Acutis Why is my internet so bad? Find the link that needs a look
The short answer: bad internet always lives on one of four links: your laptop, your router (the only door out of the house), your provider, or DNS (the phone book that turns names into numbers). Test them in order, closest first, with commands already on Windows. ipconfig /all draws the map, hop 1 of tracert -d 1.1.1.1 checks the router, ping 1.1.1.1 checks the road out, and ping google.com checks the phone book. When the number answers and the name does not, the fix is one DNS setting. When a tracert hop jumps and stays high, that hop owns the delay. The whole check takes about four minutes.
This page is the text version of the video. Every command below was run on a real Windows 11 laptop on 7 September 2026, and every line of output is shown exactly as it printed. The only edits: hardware addresses and the machine name are masked, and the trace runs with -d so no hostnames print. The surprising results stayed in, because they are the ones that send people the wrong way: the router that ignores ping, and the hop that printed stars while every hop after it answered.
Commands used in this video
In on-screen order. All of them run in Command Prompt, with nothing to install.
ipconfig /allping 192.168.0.1Replace 192.168.0.1 with the Default Gateway that ipconfig printed on your machine.
tracert -d 1.1.1.1ping 1.1.1.1ping google.comnslookup google.comipconfig /flushdnsnslookup google.com 1.1.1.1The map: four links, closest first
Your laptop talks over Wi-Fi to your router. The router is the only door out of the house. Past that door is your provider, and past them, the internet. On top of all of it sits DNS: before your laptop can reach google.com it has to look the name up and get a number. Every slow page lives on one of those links, so you test them in order and stop at the first one that needs a look. That beats unplugging things in a random order.
What it actually printed
Colour key, the same as the video: green is the healthy line, amber is the line to read closely.
Read four lines on the adapter you are using, here the Wi-Fi card. IPv4 Address is your laptop at home, Default Gateway is the router, DHCP Server is the same router because it handed out the address, and DNS Servers is the phone book. Those four lines are the whole map. The other adapters in the output are trimmed here.
> ipconfig /all Wireless LAN adapter Wi-Fi: Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6E AX211 160MHz Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : XX-XX-XX-XX-XX-XX DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.43(Preferred) Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0 Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1 DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1 DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4
Read the loss figure, then set it aside: this laptop was fully online while its router ignored every ping.
> ping 192.168.0.1 Pinging 192.168.0.1 with 32 bytes of data: Request timed out. Request timed out. Request timed out. Request timed out. Ping statistics for 192.168.0.1: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),
Read hop 1: the same router that ignored ping answers here in 1 ms, three out of three. Link one is healthy.
> tracert -d 1.1.1.1 Tracing route to 1.1.1.1 over a maximum of 30 hops 1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.0.1 ^ the router: the test that counts
Read the replies and the loss. Use a number, not a name, so you test one thing at a time. Replies at about 22 ms with 0% loss mean your packets left the house, crossed the provider, reached the internet and came back.
> ping 1.1.1.1 Pinging 1.1.1.1 with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 1.1.1.1: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=57 Reply from 1.1.1.1: bytes=32 time=23ms TTL=57 Reply from 1.1.1.1: bytes=32 time=23ms TTL=57 Reply from 1.1.1.1: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=57 Ping statistics for 1.1.1.1: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 22ms, Maximum = 23ms, Average = 22ms
Read the first line: the name turns into a number in square brackets. That step is DNS doing its job.
> ping google.com Pinging google.com [64.233.181.101] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 64.233.181.101: bytes=32 time=33ms TTL=109 Reply from 64.233.181.101: bytes=32 time=34ms TTL=109 Reply from 64.233.181.101: bytes=32 time=34ms TTL=109 Reply from 64.233.181.101: bytes=32 time=33ms TTL=109 Ping statistics for 64.233.181.101: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 33ms, Maximum = 34ms, Average = 33ms
Read which server answered and what the name became. This is the phone book on its own, with nothing else in the way.
> nslookup google.com Non-authoritative answer: Server: dns.google Address: 8.8.8.8 Name: google.com Addresses: 2607:f8b0:4001:c09::65 2607:f8b0:4001:c09::8b 2607:f8b0:4001:c09::71 2607:f8b0:4001:c09::66 64.233.181.102 64.233.181.113 64.233.181.138 64.233.181.100 64.233.181.139 64.233.181.101
Read the two DNS moves: forget the copy your laptop remembers, then ask a different phone book directly. If 1.1.1.1 answers and yours did not, you have found the link.
