What causes packet loss?

Packet loss can be caused by various factors. The main typical causes on a home users internet connection are:

• Poor wireless signal and/or interference: Wi-Fi networks are susceptible to several factors such as walls, floors, electromagnetic interference by other electric devices. Even other Wi-Fi networks can interfere with your own Wi-Fi network. Switching to a wired network would be a good test to see if packet loss only occurs on the wireless network.
• Network congestion: Network congestion occurs when a network reaches its capacity. This causes a delay in packets being transmitted which is experienced as increased latency, with the packets eventually being dropped. Resulting in packet loss on the users’ connection.
• Faulty hardware and/or software: A faulty router, network card, cable or wireless adapter can cause packet loss. Corrupt software or firmware on a device can also cause a lot of problems.
• Denial of service attack: Also known as a DoS attack, a Denial-of-Service attack is designed to flood the server with incoming data. Causing an overload of data for the network hardware to process. A DoS attack is very uncommon for a user to experience directly and mostly happens to servers or data centres.