Are you aware you can not trust the results of PingPlotter when running inSSIDer?
Correct! inSSIDer hits the Wi-Fi adapter pretty hard as it does continuous Wi-Fi scanning, which negatively impacts the performance of the Wi-Fi adapter. Basically, we ask Windows for all of the Beacons and Probe Responses that it hears, the adapter scans all of the channels, and Windows returns the results to us for analysis. It all happens in under 4 seconds, but we do it over and over to keep things as up-to-date as possible.
We recommend using inSSIDer for checking your configuration, making sure you’re on a good channel, or checking your signal strength, but NOT for performance testing. As soon as you want to test performance (or even just use Wi-Fi), we recommend exiting inSSIDer.
Oh, fun fact! PingPlotter is local to us! We’re both based in Boise, Idaho. Pretty cool.
Sorry to bother you, but in case you are interested:
The ping spikes have to do with automatic actions by an older NIC/driver.
Googling with “every 10 min” I found “WLAN Optimizer”, with all 3 tweaks
the problem is gone.