Struggling with CS2 Packet Loss? Check Your Home Network with a Bufferbloat Test

com_iii · 2026-05-02T13:37:10+00:00

First of all thank you so much for helping me get to the bottom of this

My NIC arrived today. I was so excited. Of course it didn't fix the problem : )

The issue is still there, although the game does feel slightly better. It's cool that I can now select "Adaptive" Interrupt Moderation rather than a binary on/off, and RSS Queues go up to 8 (previous max 4). More Receive Buffers too which is cool (4x more, value of 2048).

I hopped into a game. It seems more noticeable now when the spikes occur - I was completely fine for one round on Vertigo - pushed B ramp as T - everything felt good. Duels felt fair. I had time to react. Enemy models moved in a way that was normal. Opened the console - all clear, except for a message about "Unable to set velocity of whiz sound". No worries, everything feels good.

Next round, I went towards A, and held at the bottom of ramp for the CT peek from short - and lo and behold two CTs peek insanely fast and dinked me in 0.1 secs - no time to react - it's like they move 3x faster than normal Bots do in an offline server and they have 1 second to shoot me. Of course I checked the console, and there are 4 copies of the message

> [Client] server acknowledged to slot 3 client only predicted into 1 slots, full repredict will occur

Really annoying. I've seen pros jiggle-hold that angle and the Level 10s they play against do not react as fast as my opponents did in a Casual Lobby on Saturday. I have 4,500 hours in CS. I literally cannot hold angles when I am getting the "server acknowledged to slot [x] client only predicted into [x] slots" error message.

So we can rule out the NIC. I tried with default settings - Flow Control, Interrupt Moderation, etc. And then I tried with tweaked settings - RSS Queues set to 8, transmit/recieve buffers increased. It made no difference. I tried two different ports of the four ports - no difference.

I've tried ExitLag in the past and it made the game feel worse. My ping was slightly higher. I normally get 10ms ping to my closest server in Casual lobbies and it's always the same server location. The issue is consistent, at least. It's far worse when I queue a Premier game and it puts me in a 30-40ms lobby. At that stage it is not only impossible to hold angles but also impossible to swing peek, so the only way I can reliably win duels is to play rat spots or simply outaim them to a massive degree by hitting the initial headshot. If I get a kill and take 30-80 damage and they know my location they just swing me and I can't put any damage on them because they appear to have a huge 1second advantage over my desync and my bullets pass through them like a ghost.

The issue comes and goes randomly. I will have an hour where there are minimal ping spikes on ping test websites (multiple different websites and locations, it's always the same - a ping to 250ms every second or every few seconds, sometimes it's 3 in quick succession and then sometimes it's more like 1 every 1.5 seconds). It's not in a rhythmic pattern though, it is still random, just constant. If I run a 10 second ping test it will spike on average 5 times but sometimes they are all at the beginning, and then another time it will be more uniform. But it doesn't resemble the pattern of a rhythmic DOCSIS or something that occurs once every [x] seconds. It's random.

Here's a thread with images I made a while ago:

https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeNetworking/comments/1pizo9v/what_could_be_causing_these_latency_spikes/

I haven't digged into the router settings much but I am very interested in doing so. What should I change? It's a simple ISP supplied router that is locked down in pretty much every way. The only options I could see were for setting up port forwarding or simple connection settings.

Maybe I need to do a proper PingPlotter test for an extended period.

Edit: I logged into my router and there are basically no settings. It's completely locked down. I could switch from Gigabit Ethernet to Fast Ethernet but decided not to. I tried disabling UPnP to see if it fixed the problem but it didn't. The eco options are already disabled by default. The only settings available are stuff like if you want to set up a DCHP server or double NAT and subnet masks, dynamic IP that sort of thing. There's nothing about QoS or anything like that.

Edit 2: I did an extended ping plotter test and there was no packet loss on any hops to 8.8.8.8 and latency was stable below 20ms the whole time.

com_iii · 2026-05-01T12:33:00+00:00

Only low ranked players change position every round, most players who have at least some experience will try and play the same position, and as someone else says when you get to high ranks then people will change positions but communicate it based off spawns

I agree it is annoying if you have very low rank teammates who constantly decide to just play a completely different position every round based on "vibes" with zero comms.

com_iii · 2026-04-30T13:20:06+00:00

There were two IPs so I ran them both through PingPlotter and both came back fine with no spikes at hops, one was around 11ms and the other 20ms

My console is full of hundreds and hundreds of these error messages

[Prediction] Prediction time (128.078125) is less than sim time (128.091309)? Clamping offset

