Intermittent Lag

still an on-going issue... i have contacted my ISP several times now. and have paid their stupid service fee on more then one occasion. in the end it's NOT an ISP related issue. they don't know what is wrong, and can't find anything wrong. there is nothing wrong near the house, up the road, down the road, at the office, or with any of the nodes taken during my route to SE game servers.


i have been a customer with Time Warner for over 3 years now. and have never once experienced intermittent lag in any game. however, i have been experiencing it in this game since early access. CLEARLY an issue with SE. Square Enix, please fix your shit.

has been an issue for over a year now. i guess it is pointless to even so much as hope SE will someday improve their shit?

seriously... this sucks. i can play DC Universe Online, or any other MMORPG, either on the PC or console. and all through out the week never once will have any lag. however, i experience intermittent lag in FFXIV:ARR almost every day.

again, have paid several service fees from Time Warner. like 60-some dollars in total for everything. we have spent like a month trying to resolve this issue that is EXCLUSIVE to this game. nothing works, everything is fine on both my end and the ISP end.

i have been experiencing intermittent lag in this game since early access. and the funny thing is... i never experienced any lag during Beta Phase 3 and Beta Phase 4.


clearly an issue with SE. please fix it!

In my experience with Time Warner, it is usually two-fold. There is a problem with their oversold markets that causes injected lag, but usually not game-breaking in and of itself (for the most part, but it can at times compound an issue occurring further down the route). It's not uncommon to see things like this happen during basic testing:

3 22 ms 103 ms 30 ms cpe-024-031-198-009.sc.res.rr.com [24.31.198.9]

That is a major gateway for the markets rooted out of Columbia... the second hop from my modem. When doing more focused tests, we can frequently capture about 5% packet losses when there is a lot of traffic moving through South Carolina. We can also track the same kinds of things in Charlotte and Raleigh, as well as Ashburn, Chicago, various hops in NY/NJ, and a host of other locations in Texas, California, Ohio... it's quite a list just within TWC's networks. Here's one such potential sign of trouble around Chicago that showed up towards the end of the trace/ping batch file I run to gather data for them. This is the last TWC hop before I get put into Level3:

8 3534 ms * * twc-telus.pr0.chi10.tbone.rr.com [66.109.9.70]
(yes... that is correct, one response took over 3 seconds, and then it timed out twice on one tracert pass)

And that leads us to the other side of the coin for TWC. There are issues with their routing partners. Lately for us here in Florence, most of the time pretty much anyone but Cogentco really isn't up to the task for this game. TATA is still manageable as a temp fix...but almost EVERY time they put me on Level3, it goes to crap within a week and we have to get it changed again. They just stuck me on them tonight...and my latency has already gone from normal times of <60 to 80+...if it does it's usually crud I'll be pushing 160+ by Sunday and I'll have to take them to task Monday to get them moving to get me switched off again. If I don't, by Wednesday I'll be flirting with 230 or so.

They are in the midst of updating some markets, so it is gradually getting better... but it is still not anywhere near where it needs to be. Go lurk on their forums in the Internet->Connectivity section and you will see all kinds of chatter about the things that are wrong with their networks as well as what kinds of things to look out for. There is a LOT they can do to remedy many of the issues their customers are having with this game and other services as well...we've seen them become more proactive and improving the experience in the past when people are providing them actionable details on their problems (which unfortunately means you may need to do some homework and testing of your own to prod them along).

But, in most cases you will ultimately need to be dealing with Tier3 to get some real action taken. It sounds like you've spent a lot of time with the locals. While there may be some localized signalling issues (bad amps, stray signal ingress from local TV broadcast and LGE towers or other devices, improperly terminated/choked lines, bad modems down the street putting noise on the circuit, etc.), once you move beyond your local plant...it is more or less out of the hands of those local techs. If you can't seem to make any decent headway over the phone...go to the internet. There is a lot of good user-to-user advice at the TWC forums, and there is also a dedicated section over at dslreports specifically for addressing TWC problems, as well as twitter, facebook, and email options for getting in touch with people that can get things escalated (can get links from the TWC forums, or you can use the generic help email to get the ball rolling: TWCable.Help@twcable.com).

