49% Packet Loss from Oceanside, CA to google.com

While the report shows 100% packet loss to one hop, and 49% packet loss to another, you will also note that hops beyond the ones reporting 100% packet loss are reporting 0% packet loss.  This means that those individual hops have reached their capacity to generate ICMP error packets back to you, but are still functioning find and are passing packets through.

In short, I see nothing of significance in your traceroute.  You can probably do a PING against that first hop and get 100% reponses, it's just not returning the errors that traceroutes depend upon.

Interesting that you're being routed to a Dallas-Fort Worth, TX Google address.

> "This means that those individual hops have reached their capacity to generate ICMP error packets back to you, but are still functioning find and are passing packets through."

Are you saying that this is normal for the AT&T network? Because this was not the case a week ago, and this problem is wreaking havoc with my VPN connnection.

Are you speaking in an official capacity for AT&T?

I have noticed it periodically on the AT&T network as well, but as JefferMC said, it is inconsequential as long as the routing to your end destination proceeds uninterrupted and uncorrupted. Your data indicates that it is doing just that. You will also sometimes see along your traceroutes that some nodes report back "timed out"; they are just programmed not to respond to low priority queries such as yours.

2) No, I do not speak in any official capacity for AT&T.  If you need someone to officially tell you that lack of error responses doesn't constitute an actual issue, then you'd need to send a Private Message to ATTU-verseCare.  However, yes, this is fairly normal for the AT&T network, as well as some others that won't respond in any way to any ICMP packet.

1) The lack of appropriate error responses to ICMP ping packets with a TTL of zero is not "wreaking havoc with your VPN."  It may be a co-symptom, but I do doubt that.  If you're using an IPSEC VPN, then it is possible that the hop can't process the IPSEC traffic in ASIC and turns it over to the processor, which does appear to be getting worked hard (or else you'd probably be getting back at least some error returns).

Also, mapping the route to your VPN end point is probably more useful than tracing to some google host.

I don't know what happened, but the problem is no longer happening. My connection is back to full speed.

I've been having basically this exact issue for the last two weeks. In my WinMTR you will see the same thing on the second hop. This is a smaller sample however larger have shown the same results. 

However with me the issue has not resolved itself. The server being traced in the MTR is a gaming server I play on, and the lag has been unbearable to the point where I just cannot play. I've spent quite a lot of time with their technical support and the conclusion was the issue lies in my modem or AT&T's infrastructure. Can someon help me?

I am in Rancho San Diego, CA and the issue is the worst between the hours of roughly 4pm to 10pm PST.

WinMTR Statistics

Here is a better MTR that was run while actually playing and having issues.

WinMTR Statistics

Okay, this last WinRTR shows some symptoms in need of looking into (unlike the others).

While playing, is anything else going on with your connection?  IPTV watching?  Online Backup?  BitTorrents or other P2P activity?  Is this a wired connection to your Gateway or Wi-Fi?  If Wi-Fi, can you try wired?

What game are you playing?  Are you also trying to stream your game play to Twitch/Youtube or similar?

Can you go to http://192.168.1.254/ , look at the broadband tab for the Sync Rates, Attenuation, SNR and error counts and screenshot those and paste them as a reply to this thread?

Running nothing in the background, I even did a selective startup and disabled any non-essintial processes and services. 

I'm playing world of warcraft and no I'm not streaming. I am connected via Wi-Fi and do not have an option to connect via wired. However on another computer the symptoms persist via the wired connection as well. 

Currently the game is running and the connection is stable (as it usually is during off hours) but here is the data you asked for (I can look again next time it's acting up to see if there are any differences)

 Screenshot

I'll let others with more expertise tell you where to go next but your s/n ration is barely capable of sustaining a connection. I believe AT&T's standards call for a minimum of 9.0 for any given speed profile. It would appear you have line issues. You may wish to go to https://ufix.att.com and let it run its tests to see if anything obvious shows up.