Bad Pings to Valve's Gaming servers.
KylePar145
Enthusiast - Level 1

Lately me and 2 of my friends (all of us use Verizon Fios) have been getting bad latency while we are playing on Valve's game servers. We live within 10 miles of one another and we all experience the lag at the same time. Our pings will start out fine (10-20ms) but then spike to 100+ms and stay there for HOURS. We all live in Maryland, and Valve's servers are usually either New York or Chicago based. It happens to all 3 of us at the same time while we are playing. And it doesnt occur to everyone on the server, just us 3. Here is a trace route to a server while we were experiencing bad latency;

  1    25 ms    76 ms    38 ms  Wireless_Broadband_Router.home [192.168.1.1]
  2    10 ms     7 ms     9 ms  L100.WASHDC-VFTTP-43.verizon-gni.net {edited for privacy}
  3    17 ms    27 ms    22 ms  G0-6-1-3.WASHDC-LCR-22.verizon-gni.net [130.81.190.36]
  4    23 ms    27 ms   120 ms  ae0-0.RES-BB-RTR1.verizon-gni.net [130.81.209.114]
  5     6 ms    72 ms     8 ms  0.xe-5-1-0.BR2.IAD8.ALTER.NET [152.63.38.161]
  6    26 ms    27 ms    25 ms  ae17.edge1.washingtondc12.level3.net [4.68.62.137]
  7    25 ms    25 ms    27 ms  vl-3602-ve-226.ebr2.Washington12.Level3.net [4.69.158.38]
  8    27 ms    27 ms    26 ms  ae-5-5.ebr2.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.143.221]
  9    39 ms    27 ms    27 ms  ae-92-92.csw4.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.134.158]
 10    26 ms    27 ms    26 ms  ae-4-90.edge2.Washington4.Level3.net [4.69.149.208]
 11    86 ms    85 ms    91 ms  4.53.114.114
 12    85 ms    82 ms    80 ms  208.78.167.3
 13     *        *     General failure.

The trace failed because Valve Blocks pings to their servers that are currently hosting a game (in order to prevent DDOS attacks). Ideally I would also have a trace route from the server back to me, but I haven't come across a way to do that through the in-game console. Looking at hop #4 you can see a ping of 120ms, could this be what's slowing us down?

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Re: Bad Pings to Valve's Gaming servers.
smith6612
Community Leader
Community Leader

Was this trace taken during a bad time when you're seeing the latency? The latency to your router is pretty awful and I would first see if you can get that part of the trace cleaned up first. It almost suggests to me that you are on Wireless or the router is under some tremendous load (Steam is known to do that to older ActionTec routers like the Rev. D).

Re: Bad Pings to Valve's Gaming servers.
KylePar145
Enthusiast - Level 1

Yeah, the ping to router seemed odd to me too. I have a wired connection, so that seems pretty off. When I ping it now it's at <1ms (like it should be). I'll try it again in-game when I get the chance. I do have an ActionTec router, I'll ask my friends what they are using.

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