> ipconfig /flushdns Windows IP Configuration Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache. > nslookup google.com 1.1.1.1 Non-authoritative answer: Server: one.one.one.one Address: 1.1.1.1 Name: google.com Addresses: 2607:f8b0:4001:c16::8b 2607:f8b0:4001:c16::71 2607:f8b0:4001:c16::64 2607:f8b0:4001:c16::8a 142.251.46.142
Read it as a ladder: hop 1 inside the house, hops 2 and 3 your provider, then broadly flat all the way to 1.1.1.1.
> tracert -d 1.1.1.1 Tracing route to 1.1.1.1 over a maximum of 30 hops 1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.0.1 2 16 ms 15 ms 16 ms 216.160.151.254 3 19 ms 19 ms 19 ms 71.36.254.1 4 * * 21 ms 4.68.38.145 5 20 ms 21 ms 21 ms 4.69.219.74 6 22 ms 22 ms 22 ms 4.71.42.142 7 25 ms 23 ms 22 ms 172.68.32.12 8 22 ms 22 ms 22 ms 1.1.1.1 Trace complete.
Three results that look like problems and are not
Pinging my router returns 100% packet loss. Is my router the problem?
Usually not. The router in the video returned 100% loss to ping while the laptop was fully online, and the same router answered hop 1 of the trace in 1 ms, three out of three. Many home routers ignore a direct ping on purpose and forward everything else normally. This exact screen sends people to unplug the router, call the provider, or buy a new one. Hop 1 of tracert -d 1.1.1.1 is the test that counts.
Hop 4 of my tracert shows stars. Is that where my internet slows down?
Not when the hops after it answer. Hop 4 printed two stars and every hop from 5 to 8 replied right after it at normal speed. That router forwards your traffic and simply declines to talk about itself. What you are hunting for is a hop where the time jumps and stays high for every hop after it. The full method for reading a trace is in Episode 4: How to read a tracert.
ping 1.1.1.1 works but websites will not load. What is it?
DNS. If a number answers and a name does not, your connection is fine and the phone book is the link to fix. Run nslookup google.com 1.1.1.1. If that answers, the fix is one setting on the laptop, below.
The one-setting DNS fix
If the other phone book answered and yours did not, point Windows at it. In Windows 11, open Settings > Network & internet > Wi-Fi > Hardware properties. Next to DNS server assignment choose Edit, switch to Manual, turn on IPv4, and enter 1.1.1.1 as preferred and 8.8.8.8 as alternate. Save, then run ping google.com again. On a wired connection the same setting lives under Ethernet. Which server to pick, and why, is in Which DNS server should I use?. You can also test any name against several resolvers at once with the free DNS lookup tool.
Reading the trace: whose link is it?
Hop 1 is always your router, here 1 ms. Hops 2 and 3 are your provider, a small honest step up to 16 and 19 ms. After that the times stay broadly flat to the end at 22 ms. That is a healthy path. A path that needs a look has one hop where the number jumps, say from 20 to 140, and every hop after it inherits the jump. If that hop comes before your provider's first hop, it is inside your house: the router or the Wi-Fi. If it is at hop 2 or later, it is your provider or beyond, and now you can tell them which hop, which turns a long support call into a short one. For gaming lag specifically, How to fix high ping and lag picks up from here.
The checklist
ipconfig /all: read IPv4 Address, Default Gateway, DHCP Server and DNS Servers.- Ping the gateway. 100% loss while you are online is normal. Hop 1 of
tracert -d 1.1.1.1is the real router test. ping 1.1.1.1. Replies mean the road out of the house is open.ping google.com. Number works and name fails: DNS.nslookup google.com, thenipconfig /flushdnsandnslookup google.com 1.1.1.1. The fix is one setting.tracert -d 1.1.1.1. The first hop that jumps and stays up owns the delay.
Watch the video
Chapters
- Why is my internet so bad?
- Open Command Prompt
- The map: laptop, router, provider, internet
- ipconfig /all explained: the four lines to read
- Ping the router, and why 100% loss is normal
- tracert hop 1: the router is fine
- Leaving the house: ping 1.1.1.1 and ping google.com
- nslookup and the two DNS moves
- The whole trace, read as a ladder
- Four minutes for one machine, and for six hundred
Stop guessing. Is it the network or your machine?
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