Hey guys and gals,
I've been a Verizon FiOS customer for a few years now, and upgraded my internet service speeds to 100Mbps up/down, and I live alone. I have such a high bandwidth plan because I'm an avid online gamer, and couldn't really be bothered with lag. I have a Verizon Quantum router (Model G1100), and am getting the speeds I pay for, according to bandwidth tests (sometimes the upload speeds come back a little low, but the download speeds are consistently around 100Mbps). The reason I'm posting here is because I'm at my wit's end as to what's causing my issue, and it's basically a last resort before I have the FiOS serviced removed from my home permanently.
As for what's going on, the basis is that I have a buddy I game with on the Playstation 4 online, who lives in Connecticuit (I'm in NY, Long Island to be more specific). In total, no more than 50 miles apart, if even that much. Whenever we play, we experience these absolutely unplayable lag spikes. Seriously, completely and utterly unplayable.
A couple of things to note/consider:
* We can both play people from similar areas to eachother, also further away with little to no lag.
* My PS4 has DNZ enabled, is hardwired to my router, set up on a Static IP, and has had the ethernet cable replaced. Additionally, every other arrangement was tried (DHCP, wireless, Firewall adjusted multiple times) to establish a better connection.
* I've disabled both wireless bands on my router, as well as made sure IPv6 is disabled in an attempt to isolate my issue with no success. My PS4 is the only thing connected to my router at this time, with nothing else causing strain, updating, or using bandwidth of any kind.
*The lag spikes happen intermittently, regardless of what game we play. Sometimes we can play for 15 mins without an issue, other times it'll spike 15 times in under 5 mins. There doesn't seem to be a consistent pattern whatsoever.
*My buddy is also hardwired, using Optimum service, getting 150Mbps up/down. His internet is shared, however, the issue we experience happens when there's no strain on his network either.
*This issue occurs at all hours, but seems to be much less severe in the wee hours (2AM-5AM)
*Both my buddy and I are in the IT field (He's a Network Admin, I'm a Help Desk Technician). We've seen quite a lot, and we're both scratching our heads.
Now, we've come across what appears to be the issue, but we can't figure out a way to resolve it as it appears to be out of either of our hands, and into Verizon's.
Performing 2 seperate Tracert commands, 1 to my buddy's public IP, and 1 to google.com, yielded very different, very concerning results.
Due to fear of this entire post being scrapped, I'm not going to post a link or a pic of my tracert, but I do have them saved (will send if necessary to an admin or a technician), and can discuss what it shows.
Hops 1, 2, and 3 to my buddy average around 8 ms, hop 4 times out, hop 5 averages at 108 ms, hop 6 at 136 ms, hop 7 at 30 ms, hop 8 is back up to 138 ms, hops 9 and 10 time out, hop 11 at 118 ms, then hops 12 through 30 all timed out.
Tracert to google is much faster, showing the highest hop's ping at 25 ms, resolving in 9 hops. The average of all 9 hops is around 8 ms.
It seems to be on Verizon's side, because it's after the router. It appears to be how it's routed, but I don't know how to get an issue like this resolved without Verizon acknowledging the issue is on their end.
Only other thing I believe it can be would be some sort of bottlenecking due to other people using the internet in my area with FiOS. My issue with this answer is that I still have fine connections to other people, in which my buddy does too, during the same hours.
If, for any reason, anyone needs more info, has any insight, or can help in any way, please feel free to reach out. I truly need this issue resolved, and see no other option but to switch ISP's to Optimum if it can't be.