East Coast connection went from Good to Poor since the 5.3 update

Not sure what they did with the servers during this update but my connection has gotten noticeably and officially worse based on their own metric.

I live on the east coast so previously when the servers were in Montreal my connection was "Excellent" as specified by the game itself. When the servers were moved completely across the country to California my connection became "Good". Now after this 5.3 update and presumably whatever server maintenance they've done my connection is now "Poor".

The game is playable but player pop-in and loading of NPCs is worse and there is some delay in actual battle in terms of AoE reaction time. I have to wait several seconds for the NPCs to load in Eulmore for example and that was never the case previously.

Running speedtests shows my connection seems to be working as normal in that regard, and this isn't like random lag spikes interfering with play as it is now just a constant "poor" connection as the game itself says. It just doesn't feel right anymore. I don't really know what else I could even try besides resetting the router but given how the game is detecting it and my speedtest results I don't know how that could change on my end.

So I'm curious to know if anyone else has seen a change in their connection quality since the update?

I have noticed this as well, starting on Tuesday 8/11, however the connection actually being poor started in mid July for me. I have noticed that it is much worse now, the latency making play basically impossible from 12 noon until Midnight. I am tempted to blame my ISP but seeing the number of people getting 90002'd here and doing the tracert I see my connection is breaking the closer I get to Square's servers. I am not a networking expert by any means, I should like to ask one what results like this mean.

If you open up a command prompt and type "ping 204.2.229.9" (this is Aether Data Center) you can quickly see if you are losing packets and how fast you are connecting. "Tracert 204.2.229.9" will show you the exact places where you are losing data (Marked by *)

https://i.imgur.com/PFrerAG.png

This is what I'm seeing. The packet loss aren't from "spikes" as thankfully that isn't my problem which would be way worse which I experienced years ago when they were in Montreal.

The connection just feels bad compared to what it was previously any other time AFTER they moved to CA which was "Good", and now it is "Poor".

The 11th hop clearly wrecks me, not only with the higher ping but the packetloss, but that section is probably not in their control but they would maybe be the ones who would have to contact them to fix it. After posting the image above, the packet loss percent is consistently double digits hovering around 14-15% for Hop 11. Seems to be an actual problem there.

But Hop 14 for example does seem to be within whatever server setup they are paying for and I'm seeing the packet loss there as well.

(All hops prior to what is shown don't matter, or are blank)

Just got done doing a Shadowbringers hunt train and it was having problems loading the A Rank hunts which I thought they fixed ages ago, but apparently it's bad enough that they weren't even loading in for me half time. This is on PS4 and again as an East Coast player.

It definitely wasn't that bad before, at least after they presumably fixed it in the past with the priority system changes.

Now there were a few of the hunts that literally did not load for me before they were dead even though I was there with the rest of the hunt train within the same time traveling there.

I hope this is looked into but I doubt it will be since it probably isn't impacting everyone enough to have them take notice.

Hello, just passing by, i have started having same issue since the 5.3 went live too, before i allways had "Exclellent"(only once i had a "good"), but now i'm all the time with "Poor".

Good afternoon and thank you for posting in the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums

Are you connected to the router or are you using WiFi? Do you experience any lag or disconnections when playing?

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Hey! Just wanted to chime in to give some feedback here. I'm also experiencing this since patch 5.3 went live.
Before the 5.3 maintenance I usually had an Excellent connection, sometimes Good and in the really rare cases it was Poor, it was actually my internet connection.

However, now it is always Poor when I start (while everything else internet related seems to be normal). At some point it may change back to Excellent but I can never tell when - plus it won't stay there and also change back to Poor. This does lead to lag, disconnects and even stuttering video sequences (and sometimes even in fights. e.g. always at one point in the Seat of Sacrifice). In regards to the latter, it was interesting to see this happen in exactly the same MSQ videos (only watched the ones from the latest patch since) on both DCs I play on.

I'm playing via WIFI on both Crystal DC (Brynhildr) and Chaos DC (Spriggan) (so it's not only the East Coast connection) and on both it is the same story.

Hey there, I am on PS4 on the East Coast of the US and I also have had this issue. I've played a bit on Aether and Crystal data centers if that is at all relevant. Since 5.3 came out i went from good-excellent connection to constantly being at a poor connection. It's usually manageable but I do frequently have trouble navigating menus and it has cost me some nasty hits and scares while running dungeons with periods of rather intense lag. I chalked it up to maybe a lot of people being online to play the new (amazing i must say) content, but it wasn't a huge issue before when there was a lot of activity. I will state i am in an area that has had some storms recently so maybe it is interference but its been pretty clear the last few days and i'm still having trouble. So I figured it might be a good idea to mention it here!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dynratygus

Good afternoon and thank you for posting in the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums

Are you connected to the router or are you using WiFi? Do you experience any lag or disconnections when playing?

Thank you for visiting the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums

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Thank you for getting in touch with this. I am hardwired to the router through the ethernet cable. I do not disconnect while playing but I do experience "lag" in the sense that things take much longer to load than previously. For example I made the post about how during Hunts in Shadowbringers areas the A Rank hunts will sometimes not even load cause of the poor connection, and I haven't had that problem previously except before the priority fix to hunts in general.

Here you can see my speed test, which is accurate for what I am paying for:
https://i.imgur.com/oLOt4H3.png





https://i.imgur.com/Uiwu0PA.png

Here you can see pretty heavy packetloss at specific nodes along the network through the company that the servers use. Literally every single node is run through NTT which is who runs the servers as well based on the whois info.

In particular the node in Newark, NJ and San Jose, CA are almost always heavy packetloss.

You can ignore those really big spikes in the graph cause that was just when I ran the speedtest while it was running.

EDIT: I tried to contact NTT through their support email and they basically said there was nothing wrong with their connection and that they couldn't do anything about it cause I wasn't their customer, even when I provided a screenshot like above showing the very obvious packetloss to their server. I know some connections are meant to block the pings, but it seems pretty obvious that it isn't the case with these types of servers considering the similar ones don't have it.

EDIT #2: I have tested it on PC as well and it also shows Poor. So it's not just my PS4 acting up or a faulty ethernet cable on the PS4 itself at least. I even tried to use Google DNS on my PS4 thinking maybe that might help in some way but nope. PS4 and PC both show Poor connection.

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