Ping spike problems, and considering fibre...

Hi,

I've recently I've been suffering from ping spikes that have shown up irregularly, but averaging 2-3 every couple of days. Normally what happens is for 5 minutes my ping junps from 20-30ms to 200-300ms. It's enough to get me bounced off my favourite game servers for excessive ping.
During the spike the download speeds have been observed to halve from my normal 14Mbps down to 7-8.

Here's a recent, a bad one where I've had 3 spikes within a few hours:
BQM Graph

Sometimes the spike lasts for half an hour... but this is rare.
I've been keeping tabs using the BQM and the spikes can occur at any time of day or night, but with a tendency towards peak times. I've rebooted the modem a couple of times recently so I don't have a long history on the BQM to check unfortunately (dynamic IP).


History:

I've been with Sky broadband for a while and up until Xmas it was excellent - low pings, reliable and decent download speeds.

Last year my ping to google / bbc was down at 7-15ms, since the problems Sky have had a couple of goes at fixing it they've (presumably) switched interleaving on, so I average 25-30, but this hasn't stopped it.


Setup:

I have two PCs connected by Powerline adapters, I play BF4, my daughter plays LoL with Skype / Teamspeak, plus we also have an iPad, a laptop and 3 phones connecting over wifi (not at the same time!)
The modem is plugged into the master socket, all phone connections are going in through filters. The Sky engineers are happy with the line quality and how I've got everything plumbed in.


1) So should I just keep going back to Sky tech support?
2) Is there anything I should steer them towards as a likely cause?


My daughter is wanting to live stream her LoL games, her current attempts haven't worked well - the stream stutters, presumably hampered by the 1Mbps upload limit... so I'm considering an update to fibre

Here are the stats off the availability checker:
FTTC Range A (Clean) 40 31.5 8 5.8 -- Available
FTTC Range B (Impacted) 35 19.3 8 4 -- Available


3) Do I need to get the spikes resolved before upgrading, or would the upgrade fix it?
4) Are those stats ok for game streaming?
5) I was thinking to go with PlusNet as they're so cheap, but reading their forum is making me worried their network is faltering... how is Sky's fibre? Or should I consider the much pricier BT Infinity?

Any help much appreciated

Edited by deleted (Mon 20-Apr-15 14:22:52)

1. With being able to co-relate your actual usage, the suggestion is that what you are doing with the connection might be the cause for those spikes. If it was congestion at exchange it would be lasting for a lot longer

2. Yes, YOU, you need to rule out usage from devices like iPad, or blips on the Powerline adapters

3. You could spend hours and days and get no-where, upgrading is likely to help, but cannot be guaranteed

4. Stats - the download and upload ranges are more than enough, so long as your video streaming is carefully managed to not fill more than half the upload

5. Which is best varies from area to area, some places Sky is perfect and others everyone is on it. Alas people moan but don't do enough speed tests to give a really good local set of stats on this sort of thing

Hi MrSaffron, thanks for the reply...

1) I tried disconnecting the powerline adapters for a little while, no spikes occurred, but it was such a short time that it's inconclusive. The Sky doubted it would have an impact anyway so I didn't repeat the experiment, but if you think it's worth a shot...

2) The spikes have occurred (according to the ping monitor) when most of the devices are off, and they're all inactive .. such as at 3am, 5am, or when no-one is in the house.

3) Yeah, I didn't think it would guaranteed, sadly

4) That's good to hear

5) Wifi analyzer on my phone shows 4 Skys and 1 BT homehub... BT therefore the best bet?

In reply to a post by RostokMcSpoons:

5) Wifi analyzer on my phone shows 4 Skys and 1 BT homehub... BT therefore the best bet?

The ISPs on the wifi channels isn't relevant. Only the channels in use that may be conflicting with yours.