Unplayable lag spikes and PoE client throttling local network path to router.

To preface this, it should be noted that I've been playing and streaming PoE for years and haven't had very many lag issues at all. I often play and Stream PoE in 1080p while having chrome open and many other programs like PoB, my avatar manager, OBS, some streaming plugins, whatever. Sometimes even running youtube videos when commenting about things, all while playing the game on the same system on the same internet set up at the same time. This is my normal PoE experience, and there is generally little to no lag at all.

A few days ago after a recent update, I started running into some crazy lag issues that kept dropping me from the game and a lot of constant disconnects. The constant lag spikes were north of 30,000 up from the normal 33ms. Occasionally I'd be able to log in for a bit but eventually things would go south again.

While trying to figure out what's going on and how I can fix this, I ran into a very strange thing I've never experienced before. When I launch the client, even if I haven't logged in, my internet speed goes from the standard 200-300 Mbps to as low as 6mbps (and lately even lower to .5).

I tested this by running ookla and the google search default speed test just to give me a basic understanding of what's happening. Running without the client is my normal internet speed, when I launch the client it tanks to almost nothing. Logging into the game (if I can) doesn't make it any better. When I close the client my speed instantly jumps back to normal.

To be fair I ran the test with Diablo 3 which is also an online required launcher/live service game. Launching that had little to almost no effect on my internet speed, and even logging in and playing only hard a negligible effect (a couple of Mbps loss at most). I've also done this with a few other games and again the only one that's creating this massive/any issue is PoE.

Furthering that thought, I ran speed tests on other PC's in my house on the same network and when I launched PoE on this machine. No other network traffic was effected at all. So, there is something in the launcher/s update that is totally stepping on my networks connection to my router that has never been an issue before (my conclusion thus far).

I posted about this in other peoples tech threads (other people are having these same issues) but I figured it best to make my own thread. Sorry for those whom I previously hijacked.

These are the things I did while trying to trouble shoot the issue.

Switching the DX/Vulcan settings (I thought maybe all of the constant shadder downloads were causing a problem).

Switching To Predictive from Lock step.

Uninstalling my Steam Client.

Installing the Stand Alone PoE client.

Re installing the stand alone PoE client.

I've tried switching to every gateway.

I created a second account, wondering if it was some kind of account flag.

Ran speed tests mentioned above.

Power cycled all connected network devices.

Went through all the steps on the sticky posted trouble shooting and advanced trouble shooting guides on the PoE forums.

None of these things fixed anything at all.

I am at a total loss. One of the interesting things is that sometimes I can get on for maybe 20 minutes or whatever, before the lag spikes get crazy. However, even the moments when the game is not lag spiking very much, it's making it almost impossible for any other program to use any network capabilities from my machine out side of the tiniest bit, as indicated in the speed tests I mentioned. I can't run youtube videos, (certainly can't stream anything) I can't even google things without major timeouts. It pretty much bricks everything.

I know speed tests are not an indicator of lag issues, but you can see how the discrepancy is clearly indicating that there is some sort of major issue every time I launch PoE, versus anything else.

I'm sorry that this post is very long, but I wanted to be as thorough as possible in describing what's going on.

System specs (if it maters):
AMD Ryzen 5 3600X 6-Core Processor
32 GB DDR4 3200
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Super
Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 3168
1TB SSD

I've also now update latest windows updates and network drivers (directly from intel). The problem still persists.

More looking into this problem shows that there was a similar issue with Diablo 4 during the beta, where the game basically killed the functionality (or throttled it to almost nothing) of the network card, to the point that if it ran it was super limited and would eventually lag out and disconnect, also nuking the ability for anything else to access the network while the game was running.

I'm having the same issue with PoE and it's the launcher itself. I don't even have to be logged in for it to crash my network card. If I do manage to log in it's only until the game hits 30,000-40,000ms of lag and then drops me.

Good news: I finally made it in to the game. Bad news:
https://imgur.com/a/soiSmoS

And then I got kicked.

Good news: I finally made it in to the game. Bad news:


And then I got kicked.

Edited:
OK how do I post images here because doing it the logical way, which is to post a link to an image using the img tags doesn't work.

I actually managed to log in a play and everything was totally fine all night last night. Like some patch or hotfix had been slipped in or something. Today. Everything is right back to totally screwed, can't even log in again.

same problem , still wasnt solved nor answered by ggg