Fiber Internet Dropping Randomly

Running a tracert to youtube, I can see there are several areas where the connection just times out and drops randomly. What other steps could I take to solve this issue?

Your trace route is not from AT&T Fiber but it shows no issues. You are posting from a European connection. The average ping to your Google Youtube target is 20 ms. Timeouts and dropped ICMP Echo packets are normal and don't indicate any issues.

What's next?

Dave

Strange that it's coming up as a European connection, it might be my privacy/tracking blocker add-ons that garble my data.

My IP has me in Dallas/Fort Worth (though I *am* in Houston). What should I be recording to show this issue? Frequently I have packet loss and disconnects that last for about 10-15 seconds every 15 minutes or so. This isn't isolated to one program, but I've attached an example from Discord where my ping skyrockets for a short time.

frequently I have packet loss and disconnects that last for about 10-15 seconds every 15 minutes or so.

Do you have a secondary router that has a short DHCP renewal time?

You never hit anything in the AT&T Network. It really appears you are using a VPN for this connection so you can't see anything related to AT&T.

This isn't isolated to one program, but I've attached an example from Discord where my ping skyrockets for a short time.

Pings just show the path of your IP connection to a target.

For it to be a problem you need ever increasing round trip delays and not just spikes at (1) or more router nodes on the path. So if a intermediate node has a 600ms response but your target shows a 19ms there is no issue. If you see a node that spikes to 200ms and this increment is passed along your path to your target it might indicate a potential issue. You don't have access to the tools to find a real issue.

Ping traffic is not high priority or even guaranteed delivery. As your trace routes shows many routers don't respond to any Ping traffic. If you keep pinging a router node many are configured to keep a list of recent source IPs and limit responses and finally just stop responding. This is by design to prevent DDoS attacks.

Even your Discord Server is going to ignore your Pings if you are running long running Pings over a short interval.

Dave

I don't have a secondary router, I only have the provided AT&T BGW210 gateway.

Apparently my VPN was still connected despite the program not being open, I apologize. I am getting the 200ms spikes after disabling it (and I had to disable auto-connect, who thought that was a good idea to have enabled by default? I digress).

If you see a node that spikes to 200ms and this increment is passed along your path to your target it might indicate a potential issue.

So it's looking like I might have an issue, if I'm reading this correct. I know you said that ping traffic isn't high priority, so I'm ignoring the time outs on requests, but the response ms is much higher than the previous one.

Ah you switched to IP/6 from IP/4. Still no issue since Hop #2 is 111 ms, 218 ms, and 189 ms. Your target is 161 ms, 44 ms, and 40 ms. You can't compare IP/6 and IP/4 responses there is not a 1 to 1 correspondence.

Dave

That was the default for the tracert, I forced IPV4.

Your latest trace route output still does not show an issue with the basic connection.

 Frequently I have packet loss and disconnects that last for about 10-15 seconds every 15 minutes or so.

Could you provide some additional details on what you are calling "disconnects" that last about 10-15 seconds

Dave

You cannot connect to any webpage. It happens intermittently, entire internet drops. Sometimes, it's only packet loss in which I remain connected but new connections take the 10-15 seconds to connect. Other times, the entire internet will just stop working for an extended period of time but those are less frequent.

OK let's look deeper. What are you using for DNS resolution?

The default is your AT&T Gateway's LAN router address of 192.168.1.254 and is provided by the DHCP server. Do the lights on the BGW210 change when this issue is present to indicated an intermittent physical issue?

Dave

No, no changes in the lights of the gateway. Additionally the app shows nothing wrong as well.