Regarding high latency from Los Angeles/surrounding area

What is the symptom?
Players from southern California, Arizona, Nevada, and possibly other nearby states experience constant bursts of delayed network activity.

Why is this happening?
One or more routers owned by Tata Communications seem to be either shaping traffic or unable to handle their load. This is evident by the fact that the delays become longer and more common during peak hours.
Others in the area who aren't being routed through Tata Communications are not experiencing this problem.

How do I know if my issue is the same?
Do a tracert to your server (mine is 199.91.89.28). If you get routed through 66.198.*.* and see a high response time at that hop, you probably have the same issue.

Quote:

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E:\Users\Admin>tracert 199.91.189.28

Tracing route to 199.91.189.28 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 28 ms 30 ms 20 ms cpe-76-94-192-1.socal.res.rr.com [76.94.192.1]
2 10 ms 9 ms 12 ms tge0-7-0-9.lsaicaev02h.socal.rr.com [76.166.24.77]
3 16 ms 27 ms 12 ms agg11.lsaicaev02r.socal.rr.com [72.129.18.194]
4 12 ms 14 ms 15 ms agg26.tustcaft01r.socal.rr.com [72.129.17.2]
5 29 ms 14 ms 15 ms ae-6-0.cr0.lax30.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.214]
6 14 ms 12 ms 12 ms 107.14.19.67
7 26 ms 28 ms 42 ms ix-5-0-0-0.tcore2.LVW-LosAngeles.as6453.net [64.86.252.153]
8 148 ms 124 ms 124 ms if-22-2.tcore2.PDI-PaloAlto.as6453.net [66.198.144.73]
9 136 ms 140 ms 137 ms if-11-3.tcore2.CT8-Chicago.as6453.net [66.198.144.58]
10 136 ms 136 ms 141 ms if-3-2.tcore1.W6C-Montreal.as6453.net [66.198.96.45]
11 125 ms 125 ms 124 ms 66.198.96.50
12 136 ms 138 ms 139 ms 192.34.76.2
13 125 ms 124 ms 126 ms 199.91.189.234
14 125 ms 124 ms 139 ms 199.91.189.28

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What can we do to fix this?
We don't have many options. Tata Communications has no obligation to us, though they may have a contract with our ISPs. The best you can do is call your ISP and explain that you're experiencing slow response times from this router. You'll probably have to sit around for an hour restart your modem, etc. before they'll even listen to your problem.

Your ISP does have the ability to 'fix' this problem by giving you a different route to the servers, that doesn't go through Tata Communications, but they rarely do this unless there is a serious problem. At this point, I think the best we can do is try to generate enough support volume that they take a look at it.

Is there any work around to this problem?
Yes, you can use a VPN located on the east coast to avoid being routed through Tata Communications. There are a lot of options available. The downside to this is that you'll experience slightly higher latency, though not so high that it inhibits game play.

EDIT: This appears to be throttling by Tata Communications. If I route to the FFXIV servers through the Palo Alto router, I get 140 ms and dropped packets. If I route to anything other than the FFXIV servers through the same router, I get under 50 ms and no dropped packets. If anyone could confirm this, that would be great.

Oh hoy mate! I read about some others haad that problem too..
May I ask if you still have your hands on the IP's to the FF servers? :)

Friends and myself have the same issue. We are TWC users, but in the Orange County area of SoCal. I go through the same backbone route as you, and we also have bad bursts of lag. It's made it impossible to do most end game content right now.

I'll get them to call into TWC support after I do it, so I know what to tell them.

You should do a general google search for the router "if-22-2.tcore2.pdi-paloalto.as6453.net" and see all of the threads about bad hops, lol. We're screwed :)

I thought this was just me, holy crap. I was about to call them and ask them what was going on. :/

Will do that now then.

I'm having the same issue, TWC in Orange County. Turn 2 is pain because of it.

HOLY CRAP I LOVE YOU.

Not because this really fixes anything, but because I have been complaining about this issue constantly and I am always told "fix your comp" or "fix your graphics" etc.

It's nice to at least know where the issue is coming from...So if we switch to AT&T will that fix it, or do they route through Tata communications, too?

A lot of ISP's use TATA and Cogent unfortunately (two frequent offenders in the US), so switching to AT&T may not fix it.

The ISP's just need to get off their duff and lean on them to improve their QoS, or switch to a different routing partner.

In my case from Central California, starting a couple weeks ago S-E's NA datacenter's latency to the Tata Communications backbone doubled. Here is a tracert from just now:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.254
2 <1 ms 1 ms <1 ms 001.131-78-65.ftth.swbr.surewest.net [65.78.131.1]
3 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 172.22.5.13
4 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 172.21.2.13
5 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 172.21.0.250
6 4 ms 4 ms 4 ms sjo-bb1-link.telia.net [213.248.88.73]
7 5 ms 5 ms 4 ms tata-ic-140123-sjo-bb1.c.telia.net [213.248.95.130] (San Jose, CA)
8 78 ms 77 ms 77 ms if-1-2.tcore2.SQN-SanJose.as6453.net [63.243.205.2] (San Jose, CA)
9 78 ms 79 ms 78 ms if-5-2.tcore2.PDI-PaloAlto.as6453.net [64.86.21.2]
10 82 ms 77 ms 77 ms if-11-3.tcore2.CT8-Chicago.as6453.net [66.198.144.58]
11 80 ms 77 ms 77 ms if-3-2.tcore1.W6C-Montreal.as6453.net [66.198.96.45]
12 151 ms 151 ms 151 ms 66.198.96.50 (also a Montreal as6453.net allocated IP)
13 150 ms 157 ms 158 ms 192.34.76.2 (most likely this is the S-E NA datacenter port)
14 120 ms 119 ms 123 ms 199.91.189.234
15 157 ms 157 ms 154 ms 199.91.189.36

That 66.198.96.45 -> 66.198.96.50 must be the router involved which services one of S-E's paid backbone links for their NA datacenter. In which case they would need to file a support ticket, since either that router is malfunctioning or the port is overloaded.

The link from Telia -> as6453.net (Tata) in San Jose is also horrible.

During Phase 4 beta, I had 80ms ping all the way to my server, which is to be expected considering distance. Ironically now my ping to the JP server (103-110ms same as always) is lower than the NA servers by ~40-50ms, since they are unaffected by this backbone peering issue with Tata which cropped up recently.

My ISP uses the following backbones:
Level 3 (Primary)
Telia (Secondary)
Global Crossing (Tertiary)
Sprint (Backup)

It's Ormuco's fiber (Direct Allocation, ORMUCO-FIBER2-NETWORK, 192.34.76.0 - 192.34.79.255). SE is contracted with them though for service. So, SE may have some leeway into getting some action taken at that point, especially since the next hop on Ormuco's fiber is indeed the old EIDOS subnet (Reassigned, Eidos (C03333552) , 199.91.189.0 - 199.91.189.255), which is now SE and the subnet where our clients are connecting:
http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-192-34-76-0-1/pft
http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-199-91-189-0-1/pft

But those earlier segments exhibiting problems are under TATA Communications roof, so we're dealing with yet ANOTHER ISP in the mix at that point. One that everybody and their brother seems to have agreements with, yet for some reason can't seem to push them to fix their failing segments.