Latency issues

[Samezuka]

Here as well! For a couple of weeks shortly after 2.55 came out.

Jenova
AT&T Uverse
Miami, FL

[Shalice_Icefrost]

Exact Same issues

Hyperion Server

[Raist]

Need to look at your actual routes. If your ISP isn't analyzing your actual path to the game server, they may never see any problems because they are looking in the wrong place. The problems more frequently occur after they hand us off to one of their peering/transit partners and before getting to Ormuco. In such cases our ISP can help resolve things by either working with their routing partner to investigate further to fix problems or switch you to one of their other partners.

Time Warner has been doing just that for me since around last spring. On average I switch to a different peer roughly every 3 weeks or so trying to stay ahead of he congested segments. It will require dealing with at least Tier3 though...not the guys that typically answer the phone or check your cables and modem out. You need escalation to a higher layer of support.

[Spiroth]

Need to look at your actual routes. If your ISP isn't analyzing your actual path to the game server, they may never see any problems because they are looking in the wrong place. The problems more frequently occur after they hand us off to one of their peering/transit partners and before getting to Ormuco. In such cases our ISP can help resolve things by either working with their routing partner to investigate further to fix problems or switch you to one of their other partners.

Time Warner has been doing just that for me since around last spring. On average I switch to a different peer roughly every 3 weeks or so trying to stay ahead of he congested segments. It will require dealing with at least Tier3 though...not the guys that typically answer the phone or check your cables and modem out. You need escalation to a higher layer of support.

Well, all this sound alien to me. I want the services I pay for to work without me putting the work extensively.
The problem started immediately after last Maintenance. I was online exactly before the maintenance and as soon as it ended. The problem started immediately.
It's on Square's end.

[Raist]

Well, all this sound alien to me. I want the services I pay for to work without me putting the work extensively.
The problem started immediately after last Maintenance. I was online exactly before the maintenance and as soon as it ended. The problem started immediately.
It's on Square's end.

There are 5 ISP's that feed all the data to Ormuco, SE's ISP. Not one of those ISP's has more than 4 routes specifically into Montreal...some only have 2 or 3. There are north of 40,000 ISP's in the world.

Basically, we are all getting crammed into some narrow pipes along the way, and they can get congested at anytime for a long list of reasons. As we become more and more dependent on the internet for so many things, it just gets worse and worse. Note that it's not just the game traffic you are contending with--financial and other business related traffic, facebook and twitter, our phones, our TV... everything is digital now and takes a slice of the bandwidth throughout all markets you travel through on the way to Ormuco in Montreal. Not uncommon for a household with streamers/gamers to consume a DVD's worth of data (4.38Gigabytes) per day, and most of that gets packed into a short window during primetime. Bottlenecks and failures occur sometimes with no warning whatsoever, and they are becoming more and more frequent as people use it more and more.

Edit:
For a bit of a visual, here is a trace to the IP I have been using for Midgard lately:

C:\Windows\System32>tracert 199.91.189.31

Tracing route to 199.91.189.31 over a maximum of 30 hops

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  LPTSRV [10.10.100.1]
  2    17 ms    17 ms    21 ms  cpe-75-176-160-1.sc.res.rr.com [75.176.160.1]
  3    31 ms    32 ms    31 ms  cpe-024-031-198-009.sc.res.rr.com [24.31.198.9]
  4    20 ms    19 ms    20 ms  24.31.196.212
  5   125 ms   125 ms   115 ms  be33.chrcnctr01r.southeast.rr.com [24.93.64.182]
  6    30 ms    29 ms    30 ms  bu-ether24.atlngamq46w-bcr00.tbone.rr.com [107.14.19.18]
  7    24 ms    26 ms    25 ms  0.ae2.pr0.atl20.tbone.rr.com [107.14.19.11]
  8    25 ms    26 ms    27 ms  te0-0-0-10.ccr21.atl02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.12.109]
  9    28 ms    28 ms    29 ms  be2050.ccr41.atl01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.0.165]
 10    35 ms    34 ms    38 ms  be2168.ccr21.dca01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.31.94]
 11    42 ms    39 ms    41 ms  be2148.ccr41.jfk02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.31.118]
 12    44 ms    45 ms    45 ms  be2106.ccr21.alb02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.3.50]
 13   185 ms   193 ms   207 ms  be2088.ccr21.ymq02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.43.17]
 14    63 ms    63 ms    65 ms  38.122.42.34
 15    47 ms    47 ms    49 ms  192.34.76.10
 16    50 ms    51 ms    50 ms  199.91.189.242
 17    47 ms    48 ms    50 ms  199.91.189.31

Trace complete.

