Ping spikes

If you're not pinging Google, perhaps Google is pinging because you have some com blocked. Do you run Chrome or the Tool Bar? They both "phone home" and report everything you do on your PC, basically.

So you did the pinging. So what's the problem?

It's not unusual for pings to be all over the place unless you have exclusive use of the routers from your location to the site. What did you use for the ping test?

I just ran one and it's showing packet losses. Could be a router problem somewhere.

Let me get this straight--Your network is connected directly to Google servers? Are you inside the Google building?

Run a ping plot and you'll get a better idea of where your traffic is going. It returns a ping from each server in the message route. You'll should note that network traffic can get bounced all over the world just to get next door. It just depends on network load. There's a lot of load on the network now. MS just released a ton of updates.

I didn't know that 1 or 2 ms difference was considered a spike.

keyboardface said:

Recently I've started getting these big ping spikes whilst online gaming making them kinda pointless to play cos I'd get temporary 'Connection Interrupted' errors and such. My setup hasn't changed and I've never had this problem before so I'm hoping it's a software issue or some pretty well hidden malware.

Code:

Pinging google.com [173.194.34.169] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=31ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=36ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=39ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=31ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=36ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=34ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=31ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=32ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=31ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=31ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=32ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=31ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=39ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=34ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=32ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=97ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=206ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=251ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=56ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=31ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=31ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=1192ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=112ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=1362ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=185ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=31ms TTL=58
Reply from 173.194.34.169: bytes=32 time=78ms TTL=58

Ping statistics for 173.194.34.169:
    Packets: Sent = 93, Received = 93, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 29ms, Maximum = 1362ms, Average = 65ms

I've restarted in Safe Mode with Networking and tried the same thing and the ping spikes still occur.
I've tested the ping to Google on another machine on the network and there were no spikes at all, ~30ms straight across the board.

Any ideas to help me work out what's causing them? Any help would be much appreciated.

With times like that I am suspecting that this is a wireless based connection? Wireless can suffer from various interferences that could affect latency. Test your latency when using a wired connection to see if the Wireless connectivity is the cause of this.

If the latency is still irregular on a wired connection and other devices do not experience any issues then it could be software based.

I would begin to look into drivers for your NIC. What is the make/model of your NIC?

There was a case awhile back that had a similar symptom and the issue was the result of a bad driver.

Ping (ICMP) is a connection-less protocol therefore the ping spikes wouldn't be a result of his server-client connection as there is none. Equally, if it was traffic engineering then it would affect anyone who pings Google and for me I do not receive lag spikes.

Code:

C:\Users\Josh>ping www.google.com -t

Pinging www.google.com [2.127.252.221] with 32 bytes of dat
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=19ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=19ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=21ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=21ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=35ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=19ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=21ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=60
Reply from 2.127.252.221: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=60

Ping statistics for 2.127.252.221:
    Packets: Sent = 42, Received = 42, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 16ms, Maximum = 70ms, Average = 19ms
Control-C
^C
C:\Users\Josh>

With a wireless connection like mine a Jitter (Variance in latency) of 1 to 5 ms is average.

Josh :)

Oh there is indeed a connection; Otherwise, the server(s) wouldn't respond. While the ICMP special message is handled differently, it's still a message. The option to respond is server based. The Ping doesn't really mean much if you're looking for why a delay is occurring. You certainly can't say it's local software simply because there is a delay. All a ping tells you is end-to-end time. A routing trace (Tracert) is more meaningful in determining where the delay is occurring since you get a "ping" return from each server that handles the message to the end-point. If you see an elevated response from a server in the route, the problem is there, not local.

The route servers I see may not be the same as the servers you see. More often than not, they won't be the same until the message reaches the end point. So comparing two pings from different clients to the same end point doesn't tell you anything. The OP experienced delays and that's for sure but given the data above, blaming a driver is a shot in the dark.