HELP! obscenely high ping times

[jmello]

for the past week or so i've been getting 3000 to 3200ms ping times (pinging google.com), and now i'm getting timeout errors when i look for a ping..

i've got cable internet, connected through a Toshiba DAZ8823A Modem and a Linksys BEFW11S4 wireless B router, wirelessly connected to my laptop.
all of the other computers on the network are turned off.
this computer is running windows xp home, and is connected to the router wirelessly (laptop).

is there anything i can do other than call the cable company (and put up with their 'service checks' and other hoohah) that will save my ping times, or at least help them?

i'm running a scan with norton, i'm going to run adaware next then restart, and i'm also going to turn on my mac and see if surfing on it is as slow. (i don't know how to ping on os 9.2.2 :P )
i'll also reset my router and modem, to see if they're the problem.

any help would be greatly appreciated :)

[scathing]

If you find that your ping times are pretty bad, I'd suggest pinging something internal to your ISP's network first (DNS servers are good since they should be set up for high availability and access with minimal latency). If those times are high (and, on un-rate shaped cable, anything more than 15ms is high. I get sub 10's on mine) then the problem is either in your ISP, or between you and your ISP.

Try tracerouting to your target node at this point. If your internal pings are OK, traceroute to your target IP. If not, traceroute to your DNS server. This will tell you exactly where the cause of the latency is from.

c:\> tracert www.google.com

Tracing route to www.google.akadns.net [216.239.53.99]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 7 ms 11 ms 6 ms 10.21.128.1
3 8 ms 9 ms 12 ms sbr4-ge1.gw.optusnet.com.au [198.142.53.1]
4 10 ms 8 ms 9 ms mas2-pos5-2.gw.optusnet.com.au [198.142.7.25]
5 10 ms 8 ms 10 ms mas4-ge1-1.gw.optusnet.com.au [211.29.129.134]
6 9 ms 16 ms 12 ms mas3-ge2-2.gw.optusnet.com.au [211.29.129.113]
7 23 ms 23 ms 25 ms pos5-2.ig6.optus.net.au [61.88.178.93]
8 227 ms 226 ms 223 ms 203.208.148.101
9 240 ms 220 ms 250 ms 203.208.168.133
10 219 ms 220 ms 221 ms 203.208.168.114
11 182 ms 186 ms 179 ms 203.208.168.250
12 182 ms 184 ms 182 ms 216.239.48.246
13 181 ms 180 ms 180 ms 216.239.48.74
14 181 ms 182 ms 180 ms 216.239.53.99

Trace complete.
In case you don't know what traceroute does, it pings every node on the route between your machine and your target's.

Assuming that the owners of each node have given them a hostname, you can tell who owns them. If there's an issue, it gives you a start to contacting someone to complain to.

Now, as you can see from my output, the jump between nodes 7 and 8 is where the latency is coming from. Since node 8 doesn't have a hostname I can't tell who owns it (there may be tools online to run a search for who owns IP ranges, but I can't tell you where), but now I know where the delay is coming from.

Since one end is Optus', I could conceivably call them up and report the issue (as it could be a problem between their router and the router of the network provider they're connected to).

If neither node belongs to your ISP, when you call up they'll tell you its out of their network and beyond their ability to support. Which, if you think about it, is fair enough.

[WiTT]

maybe you've done over your limit and have been capped

[jmello]

this is what i got with tracert. (http://www.cox-internet.com/jmellothegreat/tracert.GIF)

is it possible to raise the timeout times?
what about another program taht i can run to find that information?

i don't have problems with going over a cap, it's unlimited.. (i'm in the usa)

[druid]

Originally posted by jmello
this is what i got with tracert. (http://www.cox-internet.com/jmellothegreat/tracert.GIF)

is it possible to raise the timeout times?
what about another program taht i can run to find that information?


Use the -w flag to set the timeout in milliseconds.

Like: tracert -w 5000 hostname

[scathing]

Dude, if you've got a home router your first hop should be to that device. Its strange that your first hop is timing out.

If that's timing out (most home routers won't block ICMP packets on the internal interface unless you specifically tell it to) then I wonder what's going on. Try plugging your computer straight into your cable modem.

Did you get any more luck pinging your ISP's DNS server?

[jmello]

i'm running the tracert -w 1000000 google.com thing right now, it's taking forever.
if i knew what the dns server was, i would ping it, but i don't have an ip for it or anything.

i tried calling up the live support people, but i need so much billing information that i'm just going to let my brother do it (the account's in his name, although he knows nothing about computers)

i can't find in the router options where there's an option to block ICMP packets. i don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
i'll give plugging it straight into the modem a try.
i'm also going to try connecting the modem to different cable lines around the house, to see if that helps anything.

thanks so much for the help, i've had problems like this from the cable company before and they've just given me the run-around, it's good to know there's a bunch of people out there who are more than willing to help :)

[jmello]

wow, i think i just fixed it.
i started closing things to see if it was a software problem and it turns out that shareaza had gone insane and started eating all of my bandwidth, while only downloading at 10k/s total, maximum.

now i feel stupid :rolleyes:

oh well, thanks so much for the help. :)

i was five seconds from getting the cox csr on the phone when, all of the sudden, my ping times went back down to 60 or so.
i did a little dance :P

[scathing]

What's the domain name for your ISP? I can look it up.

[jmello]

the service is from www.cox-internet.com

thanks for the help :)