Notice the big latency spike at hop 5 as I am coming through the Charlotte, NC area. Notice that it happens again just as I am coming into Montreal at hop 13. Latency spikes stack. Any hiccups along this route can be tied into something going on in Charlotte, and have virtually nothing to do with the servers in Montreal--I have to go through Charlotte on my way to Montreal on this path. Note I just got flipped to Cogent...I was on TATA when I looked at it just a few nights ago. SE didn't change this... my ISP did.

When you call your ISP and they look at your "connection", what they are most likely looking at is your connection to the first or maybe second hop past your local network. They aren't looking at the thousands and thousands of potential routes you may take at any given moment to get to any one of millions of IP addresses worldwide that are hosted on other people's networks. In this case, they would be looking at hop #2 in my trace. They MIGHT look further down the line to the 3rd or 4th hop because they are still in the South Carolina area---but they won't be looking much deeper than that. In this scenario, the problem appears to show up in NORTH Carolina...so that helpdesk employee is not going to see the problem. They are often not authorized/empowered to look much deeper than your localized connectivity issues. This is something that Tier3 support CAN and SHOULD look at...as it is part of their job. Tier3 has the knowledge, access, and tools to conduct a much more thorough investigation into your specific route that is having issues.

[KANNIS]

I'm not having issues with other MMO's (GW2, and Wildstar), only with FF14 (the one I really want to play).

Thanks

[Raist]

I'm not having issues with other MMO's (GW2, and Wildstar), only with FF14 (the one I really want to play).

Thanks

If I remember correctly... they aren't hosted on Ormuco lines in Montreal, or JP-NIC in Tokyo.

You can't simply expect one service in a different region to behave the same as one in another region. Heck...even just running across town you can run into issues that don't crop up against a server in another country. The internet is a complex web of inter-connected networks. Look at that trace I provided. 8 distinctly separate top-level subnets (network groups) along my path to Midgard. 17 total interconnections along the way--and every single one of them is a potential point of failure along the way.

Oh, and BTW.. you Comcast subscribers may simply be dealing with more issues upstream within the Comcast network again. Think it was certain spots in Missouri last week that had gone completely down and it was flat out knocking out connectivity to certain regions for LOTS of users. Here's a map showing problems reported from downdetector.com:

https://downdetector.com/status/comcast-xfinity


That image is an archived "thumbnail" picture that may get updated periodically as time goes by. The URL above it has more frequently updated data, comments, maps, links to support, etc. The most recent map at the site is actually showing a lot of red splotches where that archived one is still only showing yellow.

You can find more companies tracked at their companies page for people not using Comcast.

[Spiroth]

There are 5 ISP's that feed all the data to Ormuco, SE's ISP. Not one of those ISP's has more than 4 routes specifically into Montreal...some only have 2 or 3. There are north of 40,000 ISP's in the world.

Basically, we are all getting crammed into some narrow pipes along the way, and they can get congested at anytime for a long list of reasons. As we become more and more dependent on the internet for so many things, it just gets worse and worse. Note that it's not just the game traffic you are contending with--financial and other business related traffic, facebook and twitter, our phones, our TV... everything is digital now and takes a slice of the bandwidth throughout all markets you travel through on the way to Ormuco in Montreal. Not uncommon for a household with streamers/gamers to consume a DVD's worth of data (4.38Gigabytes) per day, and most of that gets packed into a short window during primetime. Bottlenecks and failures occur sometimes with no warning whatsoever, and they are becoming more and more frequent as people use it more and more.

