Massive Packet Loss Spikes every couple minutes, been happening for 3 months now, tried everything

Hi! I have infact done that 2 days ago.

Things I've tried:

- Adjusting the lease time in the router settings (increasing it from 120m to 2880m, or 2 days) still see the issue, did ipconfig /release and ipconfig /renew on all devices to update this. This reduced the rate in which the spikes happen (likely because the effects are similar and was stacking it ontop of the real issue), but they still happen. I factory reset both the modem and the router as well. The effects of a DHCP update is about as 1:1 to the effects I'm experiencing, but the timing doesn't seem to sync up with it. 

- I've tested multiple devices, both wireless and wired, both display the ping spikes. 

- I've turned off all devices, and then tested each one individually to try and rule out that 1 device is causing visible congestion for all of them, I got ping spikes showing up regardless ruling out 1 device having a virus or something. Ran virus scans on them all as well just to be extra clean and nothing found.

- I've completely unplugged the ethernet to the router, and used a new ethernet from my desktop, directly into the modem itself, skipping the possibility of the router or faulty ethernet from modem-to-router. I saw the spikes still occuring even when directly plugged into the modem.

- I'm pinging google, hop 1, and hop 3 at the same time (hop 2 will not ping request timeout, likely cause its not meant to respond back). Hop 3 shows the ping spike, hop 1 no problems. 

Here's results from 3/6/2025 when I was recording them:

10:13AM - Ethernet Desktop 300ms
-- tinkered with the TP-link's DHCP lease duration around half way here, so stepped away from recording for a bit.
12:03PM - Ethernet Desktop 605ms
12:19PM - MSI laptop 900ms
12:34PM - Ethernet Desktop 201ms -- 31 minutes from previous
1:05:23PM - Ethernet Desktop 677ms -- 31 minutes from previous
1:36PM - Ethernet Desktop 266ms -- 31 minutes from previous (watching for 2:07)
1:43PM - MSI laptop 726ms -- ping plotter actually didn't pick up on this while cmd did.
1:46PM - MSI laptop 130ms (probably irrelevant)
1:49PM - MSI laptop 1775ms -- new peak, didnt show on pingplotter, watching for 1:52)
1:52PM - MSI laptop 1009ms
1:52:58PM - MSI Laptop 923ms
ignoring laptop for now
2:07:21PM - Ethernet Desktop 786ms -- 31 minutes, nearly the same second mark, 2:38 surely the next.
2:23PM - Ethernet Desktop 507ms -- 16 minutes, breaks the pattern, still going to see what 2:38 does.
2:38:23PM - Ethernet Desktop 476ms -- 31 minutes from the 2:07, making 2:23 somewhat of a midway point.

Here's today, 3/8/2025 EST times:

11:10AM - pinging to google, hop 3, and hop 1 (hop 2 won't ping at all, request invalid)

Spike is seen as 800ms at google, 500ms at hop 3, wasn't running hop 1 for this attempt.

11:26 - 429ms on google, 92ms hop 3, nothing on hop 1.

11:41 - 50ms on google, 642ms on hop 3, nothing on hop 1. (likely because my cmds aren't perfectly sync'd)

12:12PM - I got so confident in predicting when the spike would occur, i setup a recording with text even predicting it:

https://youtu.be/Erm3s_7_aCY

this is what happens^ (ignore the 89ms in the top right corner, I'm on a public beta testing server that's normal, the spike from 89 to 129 isn't.), watching the video from 1:18, you can see at 1:19 my input doesn't register on the client and at 1:20 everything teleports to sync back, while the in-game MS raises to 129 (i've seen 800ms, its likely just the timing it syncs back at), while the cmd prompt shows 532ms while pinging to hop 3 (ISP).

When running those previous test, I had nothing running either, just for that last one I just hopped in-game, opened OBS, setup some stuff to include the cmd prompt over it and text to have some kind of evidence of clockwork prediction (with 31 minute interval prediction, 12:12PM would've been likely and that would sync with 3 minutes on the in-game clock, the seconds is in the ballpark of what second mark this usually occurs at too.) and to show the effects I experience that cause frustration. 

