Windows 10 Packet Loss & How to Troubleshoot

[Tsion]

Problem:

I've been having packet loss for the past week. This appears to be large packets sent in any consistent pattern.

For example:

Running something like:
ping -l 8192 -t usatoday.com
Would return a time out every few lines. I'm also seeing games flash warnings of packet loss.

My steps taken so far:

Replaced the ISP supplied modem with a purchased private modem.
Had the ISP technician replace all wire ends and check for ingress
Swapped to a different separate wireless adapter
Swapped to another previously working operating system
Updated the drivers for my wireless adapter
Ran the above batch statement on a different computer to replicate the same results

The only remaining option I can think of now is that the cabling within my walls has deteriorated. I've attached my network information in the text file.

Can anyone perhaps point me into the right direction here? Any additional obvious troubleshooting steps I've perhaps missed?

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Hi Tsion;
Sorry to hear of your problems. I took a look at your Network Information text file, thanks for posting it. I don't see any packet loss shown anywhere in that file. All packet loss is reported at 0%. There is one thing I did notice, and that is that you have IPv6 addressing enabled as well as the standard IPv4 addressing enabled as here:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Wireless LAN adapter Wi-Fi:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : cfl.rr.com
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Realtek RTL8811AU Wireless LAN 802.11ac USB 2.0 Network Adapter
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-E0-4C-11-2D-D6
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::a179:4057:9dca:9bf%11(Preferred)
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.3(Preferred)
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Tuesday, October 11, 2016 10:50:41 PM
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Wednesday, October 12, 2016 1:04:15 AM
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
DHCPv6 IAID . . . . . . . . . . . : 184606796
DHCPv6 Client DUID. . . . . . . . : 00-01-00-01-1F-6C-FF-66-00-E0-4C-11-2D-D6
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 75.114.81.1
75.114.81.2
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Unless you are connecting to a business or university/college domain based network, and using a VPN connection you should have no need to use both addressing schemes for a home network use. I suggest that you disable that setting in your Realtek adapter configuration properties settings. If that doesn't work, you'll have to also login in directly to your Wi-Fi router as an Admin user through your directly connected computer, such as a laptop. You can also use the computer in question to change that setting in your router; save that setting and reboot your router. When you are logged into the Admin utility of the router, it's also good practice to make a backup of your router's config (.cfg) file to your computer desktop or external media such as a flash drive or a Cloud account such as OneDrive or Dropbox.

After the router reboots, re-run your IP config command or whatever command or utility you used to produce the network information text file you uploaded to us. The IPv6 addresses should be gone or disabled or set to none if you do things correctly. This may fix your packet loss issue! Not guaranteed of course, but as it appears you are using a laptop, some wireless adapter drivers have had issue with the simultaneous use of both IPv4 and IPv6 addressing schemes as mentioned. This has been well documented on the Internet going back to 2009 when Win7 computers (and W8.x computers) first came out. It's often seen in laptops with built-in wireless adapters as well as G and N routers. I've only seen it a few times on AC routers.

If the problem persists after trying the above, the other thing you should ask your ISP is to call them up and have them do something called and "end-to-end" test on your Cable Modem. That tests your Modem for things like packet loss, excessive latency, poor S/N ratio, and lots of other stats from your ISP's home server location to your Modem and back again to their location and to the Workstation the Tech is using to run the test. That test cannot be run by a service Tech onsite at your residence. It must be done by someone at their end. You mentioned that you bought your own private owned Modem, and this can be a problem due to something we call "provisioning". If you didn't carefully check the specs from your ISP on which Modems you can buy, which Model numbers, etc. you could have hardware incompatibility. This can result in all kinds of weird problems with your Internet not acting right.

I had a customer a couple of months ago who did this same thing. He said he was having problems with his Internet *ISP is Charter*, and so he went online a bought his own Cable Modem, as it was cheaper. When I ran speedtest diagnostic on his computer and Modem separately, I found he was only getting 16Mpbs download speed instead of the 65Mpbs he was paying for. Turns out that he didn't check the specs correctly (of course he's a home user and not a Network Engineer), and he didn't get the correct type of Modem. I told him to call Charter out and he did and they performed the tests I mentioned. The Tech said the Modem was bad; and gave him one that they lease to all of their Clients which I told him to get instead; Tech took one out of his truck, plugged it into his cable ingress and voila: instantly quadrupled his speedtest to 65Mbps right where it belonged! The moral of this story is, that people try to save money by cutting corners and buying their own Network equipment when the ISPs have thousands of man-hours spent analyzing the intricacies of all the Modems available on the market to make them work with their networks. So, when a home user tries to circumvent that, and save a few dollars, they often fail because they think that a Modem is a Modem is a Modem, right? Not so.

In my customer's case, the Tech gave him a new Modem from his truck that was certified by them (the ISP) to work with their Network, it's leased equipment so they have to guarantee it works in 100% of their customer residences. They can't do this unless it's been thoroughly tested. The Tech did not charge my customer for a new Modem, and told him to return the Modem he bought online for a refund since it wasn't properly certified for use on their network. He got his network problem he's had for months fixed--for free! All it cost him was a phone call to the ISP.

If you get to this point, I suggest that you use ISP-certified Modem and supplied by one of their Techs or sent to you in the Mail or UPS. Once you have a new Modem in place, you just have to figure out if you have a problem with your Wi-Fi router or your laptop. If you are able to use multiple computers one at a time you can connect directly to the Ethernet port on the back of the Modem and test each computer for your packet loss problem. If none of them have the problem; it's not the Modem or the wiring in your home. It's in the router most likely. At that point, replace the router with a brand new one. That would then fix the problem there.

