WiFi Bandwidth maximizing when barely using anything

Hi everyone. I hope I'm posting in the right area but I could use some technical expertise on this one!

Firstly, I'm so glad I signed up to thinkbroadbands internet monitoring chart!

Let me explain my situation;

I have 70mb DL 20mb UL fibre from talk talk and I'm currently using wireless on my PC. I have 0 problems with my service normally... but every now and then (we're talking every couple of months), the wifi almost acts as if I'm being DDOS'd in some form. I play a lot of online games and I use VoIP software such as teamspeak. When I'm having these issues, the connection jitters every few seconds. For example, when talking to someone online, i'll hear their sentence, they'll be a brief pause and then i'll hear the rest of what they said, like it keeps cutting out which can generally be attributed to packet loss.

Even when I'm not downloading anything or know they nobody else in the house is using the wifi, it is acting like the bandwidth is being completely squeezed by something and I just cannot figure out what it is.

Thankfully, thinkbroadbands chart has been monitoring my connection for months now and it provides a perfect example of what my internet is like normally.. and what its like when its going pear shaped. Unfortunately its been going pear shaped for the last few days so it has made me jump on here to find out what it could possibly be. (And yes, i've tried the usual diagnostics of resetting my router etc. Changing wireless channels only sometimes alleviates the problem before it starts getting intermittent issues again.) I'm quite savvy when it comes to basic problems with the internet but this issue has me baffled.

The monitor i'm using is located here, just in case anyone hasn't seen it;
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/monitors.html

Now, let me show you how the internet looks when its working absolutely flawlessly, no wifi issues at all. These charts are from the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of June;
(records go back to march 2015)
1st June 2015;
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/28ad4bbbd6d...

2nd June 2015;
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/f7a3c0207f9...

3rd June 2015;
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/556b639a338...

Now with 4th of June.. is where the wifi is having problems. Whilst generally surfing the web isn't very laggy or anything, its mostly has nasty effects with online gaming and VoIP because of how constantly demanding it can be. Now, just look at the difference now;

4th June 2015;
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/5c3c48daeab...

5th June 2015;
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/cae885998d3...

6th June 2015 is the same, and 7th June 2015;
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/4278d892fd3...

The funny thing with 7th is you can see the internet suddenly go back to normal at 2pm. That was because I tried changing the wireless channel again and it temporarily fixed it before it went straight back being rubbish again a few hours later. As a side note, changing the wireless channel on the previous days literally did nothing.

From looking at the charts, it just gives me the impression something is hogging all of the bandwidth, as if I'm downloading/uploading all at the same time and thus gives these strange wifi intermittent problems.

I'm running out of ideas and I'd love to know what on earth could be interfering that much. These charts show this even when nobody is using the internet for anything at all. I just don't get it unfortunately.

These are my current router stats if it helps. I'm using Talk Talk's Super Router. I believe I got similar issues with the router before it. It could be the weather, it could be the neighbour.. but I just can't pinpoint what exactly could be causing the charts to skyrocket.

Internet Connection

DSL synchronization status:
Up
Connection status:
Showtime

Line Quality

Upstream line rate (kbit/s):
19999
Downstream line rate (kbit/s):
69594
Upstream noise safety coefficient (dB):
7
Downstream noise safety coefficient (dB):
6.4
Upstream interleave depth:
0
Downstream interleave depth:
0
Line standard:
VDSL
Upstream line attenuation (dB):
12.5
Downstream line attenuation (dB):
6.3
Upstream output power (dBm):
-1.7
Downstream output power (dBm):
13.9
Downstream interleave depth:
None

Network card; Edimax ew-7612pin wireless pci with latest drivers from realtek.

Thank you very much for reading and I'm hoping someone could shine some light on this for me.

Regards

Edited by deleted (Sun 07-Jun-15 21:20:11)

The monitor is only testing up to the router so wireless should not influence it unless there is something making major use of the connection, or router is grunning out of memory and the setting changes help to release memory.

The solid red blocks are those when you have issues?

but that is almost suggesting that the connection beyond the router is getting absolutely hammered and is affecting the bandwidth in my entire house. I understand the monitor isn't related to wifi but thats just how i connect at the moment.

No, the solid red blocks is when my PC is turned off and isn't using the internet.

Urm red is odd then since routers usually stay connected if pc is off. Or do you switch that off too?

Check that error rate and noise margins are not bad next time it happens

Plus set a new wireless security key

I don't switch the router off so I'm not sure why it stops monitoring. There's mobile phones, ipads and such connecting to it even during the red zone but it only seems to monitor my PC. (wish to be honest I don't really mind)

Current stats

Upstream line rate (kbit/s):
19999
Downstream line rate (kbit/s):
69594
Upstream noise safety coefficient (dB):
7.1
Downstream noise safety coefficient (dB):
6.4
Upstream interleave depth:
0
Downstream interleave depth:
0
Line standard:
VDSL
Upstream line attenuation (dB):
12.5
Downstream line attenuation (dB):
6.3
Upstream output power (dBm):
-1.7
Downstream output power (dBm):
13.9

Here's a snapshot of my wifi card's wireless software;
http://i.imgur.com/J3KovgK.png

And to keep everyone up with progress, here's Monday;
mon - http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/683e4e8e1bd...

as you can see it has improved and yes, voip and online gaming has been good enough with spikes now and then. I'm more interested in the fact the peaks are somewhat returning to normal, give or take a few spikes.. and comparison to the absolutely wild results i was getting a few days ago. (the chart literally covered in max latency etc)

oh, and i've changed nothing recently. no wifi channel changes, no nothing. This problem usually fixes itself but i'd still love to know what on earth is going on when it goes crazy like it has been.

I did try changing the wifi password and it made no difference.

Edited by deleted (Tue 09-Jun-15 14:55:59)

could the PC be in a DMZ and the ICMP packets be forwarded to the PC?

DMZ is enabled for my pc right now yes.

Well.. it was recovering and now it has started going back to its usual max latency!

Here's a picture of my wireless statistics;
http://i.imgur.com/SZf6pja.png

And the current graph is;
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/f5185ba6dc4...

I'm considering posting this on TalkTalks support forums as well. It's getting pretty frustrating.

If my understanding of the DMZ is correct (that it causes packets such as ICMP pings to be forwarded to the PC), then your monitoring has a problem.

Essentially, the monitoring is unable to distinguish whether your problem lies on the internet side (your DSL link, the Openreach back haul, or the TT back haul) or internal to you (your router, LAN or WLAN).

You probably need to disable the DMZ setting for a while, to get a better picture of the external behaviour. Then you fan decide whether to focus on WAN or something internal.

i've disabled DMZ for now.