[MAJOR] Roblox made practically unusable due to extreme bandwidth usage

Bug Reports Engine Bugs
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#1

since around june of last year, roblox has been absolutely chewing through my bandwidth and is causing unimaginably high ping. only ever when playing roblox, which happens in every game (sometimes averaging >10k or maybe even >50k)

heres an image of what my ping was on christmas, which even persisted until around mid-january with pings consistently getting above 20k and often passing 100k, even in one of my own places which only has around 20 parts

image

before june i would only ever max out at around 1-2k ping while the game was loading, and then it would stay between 50-200 depending on server location, and thats with the router im currently using, which ive had since around 2022

for anyone wondering, this is what my wifi speed usually sits at, which is pretty normal considering my routers position and should have zero problem with running roblox

image

i dont have this issue with any other online application like chrome, discord, steam or medal, even with them all open at the same time which uses the same if not more of my network that roblox does when its the only window open, and that has absolutely zero connection issues, so its not a problem with my router

ive even tried a bunch of different ways to fix it to no avail, such as opening ports that roblox uses, running roblox as administrator, granting firewall permissions, even redownloading roblox multiple times. all stuff that doesnt require resetting my entire pc since i dont have an extra usb or hard drive to back up files with yet.

only way to reconnect my router is to alt+f4 roblox. leaving a game can also cause this issue depending on its size/part count or how intensive scripts are on the client from what i can tell

task managers performance tab also has no help since it all seems pretty normal, and i dont think router/home location matter since several people have the same problem, even after moving to houses with better internet quality

system info if that matters:

  • Windows 10
  • NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060
  • AMD Ryzen 5 2600 six-core processor

I also dont have this problem at all on mobile, even if im sat at my pc which has the problem. even went to roblox support several times to no avail since thats all just automated messages that to my knowledge are never actually having reports read by a real person

i dont even know how to reproduce it, id presume you just play roblox during high activity hours without any ethernet plugged in but thats just a guess

Expected behavior

whats expected to happen:

ping should have a slight jump to somewhere around 1k ping while loading, then go back down to a normal 40-200 (depending on server location) within a minute and have no issues with connection

what actually happens:

ping stays consistently above 3k, often surpassing 10k-50k ping while loading, and often stays above 2-5k for up to 15-45 minutes after loading. once ping goes down, it refuses to drop below 500 for more than 30 seconds at a time, often causing disconnects within 5 minutes of joining or before i even get off the loading screen, also causing my pc to refuse registering every single router around my house including my own for up to 5 minutes, also attempting to disconnect other devices.

A private message is associated with this bug report

10 Likes
#2

actually heres an instance of it happening

roblox closed:

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roblox open (for 2 minutes, didnt go below 1k ping):

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1 Like
#3

nah yea i genuinely just cant play roblox at all. been struggling to even open it without it disconnecting my pc for like half a week now. just tried getting into a game and it wouldnt go below 1.7k ping

genuinely so god damn frustrating cause i cant do anything without my internet being turned off

1 Like
#4

From what I’m seeing, this issue has nothing to do with Roblox itself and more with your computer. In that case there’s not much a Roblox engineer can to do help you with this.

The best advice I can give you is to reinstall Windows. I know you have stated that you don’t have an extra storage unit, but I strongly recommend you go out and purchase a USB flash drive, it’s like $10 in most places, and will most likely fix any underlying issues that are causing this problem.

1 Like
#5

I’m not seeing any evidence of extreme bandwidth usage. Also, reinstalling windows is more of a nuclear option as it doesn’t tackle the core issue.

What I am seeing is that your wireless solution seems to go kaput when you use Roblox. Different programs interact with your PC (and its hardware/drivers) in different ways, and Roblox may be the coincidental outlier here. If it wasn’t gonna happen for Roblox, it probably would have happened with something else.

I’m assuming as you have said this is a PC, you have a wireless USB dongle for your internet.

I would look into USB-related, and then driver-related, issues, as the physical proximity to the router has not affected your ability to do anything else on the internet.

