Recent Increase in Latency

[AmbiguousNinja]

On speedtest.net my latency used to be around 20ms but as of a few days ago it has more than doubled to around 50-60ms. My ISP is Bell Canada and I have made no changes to my internet plan. After asking around, friends who are with another ISP are still getting their usual 20ms ping. Any idea on why my latency has increased? Thanks in advance.

Also it seems like my download speeds has increased slightly but it's still lower than what I've been paying for (that's another issue that I've just learned to live with being in a middle of nowhere city).

[Geek-9pm]

AmbiguousNinja, don't expert it to get better.
I get long pings from Yahoo, , about 150ms
Internet usage is growing so fast,  expect more latency and loss of data.
They can not get new equipment installed fast enough.

Latency is important in games , voice calls or any activity where a quick response is needed. But many other things do not matter.  Examples are Watching  TV reruns, NetFlix movies, Facebook and general surfing the web.

[camerongray]

This could be down to a problem at your ISP's end as they may be doing work on their network, It would probably be best to contact them and ask.  The problem could also be an issue with your router, try restarting it and see if it gives any difference.

Have you also tried a different speedtest.net server as the one you have previously been testing with may be having issues on its network.

You may also want to try using this which will monitor your latency 24/7 and graph it - It's based in the UK so latency will be higher but it's great to see if there are certain times of day when your latency is higher than usual: http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/.

[AmbiguousNinja]

My latency has remained constant throughout the day and I have tried restarting my router which didn't change anything. On speedtest.net I tried a few other servers that came back with higher latencies so the server that it finds for me seems to be the closest and the one that it has used when my latency was ~20ms.