When you contact them, make sure to have at least one valid address used by the game for them to do some testing with. If you don't have the IP your client actually uses, you can give them the names registered for the lobby servers since they will get them into the proper subnets and ASN's to conduct a more proper investigation:

Current Canadian Servers:
neolobby02.ffxiv.com
neolobby04.ffxiv.com
neolobby06.ffxiv.com

Current Japan Servers
neolobby01.ffxiv.com
neolobby03.ffxiv.com
neolobby05.ffxiv.com

well i don't know what any of that means. but i have spent the last month and over 50$ in service fees with Time Warner trying to resolve this issue. and it isn't the first time i have nagged them about it. i have paid a 16$ service fee before in the past, but nothing was ever resolved. because nothing wrong was ever found. if they say there is nothing wrong, i believe them. the only other place there could be an issue is server-side. and seeing as i never experienced intermittent lag in beta, it seems quite evident it is SE. they had to have changed something. i'm not the only person in this game to experience intermittent lag. other people in Party have experienced the lag at the same time as me on NUMEROUS occasions. and there wasn't any alerts about technical difficulties from SE.

someone else also mentioned something about the T3 support. but Time Warner doesn't even know what that is. i have been on the forums and have been told to get an external router by users. i can't afford one of these. and even still, that wouldn't explain why the intermittent lag is isolated to only FFXIV:ARR. if it was a hardware issue, i would experience it in every game.




at any rate, i do greatly appreciate you coming here. and trying to help me understand some stuff. but if Time Warner can't fix it, the only ones left is Square Enix. and i have nagged Time Warner on and off for over a year now... so... only people left are Square Enix. simply put... Square Enix just needs to fix their shit. i am tired of hassling with Time Warner and paying their service fees.

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Originally Posted by BLaCKnBLu3B3RRY

someone else also mentioned something about the T3 support. but Time Warner doesn't even know what that is.

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Then you simply aren't talking to the right people. Tier 3 is an industry-standard term within the support structure. The guys that answer the phone and the ones that come check your local lines are in the first two tiers...the third tier is basically people like network engineers/admins that deal with the higher level stuff deeper into the networks. Company policies will restrict the tools and remedies available to the lower tiered support you seem to be dealing with.

Your local guys can't do much of anything that is beyond your pole or elsewhere on the local lines and equipment. Once you start getting into issues regarding the CMTS or deeper into the route, it simply is the responsibility of a higher tier of support--which is why you need to be dealing with at least Tier3. And They DO have a department for that. When I was working on implementations I used to have a number that went directly to them, but now you have to be assigned a case number and password that routes you to a specific team of techs if you want to call them directly. Otherwise you have to go through the robo-menus until you actually get a person on the line and then have them escalate you to Tier3. It can be a bit tedious depending on the market, but it usually can and does pay off once you get them involved.

I strongly advise you take this to the TWC forums and/or that email I provided earlier. Those people can better advise and/or escalate your problem towards a proper solution if it indeed is an issue along your route--but you won't know that for certain until you pull in the proper people to investigate. While you are dealing with them, you may want to mention how you have been charged for local investigations that have made no progress--you may get lucky and get some credit back to your account (mileage will vary, but you won't get it if you don't ask for it).

you can only get user support on the forums. and i have already tried to email, asking specifically for tier 3 support. all they could do was schedule an on-site tech. in any case, i don't know... if they don't want to give me the proper support, then i just can't do anything about it. will just have to deal with it. anyhow, thank you.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BLaCKnBLu3B3RRY

you can only get user support on the forums. and i have already tried to email, asking specifically for tier 3 support. all they could do was schedule an on-site tech. in any case, i don't know... if they don't want to give me the proper support, then i just can't do anything about it. will just have to deal with it. anyhow, thank you.

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They actually have representatives on the forums who may step in to arrange more direct support. There are also frequent posters there that can help you get in touch with better support options as well. As for them wanting to send techs out when you email them, I've gone through that scripted response as well. But after explaining how we've already gone that route and that is why I am contacting them for escalation to tier3 support and include another fresh sample of my modem log, signal page, and fresh ping/trace data...it pretty much nudges them in the right direction.

Once you go over your account details and you detail how you have had techs on site(at your expense), they should put in for escalation. Last time they tried to pull that tactic on me I took them to task for it as I'd played their game and replaced modems twice, routers twice, and ran new cables to no effect...one trip from a bucket truck down the street and two call backs later, I was back to low latency three days later.

The trick I've found is basically to not settle for the lackluster scripted replies, and to always use the reply button so each email shows the track record. I've gone through the process countless times since I was in their Beta group back in 1996. Most times I never needed to send more than a third email reply. By then they usuallly either changed the routing, or I would get a call back from tier3 to share information and discuss their plan of actíon.

You just need to be persistent with them. After all, you are paying them for the service and with that comes a responsibility for them to provide support--especially if it is their hardware or network policies failing to provide stable service. If you aren't getting adequate support, you need to demand it. Push for a supervisor or something. Until you hit the Admins in charge of the operations center in somewhere like Herndon, VA, there will always be someone higher up you can talk to.

There is also the threat to switch service too that you can try. Earthlink services many of the same areas at a discounted rate (they use TWC locally to get people to Atlanta and then switch you to their network). They even send you the bill through Time Warner's billing system. So you may actually have the option to change providers if you need to take that approach in order to get someone's attention.