___

I've had techs come to the house and test + replace everything 3 times, as well as one of the street cables. The only step I haven't done was test my neighbor's connection and I was going to resort to that soon, but allegedly houses a block away have been describing and complaining about similar issues, I just haven't confirmed if its the exact same as mine (them getting kicked out of business video calls periodically). 

I did complain awhile ago that we would occasionally have long lasting upload speed drops, and had an xfinity agent come to work on that... that didn't go away when they came but after a few weeks it went away, and then this problem seems to have followed it, the agent explained there's 5G installation in the area going on, but since its been quite a few months and the previous problem went away, this seems like its a configuration issue on xfinity's end (the consistent intervals imply nothing physically is wrong, 31 minutes +some seconds is too consistent for a cable wire being too loose or wind interference) or a configuration issue with my modem, which I'm already on the 3rd one.. had the issue on an xfinity gateway and have the issue on the current netgear Nighthawk CM2050V we replaced it with.

I really appreciate this data and information.

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@XfinityRoberto​ sent, provided link to this forum thread and TL;DR'd some of the info. I've pretty much given everything I can think of. 

Update:

Tech is coming tomorrow at noon, I made same further discoveries and test;

- Completely shutdown every device and tested each one individually, still saw the 800ms spikes, always clockwork at 31mins and the occasional 15/16min half way point spike. 

- Completely unhooked the ethernet from the modem to the router, instead put my desktop in the same room as the modem with a fresh ethernet going directly into it, ruling out router, ethernet cables, and any of the wireless devices. Still saw the 800ms spikes on the desktop. 

- Made note of all the IP addresses in the tracert before and after the ping spikes, none of the IPs change so no DHCP updates. 

- Tested the laptop at home, saw a sync'd MS spike on both the laptop and desktop at 7:55pm and 8:26pm, I took the laptop to a belle vernon office and tested their xfinity wifi to try and see a spike. After over 2 hours, I seen no issues with ping spikes at that office. I ran a tracert command in cmd prompt to google, and then compared it to the IP addresses of my home pinged to google, the main differences were hop 1, 2, 3, and 4, with 5 being the mckeesport data center. I then pinged my home's hop 3 from the office to see if I could catch any signal problems with hop 3, I did not see a single problem. I cannot ping hop 2 as it request times out. 

That last test essentially limits the culprit to hop 2, whatever it is, because I was seeing the spikes at hop 3's ip from home, and trying to ping that same hop 3 from the office proved no issues. 

It has to be something on the street or in the neighborhood incorrectly configured, the modem being the culprit is unlikely considering this is my second one, the first xfinity gateway having it and the current nighthawk also having it. 

@user_jv5ynj​ Another update: Tech came and did infact see an interference at the predicted timestamp while up on the telephone pole, what it could be still remains unsolved but they fixed the cables at the telephone pole, stuck around to see if it would spike again, and sure enough it did. 

They put us on watchtower, monitoring our connectivity, not sure what that entails but hoping to find something. 

I run a different cmd; ping hop3 -l 100 -n 500 during one of the spikes, the result showed a peak of 895ms but said 0% packet loss. 

A maintenance crew was later sent and arrived at the pole, trying to see for themselves but didn't notice the same interference, they explained that there's no fiber connection just cable and it won't be coming in the next few years, either way these issues dont require fiber to fix. Not sure if they did check other poles on the street or stopped after that one didn't show anything. Allegedly the supervisor is meant to call but I haven't gotten one unless the guy I talked to during the maintenance crew visit was him.

Not sure what the gameplan is now, still having issues, there was a confirmation its not the house officiated, but now a snag that xfinity remotely can't see it and inconsistently catches it at the expected times. Its unironically possible a neighbor is even clogging the network with something they're doing but I'd have no means of finding that out and it'd require them to be doing something clockwork (mining?)

It has to be the connection to hop 2, or the connection from hop 2 to hop 3, but not hop 3 as hop 3-> whatever 4 is from any location seems perfectly fine. I have ruled out devices and hop 3 while they have ruled out the house.