Dropping Packets,,, Network issue?

[orix]

Hey all,

Have been running a TF2 and L4D server for the last few months, and all has been fine. A day or two ago, both servers became unplayable as they are suffering from seemingly random packet loss that occurs about once every 30 seconds, and can extend for 2-3 seconds. These packet drops seem to be affecting all players on the server at the same time. I have included a screen cap of the in game netgraph (this is a big one, but smaller lags also occur):




While the server is virtualised, I have never had any problems like this before so I am thinking that it is a network problem. I am not very knowledgeable about this type of thing, could anyone tell me some steps on how to proceed with diagnosing the problem? I take it that a tracert with MTR is a good place to start, but where to from there?

This problem only happened after the latest TF2 update, but as it is affecting the L4D server also I have ruled that out for now as a problem.

[bpoag]

It's the Valve update. People are seeing this across the board, HL2DM included.

[orix]

I havent seen aything about this on the mailing list does valve know about this issue? Its sad that they came up with such a good set of patches and then let us down on compatibility

[orix]

Have done some work with providers and problem was indeed largely related to a network issue. The issue with packet loss beween the server and provider was fixed and as of today the server is running quite well so perhaps the issue that is affecting other users doesn't apply here...