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periodic very high latency

I've been using Verizon wireless broadband at home for about due to it being the only viable option compared to dialup and satellite where I live. Until August of this year, pings to google.com, etc generally averaged 70-120ms. Sure, there were spikes or nights where my signal wouldn't be as strong (normally 3-4 bars with evdo) but in general it was pretty reliable. But since early August, its been very sporadic. Average latency will jump up to 1k+ ms and it will sometimes stay that was for hours at a time. Download speeds will drop from a normal max of 125kb/sec to 3-5kb/sec. Other nights, it will bounce back and forth between good and horrible every few minutes. My signal remains strong, 4 bars right now as my latency is averaging about 800ms.

The connection is staying EVDO, not dropping down to NationalAccess. Is my tower (no idea where it is) just suddenly overloaded or is there something else I can check or do to find out what the issue might be?

Thanks in advance.

Comments

dave1812

Sure--take your equipment to another area and compare speeds, to find out if your home location is the issue.

weefa

I'll try and take it to the office with me tomorrow though that's about 30 miles away.

I forgot to mention in my original post that I have a 2nd computer in the house, using a second verizon broadband connection (different modem as well). It is affected as well, timing is exactly the same and everything. Also, when its bad like this, when doing a traceroute to anywhere, the first hop is the bad one.

I can move the laptop around the house and perhaps down the road a bit to see what happens, if I can catch it when its consistently bad.

For what its worth, I'm using a Pantech UM175 with an small antenna, both attached to a window.

weefa

I was able to compare home and office speeds only a few times, for a few minutes at a time. But all those times, my connection was fine at home so I didn't find out much there.

I did drive down the road a bit with the laptop and the connection stayed the same as at home - mostly bad with some periods where it would drop down to normal.

I suppose I'll contact Verizon support soon, I was just praying for some other solution since I've had nothing but nightmares when dealing with support.

LukeTech

The tracert will tell definitely give you more info than a simple ping because it pings each router, or hop. When you say the first hop is the "bad one" does that mean IT is the one with the long latency or it doesn't respond at all?

If it's the long latency hop, then the issue exists between you and the PDSN or packet data serving node (which is the physical first hop). This would need a trouble ticket with tech support. It's unlikely that it would be a widespread issue effecting many customers for very long as these stats are watched constantly in the network; but anything can happen.

If it's the latter, then it isn't out of the ordinary for some hops to not respond to pings, this is a security feature.

weefa

The first hop is the one with high latency. Like now (connection is up and down by the minute at the moment), first hop is 846ms - 1060ms - 687ms to a myvzw.com address. I'm going to take the laptop to work Monday and watch it all day, just to verify that its this location only.

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