Edit:
For a bit of a visual, here is a trace to the IP I have been using for Midgard lately:

C:\Windows\System32>tracert 199.91.189.31

Tracing route to 199.91.189.31 over a maximum of 30 hops

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  LPTSRV [10.10.100.1]
  2    17 ms    17 ms    21 ms  cpe-75-176-160-1.sc.res.rr.com [75.176.160.1]
  3    31 ms    32 ms    31 ms  cpe-024-031-198-009.sc.res.rr.com [24.31.198.9]
  4    20 ms    19 ms    20 ms  24.31.196.212
  5   125 ms   125 ms   115 ms  be33.chrcnctr01r.southeast.rr.com [24.93.64.182]
  6    30 ms    29 ms    30 ms  bu-ether24.atlngamq46w-bcr00.tbone.rr.com [107.14.19.18]
  7    24 ms    26 ms    25 ms  0.ae2.pr0.atl20.tbone.rr.com [107.14.19.11]
  8    25 ms    26 ms    27 ms  te0-0-0-10.ccr21.atl02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.12.109]
  9    28 ms    28 ms    29 ms  be2050.ccr41.atl01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.0.165]
 10    35 ms    34 ms    38 ms  be2168.ccr21.dca01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.31.94]
 11    42 ms    39 ms    41 ms  be2148.ccr41.jfk02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.31.118]
 12    44 ms    45 ms    45 ms  be2106.ccr21.alb02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.3.50]
 13   185 ms   193 ms   207 ms  be2088.ccr21.ymq02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.43.17]
 14    63 ms    63 ms    65 ms  38.122.42.34
 15    47 ms    47 ms    49 ms  192.34.76.10
 16    50 ms    51 ms    50 ms  199.91.189.242
 17    47 ms    48 ms    50 ms  199.91.189.31

Trace complete.

Notice the big latency spike at hop 5 as I am coming through the Charlotte, NC area. Notice that it happens again just as I am coming into Montreal at hop 13. Latency spikes stack. Any hiccups along this route can be tied into something going on in Charlotte, and have virtually nothing to do with the servers in Montreal--I have to go through Charlotte on my way to Montreal on this path. Note I just got flipped to Cogent...I was on TATA when I looked at it just a few nights ago. SE didn't change this... my ISP did.

When you call your ISP and they look at your "connection", what they are most likely looking at is your connection to the first or maybe second hop past your local network. They aren't looking at the thousands and thousands of potential routes you may take at any given moment to get to any one of millions of IP addresses worldwide that are hosted on other people's networks. In this case, they would be looking at hop #2 in my trace. They MIGHT look further down the line to the 3rd or 4th hop because they are still in the South Carolina area---but they won't be looking much deeper than that. In this scenario, the problem appears to show up in NORTH Carolina...so that helpdesk employee is not going to see the problem. They are often not authorized/empowered to look much deeper than your localized connectivity issues. This is something that Tier3 support CAN and SHOULD look at...as it is part of their job. Tier3 has the knowledge, access, and tools to conduct a much more thorough investigation into your specific route that is having issues.

I'm sorry, and I'm sure you know your stuff, but you don't understand 2 simple things:


1) I have no idea what you are talking about, I am not knowledgeable in the technical stuff, and I don't want to be either.
2) This is very important. I was online playing FFXIV non stop for almost a week before Wedneday, outside of sleeping (off work due to broken leg). I had zero problems. Have also been playing FFXIV since August 2013 with zero problems. On Wednesday, I am online playing FFXIV, and maintenance happens as I was online. I log in immediately as the servers are back up, and I have this problem immediately from that time since now. It is Square-Enix's fault.

[RubenSnizzle]

Same here, been having some annoying lag ever since the last maintenance around april 12-15, maybe before..or what ever.

Ever since this, i am having hiccup of 2-3second, every now and then, and it is really..but really annoying.

I did connection test and everything is fine on my end, i can easily watch HD videos, stream on PS4 and have my mom on the tablet with NO lag. But once i get on FF14, here we go..

Siren Server - PS4 - Wired.
Videotron
Canada

[Spiroth]

Same here, been having some annoying lag ever since the last maintenance around april 12-15, maybe before..or what ever.

Ever since this, i am having hiccup of 2-3second, every now and then, and it is really..but really annoying.

I did connection test and everything is fine on my end, i can easily watch HD videos, stream on PS4 and have my mom on the tablet with NO lag. But once i get on FF14, here we go..

Siren Server - PS4 - Wired.
Videotron
Canada

Yup, me too. PS4, Wired, Malboro.