never happened before, and I'd always have ventrilo on

I still get lag spikes/dcs after defragging and optimizing the pc :S

Hi Kwystina

Hows your system doing at the moment?


I've re-read your initial post, and the thing that I missed, or didn't put enough
relevance to it, was you found infections with Ad-Aware. Was those just tracking cookies
and the like? But that it suddenly happened, might point to some kind of infection.

Anyways, I won't jump to conclusion based on Ad-Aware.

So heres some things I would like you to try:

Goto start-->Run-->Type: CMD
In the command prompt, type : IPconfig /Flushdns (space between Ipconfig and / )

done.....

Next, take this test and copy the result from the statistics to here, either in full form or as an attachment, your choice.
The test only takes 20 sec's and requires Java.

Test

Regards Abydos

This post has been edited by Abydos: May 24 2008, 04:51 PM

My Ad-Aware only found tracking cookies, and only few (20ish)
I did the IPconfig /flushdns thing and it succesfully completed i :0
I don't see the test.

EDIT: Nvm I see it

This post has been edited by Kwystina: May 24 2008, 04:53 PM

Yeah, forgot to include the link in the first place.....

Must be tired. Its night here where I sit

Sorry for taking your time!

TCP/Web100 Network Diagnostic Tool v5.4.12
click START to begin
Connected to: nitro.ucsc.edu -- Using IPv4 address
Another client is currently being served, your test will begin within 135 seconds
Checking for Middleboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Done
checking for firewalls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Done
running 10s outbound test (client-to-server [C2S]) . . . . . 504.0kb/s
running 10s inbound test (server-to-client [S2C]) . . . . . . 6.26Mb/s
Your PC is connected to a Cable/DSL modem

click START to re-test