Here’s a list that might help. Do 1 step at a time, and test if it fixed your issue before moving on to the next step. The order of steps (Starting from the top) are specific as to the amount of change required to your system.

  • Do not plug the WiFi dongle into the PC’s front USB ports.
  • Some motherboards have multiple USB controllers. Read your motherboard’s manual to understand the controller layout and its assigned ports. If you only have 1 controller, skip this step. If you have more than 1, assign 1 purely to the WiFi dongle as to prevent interference.
  • Update your WiFi dongle’s driver.
  • Update your motherboard’s USB driver.
1 Like
#6

this guy as well as ppl in the replies were having the exact same issue so i have every doubt its my router or internet connection and seeming to be more of a roblox issue, and the last post by the guy who made it said it started to stop slowly which is precisely whats going on with me. there shouldnt be that close of a pattern if its to do with my pc (i also dont know if a have a wireless usb dongle in my pc)

im also planning to get a usb soon-ish so i can upgrade to windows 11 without losing any files that im wanting to preserve and so i dont have to pay the £200 a year in full to keep using windows 10. im also looking at buying an ethernet cable so ill see if that changes anything once i get it

1 Like
#7

no yea i was tryna help a friend being raided in war tycoon and my ping just wouldnt drop below 1k

perfectly fine the exact moment i alt+f4’d so its 100% a roblox issue

1 Like
#8

Over 400k ping? That’s actually scary, the most I’ve ever had was like 34k something ping and that was in a game which has absolutely shit optimization

1 Like
#9

highest ping ive seen from someone else is over 600k

this issues existed for nearly 2 years now so i have absolutely zero clue how it hasnt been fixed. issue also happens when in studio and in a discord vc. disconnected my internet like 3 times within 30 minutes just there and took 2+ to turn back on each time

its genuinely so god damn annoying cause i just cant do anything with roblox. its gotten rlly bad over the last couple of days cause i cant sit in game for over 5 minutes without it straight up turning off my router

1 Like
#10

Can confirm. Roblox has been lagging a lot more compared to before by no apparent reason.

1 Like
#11

I had this happen to me once, I contacted my ISP and had my router replaced with a new one which fixed the issue, I pretty much couldn’t play for a week though which was annoying.

1 Like
#12

I am also currently facing this issue as well, here are the details of what is going on:

  • Roblox games unable to load (being stuck on joining the server with the game icon not visible)
  • When any given game is failing to load it will use all the internet on my device in order to do so, disabling me from doing anything else (even opening youtube on another tab)
  • Roblox Studio has become extremely slow and requires multiple attempts to access a place
  • When attempting to access a place the constant requirements are to log in either through studio or browser
  • When trying to load particular things in studio for example the animation library when uploading/updating/importing an animation it becomes extremely slow even though I have exceptional wifi
  • The current specs of my router are far better than my last one, however this issue only began once I changed my router and swithed to a different service provider.

I have tried the recommended solutions from RobloxDevforum in order to figure out how to resolve this issue, but the problem remains unfazed.

From uninstalling to reinstalling Roblox, Flushing DNS, deleting versions of Roblox in %appdata% folder, forgetting my current network then reconnecting to it, restarting the pc and trying different accounts. The solutions above are only a handful of the methods I have tried excluding general methods.

The current solution thats of interest is to replace my current router with a new one which has seemed to work for someone else, However, i’m unaware of the troubles he was having as our problems may differ and my brother still seems to run Roblox fine on his laptop, but I will still give this an attempt as I plan to dev for a long time.