If the problem persists with a new Modem and a new Router, it's a problem with your laptop or other computers you are using to test it, and those would have to be serviced or repaired to get to the root of that problem. Could be windows corruption or a failing component such as a Hard Drive or RAM stick(s).

These are some tricks I've used to solve this sort of problem. Oh, and it would be helpful when posting back on your problem if you would go speedtest.net and post back your ping/download/upload specs before and after any further equipment changes or tests. And please tell us the download speed you are paying for such as 25Mpbs, 50Mpbs, etc.

Let us know how it goes.
Best,
<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>

 

[Tsion]

Thanks for the response, Jedi!

I've gone ahead and disabled ipv6. Still seeing the same issues. I've also performed all of the tests above with the ISP's provided modem/router, with the same results.

I realize that the diagnostic test isn't showing packet drops, but why can I get steady ping response at a 32 byte packet size, and consistently dropped packets at a larger 8192 byte size?

I'm going to go ahead and swap back to the ISP provided modem/router, because I am seeing less bandwidth than I was having prior to the swap. I'll see if I can locate any ipv6 settings on the new gateway settings.

 

[Neemobeer]

You don't need to disable IPv6, that is a link-local address, which means it can't be used to route traffic across the internet. I see you are trying to ping over your MTU, that is why your pings are failing. Your MTU is probably 1500 so if you ping about 1420 or less you should get good replies.

 

[Tsion]

You don't need to disable IPv6, that is a link-local address, which means it can't be used to route traffic across the internet. I see you are trying to ping over your MTU, that is why your pings are failing. Your MTU is probably 1500 so if you ping about 1420 or less you should get good replies.

Thanks for the response, Neemobeer. I've reduced the packet size to 1024, and tested with a -f parameter to ensure it didn't fragment. While the time outs are less frequent (I assume due to more volume of smaller packets), they're still certainly occurring.

 

[Neemobeer]

The problem with troubleshooting network issues is everything past your modem is "the internet" it basically owned by one or more ISPs so there isn't a ton you can do. You can start by pinging each network device along the route to usatoday. traceroute -4 usatoday.com This will give you the route your traffic is taking. * * * are a router that doesn't reply to ping traffic.
Then ping your router, you can also ping your modem it should live on a separate class C subnet 192.168.x.x you can look it up by your model modem. Then ping each route in the traceroute and you can find the problem router. Lastly it could simply be an overloaded server on USA Today's end.

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Have you tried pinging google.com with the 8192 large packet size? It's possible that the USA server as mentioned is having an issue. For the last few years new, many ISPs as well as independent business entities have disabled their Ping responses due to security issues and recent hacking attacks *Target, Home Depot, and others*. Charter, my local ISP, is one of those ISPs, and you cannot get Ping responses back from their main domain; only certain sub-domain servers and alias Host names. Verizon on the other hand still allows ping response. You can google this and see whether or not your ISP is on the disabled list for ping.

Have you taken your computer to a friend or neighbor's house and plugged it in there and ran the same ping test?? What result did you get? If the neighbor has the same ISP you do, and you get no packet loss, it could be in your equipment or your computer, and you'll have to dig further to find it.

@neemo: Yes, that's true, but the mentioned adapters and routers affected are actually interfering with the IPv4 traffic on the device level, and cause mis-forming of packet traffic going through the router and the modem. This causes all kinds of problems as you can imagine. It's been proven that this occurs, especially with poorly coded NIC drivers from makers such as TP-Link and others. I've seen this on Windows computers going back to XP.

<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>

 

[Neemobeer]

ICMP traffic is best effort and the no reply simply means there were along the route the packet was malformed and discarded, so pinging each router from the traceroute should give a good idea where the failure or congestion is. If he can ping his own router and not experience any packet lose then its safe to say there is nothing wrong with his hardware.

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

@neemo: Too bad the OSPF spec didn't get rewritten to fix that; but the current paradigm of the ICANN is certainly not going to change anytime soon. I think that he needs to try some more of the suggestions I gave him in my post above, such as taking his computer to a friend's or neighbor's house or even to a public site such as a Starbucks or an Internet Cafe and run his test. Nothing he's provided us has shown packet loss, but you mentioned MTU size; if he has changed the default MTU size in his Router, that could be causing fragmented or misformed packets.

Tsion: take a look at your Router and see what your MTU size setting is. If you're not sure what is should be, check this article on how to calculate it. How to find the proper MTU size for my network - TP-Link. That is, if you are changing it for some reason you didn't mention to us. If you've never touched the MTU size in your router, that might lead me to believe the router is faulty. You of course could test that with a factory reset, which you have said you have already done, in addition to replacing the router also. This is the reason you need to take one of your computers PHYSICALLY to another location such as a friend, neighbor's, or other public Internet location to make your tests; as neemo correctly states, you can't do any real troubleshooting beyond your Cable Modem, as your ISP owns that and everything on the cable between your home and their server farm. If the problem continues to present itself in different physical locations besides your home location; it's clear that whatever computer you use for this test (desktop PC or laptop) if fubar-ed and must be repaired. It could have a problem that you haven't cleared up such as windows registry corruption, or faulty hardware such as a glitch RAM stick or hard drive. This test will tell you if it's equipment in your home network or just 1 or more or even all of your computers.

<<<BBJ>>>