Sudden spikes in ping

[LostGeneration]

Hello, I mentioned this in the known issues thread, but figured it would be better to make a new topic.

I’m getting sudden spikes in ping while playing Dirty Bomb, and only Dirty Bomb. TF2, Combat Arms and other online games are fine.

I’m playing in the correct region, EU, and using server browser to join the server with the lowest ping, so it’s not related to the issues with quick join picking the wrong region.

What’s actually happening is that I’m joining servers, getting reasonable amounts of ping like 30 or 40, and then having it suddenly jumping up to 999, which is presumably as high as the scoreboard can show. This usually only happens for a few seconds, but today it happened in a round and lasted for 6 minutes! I’m amazed I wasn’t kicked for that, as I’ve been kicked a few times even when it only happens briefly.

I’ve made sure Dirty Bomb isn’t being blocked by my firewall or antivirus, and have run a virus scan to rule out malware. I opened resource monitor to check what was affecting my bandwidth, and found that svchost.exe and dashost.exe, both Windows programs, were suddenly doing something, shooting my network usage up to 100%.

I should also point out that no one else on my network has been downloading or torrenting when these spikes happen, they are completely random.

Has anyone else encountered this, in Dirty Bomb or any other game? Do you have an idea how to fix it? One thing I’ve wondered about is whether I need to open ports in my router for Dirty Bomb. Could that be related to this at all?

I have the latest drivers for everything on my computer, checked with Driver Reviver.

My computer specs are Windows 8.1 64 bit, 4 GB RAM, XFX Radeon 280x graphics card, and intel q9300 2.5ghz quad core processor. I know that this is an old processor, but on medium settings the game runs at 50-60 fps. The high ping doesn’t lower the framerate either, but my character warps all over the place while it’s happening.

[Ardez1]

What antivirus do you use?

If you do not use WIndows Defender, could you try seeing if it is currently enabled on your PC? If it is, please set it to disabled. Then test again.

If you have the ping spike like that for more than 10-20 seconds could you check your task manager and see if any processes are hogging system resources?

Thanks!

[LostGeneration]

I use Windows Defender. I’ve been turning it off when I play Dirty Bomb, ever since I first had this spike.

Resource Manager is a program you access through the task manager, it’s a more detailed version of task manager’s performance tab. My cpu and memory performance were normal during the 6 minute ping spike that I checked, but my network/ethernet jumped to 1MB/s during the spike, with most of it coming from the two windows processes.

I know I said in the last post it was 100%, that was a mistake. The network chart isn’t a percentage, it’s just your MB/s sent and received, with bits sent being the part that shoots up during my ping spikes.

I’ve been trying to watch svchost to see if it does this at other times, but so far it has only occurred while playing Dirty Bomb.

Thanks for replying, I know this is a really weird problem to have.

[Ardez1]

[quote=“mauveBaguette;25255”]I use Windows Defender. I’ve been turning it off when I play Dirty Bomb, ever since I first had this spike.

Resource Manager is a program you access through the task manager, it’s a more detailed version of task manager’s performance tab. My cpu and memory performance were normal during the 6 minute ping spike that I checked, but my network/ethernet jumped to 1MB/s during the spike, with most of it coming from the two windows processes.

I know I said in the last post it was 100%, that was a mistake. The network chart isn’t a percentage, it’s just your MB/s sent and received, with bits sent being the part that shoots up during my ping spikes.

I’ve been trying to watch svchost to see if it does this at other times, but so far it has only occurred while playing Dirty Bomb.

Thanks for replying, I know this is a really weird problem to have.[/quote]

The next time it happens, can you specifically look for the process ‘Antimalware Service Executable’ and see what it is up to?

And yes, anything intermittent or spike related is always a pain to troubleshoot. Generally just firing in the dark most of the time without more details.

Found this on the Windows Support forums.

The “dashost.exe” is a process which automatically checks e-mail inbox and displays a notification if you get a new e-mail. It works on Windows 8 only if you have synchronized your mail account to mail app. So it is safe to kill the process.

If you are not using these services and still these are using the CPU, then follow these steps to change the type of start up to manual.
a. Press Windows key + R and type services.msc and press enter.

b. Double click on dashost.exe Service, and then change the service start up to Manual.

Maybe give that a shot if it applies to you?

[LostGeneration]

I stopped dashost.exe, and found that svchost was uploading to the ip 239.255.250.250, which is related to the ssdp discoverery and universal plug and play services. I stopped both of those as well, as I don’t have any other devices on the network.

I’ve played 4 full matches since then without this happening. I’m not sure why it only caused problems in Dirty Bomb, maybe it’s more sensitive to drops in network speed? The problem appears to be solved, at least, though this thread should probably stay open for a little while in case it comes back.

Thanks for your help Ardez!

[Ardez1]

Glad to see that it fixed the issue for you!