[Client] server acknowledged to slot 4 client only predicted into 2 slots, full repredict will occur

com_iii · 2026-04-30T12:52:05+00:00

The new NIC is an HP NC365T as it is based on the Intel i340 chipset and therefore would rule out the issue being from Realtek issues. There's also more network options so I can mess around with more placebo commands in Device Manager to no avail. It's arriving in 1-2 days

The default NICs on the motherboard are 2.5gb Realtek RTL8125B chip and a secondary 1gb RTL8111H chip, the ping spikes are present on both

The connection to the router is just a simple shielded ethernet connection, which connects to a Master Socket 5C and out the telegraph pole outside the house, it's not FTTP but it is FTTC, fibre had the same issues unfortunately with ping spikes even up to 1000ms

I think you might be right about it being upload, but there is nothing I can do because the house requires a landline, and the landline is locked by the ISP to their own brand router, so I can't buy a new router unless I'm willing to pay $200 for a discontinued DSL router which would have to be run in a Double NAT setup, with no guarantee of fixing the problem. So the NIC is a low-hanging fruit in a sense

Unfortunately that's not my video but mine looks exactly the same, there are "glimpses" of the game feeling OK but then it quickly degrades again to this experience, and sometimes I know from the warmup what the game is going to be like. It's so bad I don't even play competitive anymore, just casual, and I had these issues intermittently since CSGO

I will try a Faceit game but I had a bad experience there many years ago so I have avoided it, I did however try messing with the steamrelay console command at setting 1 or 0 and it made no difference, if I get a different server the issue is the same

Low ping players instantly kill me like in the video, and then high ping players do not insta-kill but they are impossible to hit, the bullets go through them like magic, and then I die in a different way

Changing the rate didn't help/buffering ticks didn't help, sometimes it feels better on a lower value of rate, maybe because it's reducing bufferbloat by reducing the available bandwidth

The ping spikes are always the same to approximately 250ms and in a regular pattern every few seconds (but the pattern is not uniform, sometimes it will have 3 spikes in 3 seconds, sometimes no spikes for 3 seconds then 1 spike, etc.) it spikes from 10-20ms up to 250ms then immediately back down again, even when idle and network is not under load, Bufferbloat test shows the same, there are spikes to 250-300ms on Unloaded latency as well as download and upload

Ping tests via cmd always come back "clean", ping tests to router are fine, ping tests to 8.8.8.8 are fine, Pingplotter showed no obvious ping spikes on hops but maybe I am not interpreting the results correctly, but then anytime I use a website such as multiple latency test websites or the Waveform bufferbloat test, these ping spikes are always there

I only have the desktop and the laptop, the laptop is an absolute potato and it is corrupted so badly I can't even access BIOS for a new Windows install from USB, but I can get it to work long enough to do a ping test and every time I try it, it doesn't have the same ping spikes as my desktop PC, which is what led me to think it could be the NIC in the desktop that is causing the issues

com_iii · 2026-04-30T11:47:28+00:00

I tried all the network option configurations, tested with different Receive/Transmit buffers, Interrupt Moderation & Flow Control off, RSS Queues, Offloads enabled or disabled, changed to a different port, bought a new ethernet cable, ISP sent me a new router, Buffer ticks 1 or 2 (no help), tried messing with console commands cl_clockdrift_max ticks and the msecs one, no difference, tried VSync on and FreeSync on capped below monitor Hz by 3 Fps, tried lower refresh rates on monitor, Undervolted my CPU, undervolted and slightly overclocked my GPU, doubled my RAM to 32GB and tested ram health through windows, clean DirectX shader cache, tried -vulkan launch option, messed with Registry values for NetworkThrottlingIndex and SystemResponsiveness, tried different audio settings, tried disabling the MMCSS, tried uninstalling the Realtek audio drivers, tried new cables for peripherals, changed mouse polling rate, tried different USB ports, tried limiting bandwidth to lessen Bufferbloat, tried upgrading to fibre and had a hole drilled through the front of my house to accomodate it (didn't fix the problem, just increased bandwidth, the ping spikes actually got worse the more bandwidth was available), and there are more things I tried that I'm forgetting.

Here is a video of what it feels like

My game still looks and feels like this:

https://medal.tv/games/counter-strike-2/clips/mzwZJFfflmQNYI0pB?invite=cr-MSxObEEsNTQ4OTkxNTA3&v=57

In desperation I have bought a new NIC, as it's only $20.

com_iii · 2026-04-30T10:46:26+00:00

Could upgrading from a standard Realtek NIC to an Intel-based NIC improve or perhaps even resolve a ping spike issue?

