Rogers Community

butcho · ‎11-24-2023

First time posting here, but I'm hoping for some help moving forward with this problem:

On weekdays, starting around 9am, I start to see latency instability in any server I'm connected to. With online gaming, this manifests as rubber-banding/warping, and is how I first noticed it. It starts out as random spikes, and eventually, you start seeing prolonged 1-2 minute periods of wild ping variation. It gets worse as the day goes on, and in the evening after ~7pm, it's essentially a constant thing with no relief until after midnight. In the middle of the night it's stable. I'm on ethernet, so wifi is not a concern, and overall bandwidth is as promised.

I've been running ping plotter and just basic ping tests on multiple servers simultaneously, and the spikes always happen at the same time across the board. Taking google as an example, my base ping is ~10ms, and this will flutter up to as high as 150ms, and everything in between. There's absolutely no consistency in the response time from packet to packet.

Prior to Rogers, I had Bell fibe, and using all the same device hardware/ethernet cabling, I had no issues and my ping was flat from packet to packet no matter the time of day. I had a tech come and replace the modem yesterday, but no change. I got in touch with a 2nd level guy who I spoke to on the phone today, and he could not see any immediate issues (this has been my general experience with Rogers support so far). He agreed to run a test after 7 pm and let me know what he sees.

Given all the factors, this seems like it's pretty clearly an area congestion problem, but I find it kind of mind-blowing that it happens all through the day. The network in this area must be completely overloaded for that to be the case, right? It's an old neighbourhood in east Toronto, so I'm guessing the infrastructure around here is not great.

I'm not particularly hopeful that a problem like this will be analyzed sufficiently, nor acted upon quickly by Rogers, leaving my only option to cancel and return to Bell. Please let me know any advice you can give, or other info you need from me.

Appreciate the help!

*Added Labels*

Datalink · ‎11-25-2023

@butcho it should be known within the gaming community that the latency pecking order is as follows:

1. Fibre, or DSL/VDSL.

2. Cable service.

They all run different technologies, in terms of signal types and waveforms, but, fibre or DSL/VDSL will give you the lowest latency.

Here's a thread from DSLReports that is worth looking at:

https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r32824164-Ping-comparison-between-Rogers-cable-and-Bell-VDSL

Now, if you're looking at download speeds, then the order would be:

1. Fibre

2. Cable

3. DSL/VDSL

Personal opinion, in terms of latency, you were better off with Bell, using whatever Fibe service you had. Swapping modems, investigating, etc, etc, won't make any difference. There is inherent latency in DOCSIS systems that isn't seen in fibre or DSL/VDSL.

Fwiw, there is a Low Latency extension to the DOCSIS spec that is published, but, I don't expect to see that used by Rogers for many years to come. If you're interested in having a look at what Comcast is doing for Low Latency DOCSIS, have a look at the following DSLReports thread:

https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r33691889-Connectivity-It-Begins-Ultra-Low-Latency-Trials-Announced

butcho · ‎11-27-2023

Thanks for all this info, i didn't know there was a well documented latency difference between the two technologies. It's just that I've used Rogers almost exclusively over the past 20 years around the GTA, and I've never seen a connection behave like this, with this kind of instability.

Datalink · ‎11-27-2023

There are a couple of issues on the go here. The first is the increase in usage by all customers (read network congestion). That affects all ISPs, and requires a large increase in budgets for network expansion. That expansion takes time, and is exacerbated by covid slowing down manufacturers and suppliers for a large range of tech equipment, among others. The second is the introduction of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex (OFDM) channels which you can see on the modem signal levels and changes in the network architecture which pushes fibre networks deeper into the neighbourhoods. Rogers is essentially silent on the changes to the networks. Any comments by Rogers only appear as a one or two liner in financial statements or in online communications magazines. The end customer and user community is left completely in the dark despite the ongoing negative affects on that user community. Introduction of OFDM channels has been problematic since day one, and my bet is that all of the issues have not been resolved to date.

Having said that, at the end of the day, shutting down the old modems and Nextboxes frees up a large range of frequencies which will allow Rogers to implement OFDM channels throughout the current cable spectrum, and although OFDM channels can be problematic in their use, they hold the promise of much larger bandwidth for every customer. Assuming that Rogers can resolve the OFDM issues and changes in their network architecture at some point, every user stands to benefit from the changes and no doubt the end users should notice the end changes and much better stability. Until that happens, the network congestion and network issues will be rather painful to live thru. The question is, do you stay put or jump ship to a different technology. That's a question that every user will have to figure out for themselves.

reading_forum · ‎07-18-2024

For the past few months I've been having issues with ping spikes on all devices, this issue appears to be more noticeable during the day from 2pm - 11pm. When the spikes are not present, doing a ping test will look like this: Normal Ping TestHowever, when the problem is present, ping tests will look like this: Ping Spikes

During May/June 2024, I had some issues with my internet connection completely disconnecting for a few minutes at a time, multiple times everyday, so we had a Rogers technician come out the first time and swap out the modem as well as remove a 3-way splitter on the line which reduced the amount of disconnections, however, the problem was still happening.