1 Like
#16

from what i remember someone having their router replaced 3 times didnt fix the issue for them so it might happen again

quick thing, it ties in with player count too, the more ppl the worse the ping (15 ppl is having me reach 27k easily)

its back but worse

I WAS AT A STABLE 92K PING

if i even open roblox it has a 70% chance of sending my ping to >5k when im not even in a game

like seriously i OPENED ROBLOX and my ping went from 40 to >5000 IN 1 SECOND

– another quick thing –

its not getting any better but this time it surprisingly didnt turn off my wifi
image

i think its also partly to do with discord vc’s cause it was just fine maxing at around 2k, and then as soon as i got into a vc it done that. its just beyond unplayable at this point and its been like this since june of last year for me at least. seriously please just fix this as soon as possible caues i wanna be able to do stuff :sob::pray:

issues also present on xbox but far less severe, maxing 5k ping, averaging around 1k, lowest it goes is 350. its also weirdly not as severe when opening from the web version? which is quite unexpected since that should be taking up more ping since its using more wifi

2 Likes
#17

i also have just another quick thing

it might have something to do with server intensive scripts or meshes being loaded that heavily lags servers.

some games are perfectly fine while others do whats in the above image, and all those games have some pretty intensive scripts. so im not sure if roblox just handles scripts/meshes poorly or if people just optimise their games poorly and have it cause this

the problem is just getting worse too. most i can do is play in a private server for 2 minutes without it sending my ping beyond 1.5k and ultimately disconnecting me and refusing to register the 4 routers within my pcs range until i alt+f4 roblox. closing it normally doesnt work

1.5k is all i can rlly get it to show. its probably far higher and its just not updating cause roblox physically cant handle its own bandwidth usage

it also just gets near to fully halting both roblox and studio from installing updates. been waiting 5 mins for roblox studio to open and its only just went to configuring

#18

ive barely been able to play for the past 9 months tbh

really hope roblox fixes this soon cause all i can do with it is play smaller games on minimun graphics quality otherwise it sends my ping >2k and attempts to disconnect every device in my house, which it has a better chance in succeeding the closer the device is to my pc

my ping reading in the performance stats shouldnt be all red with an average ping above 100 on a server hosted in my home country
image

this is the lowest its getting to when my ping should be between 40-100 ms

#19

Right okay. Just gave that thread a quick read.

Knowing that other people are having the same issue tells me there’s a good chance it’s not your PC.

Some patterns I’m picking up are that it’s specific to how Roblox/Windows handles internet traffic and possibly the method of internet connection your household has.

I noticed the OP of the thread you posted had DSL internet. Going by your internet speeds bitrate I would assume that your internet is DSL-based too.

For whatever reason the way that Roblox/Windows is sending/receiving data seems to be collapsing the stability of your internet connection; you’ve also reported the Xbox version doing this too but to a lesser extent, which I would assume would behave similarly since the Xbox is also made by Microsoft so it would probably be using similar methods for sending/receiving data.

Since you’ve reported initially that running Roblox on mobile causes no issue to your internet connection and the only 2 valid mobile platforms are either iOS by Apple or Android (Linux-based), I can only infer that Microsoft’s netcode that it uses for both Xbox and PC is faulty and hasn’t been tested for use via DSL connections, leading to erratic behaviour such as this.

This theory can be tested by trying to run Roblox/Windows via another computer connected to the same network, or by running Roblox on more alternative platforms not provided by Microsoft.

1 Like
#20

yea my isp uses ADSL which is similar, and i think roblox when loading uses a bunch of it to load a game, which causes lag, which in turn causes roblox to use more data to try harder with loading a game while your lagging, which causes more lag and puts roblox into a kinda death spiral with ur internet and ultimately turns it off

i do think this is more prominent in games with streaming enabled too since that constantly loads and unloads data

also now roblox is practically unusable when having any other window, and even then it still lags like hell when its the only open window

#21

Are you able to confirm my theory so that you are able to gain a better understanding of what the solution may be?

#22

im really not sure tbh

i looked up what my internet provider (BT) uses and id presume it is since where i live doesnt have full fibre yet

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#23

No. In regards to type of device using roblox and it not being a microsoft-based platform due to potential clashing with netcode and your internet connection, I think it’s very likely you already have that type of internet, so that’s why I was asking in regards to using other platforms or devices to validate and further troubleshoot what the origin of the issue is.