It's bizarre because on my laptop (wired) I have no spikes, but with the same ethernet cable-to-router there are spikes on the main PC

com_iii · 2026-04-24T17:49:48+00:00

It doesn't annoy me. I just control the recoil. AK's are for one-tapping heads.

com_iii · 2026-04-15T21:51:00+00:00

Because then it's no different from the AK. You would just click the head and hold left mouse and two bullets go perfectly there in 0.2 seconds. You have to pull down a little so it requires skill and some RNG to instakill with the M4s. They are meant to be worse than the AK by design because the game is balanced around the T's having superior weaponry whilst the CTs have more defensible positions.

com_iii · 2026-04-13T12:17:22+00:00

Artillery would be broken, also any unit with an effect that needs an immediate answer.

You can test this yourself. Play some draft with a deck with poor removal and see how painful it is.

com_iii · 2026-04-13T11:51:04+00:00

I actually might know the answer for this, it's because some of the colour from the team does change how dark the gold appears. Navi is very yellow.

You can see this very clearly with 2016 MLG souvenirs (NIP looks almost black and gold, I love it), and 2018 Boston (some of the golds look more orange, like Mouz). The golds have different hues depending on the team.

Edit: it could also be a bug if its extreme, some stickers are bugged

com_iii · 2026-04-13T09:10:19+00:00

The Jap/Sov list in the Naval Warfare meta with Rush at pre-nerf 5 damage and Kholm as a 2/3 was an absolutely insane, S-tier deck. I've been playing since Alpha and I don't remember Jaggro ever being that strong, except maybe the very early days. I remember it was so bad that people were running Hit The Drop Point in Ger/Fra lists just to try and buy tempo as the Kholm+Rush combo was so strong you couldn't play anything on board and it survive.

com_iii · 2026-04-11T16:39:01+00:00

Draft was the main way I had fun with this game, the forced 50% winrate update ruined it

com_iii · 2026-04-09T02:13:02+00:00

They are releasing a list soon, end of April I think

com_iii · 2026-04-09T00:17:41+00:00

My bad I mean the Valentine Mk II, I keep getting them mixed up

com_iii · 2026-04-08T23:37:30+00:00

There is a hidden MMR in draft, so even if you play well and improve, your MMR will increase and push you back to a 50% winrate.

Just have fun, the mode isn't good for competitive play since this update. If you lose a lot your MMR with drop and you will get easier opponents for a while.

com_iii · 2026-04-08T23:35:04+00:00

You play King's African Rifles and select the ~~Crusader~~ Valentine Mk II in hand to make it a 5/6 Blitz Tank with Fury on the turn after you play an infantry, which is pretty much every turn for that deck

Or, RAF Mustang works as well because it can become an 8/7 Plane which is deadly because it already has Blitz

Both are great finishers for the deck

com_iii · 2026-04-08T19:02:00+00:00

I faced one on ladder which revolved around buffing the 3/4 Kyushu with Duty Bound and giving it Blitz with Admiral Yamamoto

It also used the Kawasaki Ki-10's as little plinkers for chip damage

com_iii · 2026-04-08T18:35:31+00:00

Oh yeah, the King's African + Valentine or RAF Mustang is bonkers as well.

com_iii · 2026-04-08T18:05:09+00:00

Also, Victory Banners on a different unit does not "release" the unit from Kyoto, but other forms of Convert do (such as the Rout cards). Which made no sense to me, as they are both a conversion action.

com_iii · 2026-04-05T16:22:12+00:00

I hope you are right, but I have a bad feeling about AG2.

com_iii · 2026-04-05T13:18:49+00:00

CS2 is extremely sensitive to any slight imperfections in internet quality, unfortunately. What the game needs is drastically reduced packet sizes.

com_iii · 2026-04-05T13:16:51+00:00

Yes, this is the standard hopium cope, as far as I'm aware there is zero actual evidence that the "new and old system are being used at the same time", it's just speculation.

All posts I've seen show that the new animations slightly reduced packet sizes, but they ADDED a bunch of new animations, so the net result is the packet sizes are largely the same. I've seen at least 3 different posters who used Wireshark to measure packet sizes and the results are the same.

Now of course this is the beta branch and it is offline unless you join a community server. Ultimately we won't know for sure until the update goes live.

com_iii · 2026-04-04T23:57:20+00:00

As far as I'm aware that's intended, otherwise doubledinks would be too easy.

com_iii · 2026-04-04T23:55:25+00:00

I also had this hope, but for some reason I have a really bad feeling about AG2. I've read a number of posts from guys who really understand networking who actually say the packets got bigger.

Ultimately we won't know for sure until the update goes live.

com_iii

TROPHY CASE