The second time a technician came, they removed a 2-way splitter on the line (no other remaining splitters after that) and they added what appears to be a F81 connector to connect the cables, this has resulted in no more frequent disconnections happening ever since.

I have also noticed that when I perform a speed test during times of no/minimal ping spikes, the speed will be around 300 Mbps down and 100 Mbps up, however, when ping spikes are occurring frequently, the speed will drop to anywhere from 50-150 Mbps down and 30-70 Mbps up, not sure if this is related (I am on the Ignite 300 plan). Less frequently, I will also have 100% packet loss for a few seconds at a time.

I already PM'd CommunityHelps about the situation and they told me they couldn't see any issues with my connection. I live in a townhouse with a buried internet cable and have a XB7 modem, I have attached the Downstream, Upstream and CM Error Codewords logs (2 days of uptime) below.

Channel IDLock StatusFrequencySNRPower LevelModulation

Downstream

Channel Bonding Value

8

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

Locked

597 MHz

279 MHz

849 MHz

855 MHz

861 MHz

579 MHz

585 MHz

591 MHz

603 MHz

609 MHz

615 MHz

621 MHz

633 MHz

639 MHz

645 MHz

651 MHz

657 MHz

663 MHz

669 MHz

675 MHz

681 MHz

687 MHz

693 MHz

699 MHz

705 MHz

711 MHz

717 MHz

723 MHz

825 MHz

831 MHz

837 MHz

843 MHz

350000000

920000000

38.5 dB

39.7 dB

38.4 dB

38.3 dB

38.1 dB

38.7 dB

38.5 dB

38.4 dB

38.5 dB

38.2 dB

38.0 dB

38.1 dB

38.0 dB

38.1 dB

37.8 dB

38.4 dB

38.3 dB

38.5 dB

38.4 dB

38.5 dB

38.3 dB

38.2 dB

38.1 dB

38.0 dB

38.9 dB

36.9 dB

-6.2 dBmV

-3.4 dBmV

-6.9 dBmV

-7.0 dBmV

-7.2 dBmV

-5.8 dBmV

-6.0 dBmV

-6.1 dBmV

-6.3 dBmV

-6.5 dBmV

-6.3 dBmV

-6.6 dBmV

-6.7 dBmV

-6.8 dBmV

-6.7 dBmV

-6.6 dBmV

-6.5 dBmV

-6.4 dBmV

-6.5 dBmV

-6.7 dBmV

-6.8 dBmV

-6.9 dBmV

-7.1 dBmV

-4.2 dBmV

-7.7 dBmV

256 QAM

OFDM

Channel IDLock StatusFrequencySymbol RatePower LevelModulationChannel Type

Upstream	Channel Bonding Value
1	2	3	4	10
Locked	Locked	Locked	Locked	Locked
21 MHz	25 MHz	32 MHz	38 MHz	42 MHz
2560	5120	5120	5120	0
38.3 dBmV	39.8 dBmV	40.8 dBmV	41.3 dBmV	37.2 dBmV
QAM	QAM	QAM	QAM	OFDMA
TDMA_AND_ATDMA	ATDMA	ATDMA	ATDMA	TDMA

Channel IDUnerrored CodewordsCorrectable CodewordsUncorrectable Codewords

CM Error Codewords
8	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	30	31	32	33	34
2755297416	300897175	300902930	300913303	300919848	300920250	300928217	300931397	300935704	300944154	300953308	300965543	300969691	300972375	300978053	300983962	300989778	300993957	300994654	301003054	301010107	301013286	301018515	301013544	301026476	289359193	269159697	301050432	301052018	301050662	301057688	301059476	3177658660	2755297416
2528485020	96	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2432	1622	576824	57607	0	320	133	0	130	3163294505	2528485020
0	54	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	3762	1358	1195241	86041	0	1194	156	0	71	29	0

Does anyone have an idea as to what could be causing these issues, or what I can ask Rogers to investigate? For the most part the connection is fine but for gaming it makes it incredibly difficult as I will just lag out at random times.

Rogers Community

Excessive Jitter when gaming; highly time of day dependent

Re: Excessive Jitter when gaming; highly time of day dependent

Re: Excessive Jitter when gaming; highly time of day dependent

Re: Excessive Jitter when gaming; highly time of day dependent

Re: Excessive Jitter when gaming; highly time of day dependent