I had a cable modem go bad on me and cause issues like that. Worth a try to have it tested ?
Cable company gave me crap about coming to test it, but I won out in the long run proving
to them their equipment was my issue. Having been a Comcast customer from the beginning in
town. 5 cable names latter. And 4 cable modems.

Try this and see what your grade is: http://www.pingtest.net/

I really think you need to make that dns server change.

Access your comcast account online if you aren't sure how to get into the router and look for the opt out on there. I don't know how fast they will update you though.

https://dns-opt-out.comcast.net/


How does it test if you connect the pc straight to the modem? At least if it's still crappy you can eliminate the router. You just know comcast will tell you to do that if you call in anyway. LOL

The ping times are bad for cable, so are downloads.

Either your modem is going south (I was told the same for mine, but don't believe it) or there are too many new customers in the area and they haven't upgraded the core equipment (which is what I believe is happening to me).

DNS should not be a problem for gaming. Once you are connected to the server, you do not need name resolution, if you ever needed it at all.

QoS is also not going to help. The qos between your hosts and your router is pointless. You need qos between your router and your ISP and 99.99 percent of us do not have a connection like that with their ISP.

Kill your wireless to make sure no rogue hosts are soaking up your bandwidth. 10 down and 1.5 up should be more than enough for any game unless you are hosting and even then, if you are getting those figure consistently, you should be good for quite a few people. Maybe not a 64 vs 64 map but certainly for a small "squad" of friends.

I do not know what you are paying for but, comcast only sells a cap of 12-16 Mbps down that I know of and that is only in bursts, not guaranteed all of the time like a Frame Relay CIR or ATM CBR connection.

But, have them come out and take a look. Make them check signal strength from the modem. Have them check the splitters in your house and make sure you are not getting any signal leaks from cheap splitters or cable problems.

"DNS should not be a problem for gaming. Once you are connected to the server, you do not need name resolution, if you ever needed it at all."

You're assuming it's a dedicated server. Many games these days are hosted by players, more so since I know Magnum is on the 360 as well as pc, where most games are peer to peer. Games like COD don't even tell you who the host is in a public room, the game makes that determination on it's own and the host likely changes from round to round. You'll find a lot of entries on your router's log after a night of gaming. With Comcast's "help" it can cause issues, sometimes seriously slowing you down connecting.



"QoS is also not going to help. The qos between your hosts and your router is pointless."

If your LAN bandwidth is fluctuating due to multiple devices on the network communicating at once, it does make a difference. If you're hosting a game and your wife starts streaming from Netflix, your pc is running an update of some sort, it can be enough to disrupt the room. Some games are extremely sensitive to any connection issues, like GRAW2 on the 360.

These issues may not be ongoing, but they can cause temporary problems, which can be extremely frustrating and hard to pinpoint.

If you are being redirected to new connections via a domain name instead of an IP and there was slowness incurred, it would only be while the new host was discovered. Once you resolve the IP, DNS is out of the picture. If that is happening during gameplay there might be a lag spike but, I would hope you are being directed to the new host by IP, not a name.


I have to imagine his lan link is at least 100 Megs and probably switched so he is getting at least 66megs dedicated bandwidth right to his router. This is very much not where his bottle neck is occuring.

Now, look at the 1.5 meg down connection between his isp and his router. If he has a game, netflix, skype, FTP and HTTP traffic all going at the same time, THAT is his bottleneck. QoS on his LAN will do nothing to remedy that issue.

I have a little bit better than average understanding of QoS issues as I work for Cisco and support customers that have implemented DiffServ QoS.

I respect your opinion and experience, but I do disagree.
Can you explain why QoS is so important when one of your clients implements VOIP? They don't want to lose voice quality on the all important phones just because people in the office are on youtube. LOL
If you have move than one device sharing that connection, you need to assign priority where you want it to be (as you know). Whether VOIP phones, your server, your gaming pc or your console. Let the other devices suffer with less but put priority where it needs to be.
For a home example, I could watch a movie on netflix and watch the quality degrade due to the temporary slowing of the connection when my wife and I got on our laptops online. Enabled QoS for the console (we use a 360 for that in the bedroom) and no more issues.
When hosting a game, your upload speed is more important than download. As a home user, that's going to be limited. I've hosted games while uploading a GB to youtube without issues.

On the DNS change, I've seen changing servers make a big difference. Going from 20 seconds to pull up a certain site (weather.com for instance) back to normal. I don't know what they're doing to cause *that* kind of lag, which worries me even more.

hrmm, I pay for $29 with Cox, which i think its the 5Mbit/2Mbit Up packages..

I've run tests with powerboost that get over 45Mbit Down and 9Mbit up when I was running the Motorola Extreme Modem (Beta testing it), Dual Channel bonding and 1Gbit Lan from Box to PC = No way to bog the shz down.

No one does qos on lans. QoS is done over slow wan links and provider clouds. LANs are typically at least 100Meg connections and they are also typically switched so, they have dedicated bandwidth to the router. No need for qos there. However, when your edge router aggregates all connectivity over a T-1 or E1 which is 1.5 or 2 megs, THAT is where you want to prioritize VOIP traffic over youtube. In the real world, qos occurs between 2 routers. This prioritization of traffic being sold to home users is a joke being played on you by marketing people.





No you don't. Typical application data streams are measured in kbps and typical bandwidth available on a lan is measured in Mbps. There is way more bandwidth available on a lan then is needed. Again, the QoS would be helpful once the router put the data on the link facing your ISP but, your ISP is not paying attention to any priorities you are assigning.





The connection that is taking a beating in this scenario is your wan link, not your lan. Unless you are running 5 meg token ring in your house and you have 100Meg FIOS to your isp LOL




I can't account for your experiences without being there to troubleshoot them with you, I am just sharing my 10+ years worth of experience in provider and enterprise networking.



With browsing, of course DNS will be a factor as you are typing a name into your browser and your pc needs to resolve it before it can route to it. I am talking about gaming where the machines are using IP addresses, not site names to route packets.