Sudden, severe lag in a duty
Platform: PC, Windows 11
Connection: Wired / Ethernet cable
Internet Service Provider: Sasktel
Region/Location: Saskatchewan, Canada
Modem: Hybrid
Anti-virus: Windows Security
When: It seems to get worse or better unpredictably. It seems to me like the scale of the problem changes rather than whether it's happening or not. Sometimes things are good enough that four-person or 8-person content works fine but large Frontlines battles show latency. Earlier tonight it got so bad as to cause severe latency problems in a 4-person levelling dungeon and even disconnected me from the server entirely. In this instance, probably around 9PM Saskatchewan time.
Server: Famfrit
These measurements below were taken after I reconnected to the server, but while the latency problem was still occurring.
Traceroute:
Code:
Tracing route to 204.2.229.96 over a maximum of 30 hops
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 172.16.1.254
3 * * * Request timed out.
4 10 ms 8 ms 5 ms 207-47-191-249.ngai.static.sasknet.sk.ca [207.47.191.249]
5 11 ms 14 ms * 142.165.60.129
6 11 ms 6 ms 6 ms 69.156.254.173
7 54 ms 55 ms 57 ms tcore3-regina_0-0-0-2.net.bell.ca [64.230.115.220]
8 57 ms 54 ms 55 ms tcore3-toronto47_hu2-13-0-0.net.bell.ca [64.230.78.214]
9 59 ms 55 ms 55 ms tcore3-chicagocp_hundredgige0-3-0-0.net.bell.ca [64.230.79.167]
10 50 ms 48 ms 49 ms bx6-chicagodt_0-6-0-0.net.bell.ca [64.230.79.85]
11 50 ms 49 ms 49 ms ae-34.a01.chcgil09.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [128.241.3.9]
12 54 ms 50 ms 48 ms ae-9.r23.chcgil09.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.4.217]
13 170 ms 170 ms 169 ms ae-1.r24.snjsca04.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.5.17]
14 176 ms * 178 ms ae-4.r00.scrmca02.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.7.57]
15 177 ms 172 ms 175 ms xe-0-1-0-1-1.r00.scrmca02.us.ce.gin.ntt.net [192.80.16.2]
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 178 ms 176 ms 177 ms 204.2.229.96
The sharp jump in latency on hop 13 seems relevant here. I had similar issues months ago and there, I saw the same pattern - one large jump in latency in the middle of the us.bb.gin.ntt.net block.
Ping results:
Code:
Ping statistics for 204.2.229.96:
Packets: Sent = 73, Received = 62, Lost = 11 (15% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 175ms, Maximum = 182ms, Average = 178ms
15% packet loss seems like a lot, and since I can see from Windows' Resource Monitor that FFXIV uses TCP connections, packet loss would tend to cause large latency spikes in the client's connection to the server.
Another thing that I noticed when this happens is that when I hover over the connection indicator in-game, the Sending number is usually in the tens where the Receiving number is in the thousands (when there's severe lag problems) or hundreds (when things are operating normally). Some sort of packet-loss trouble on the downstream connection perhaps?
During more normal periods when the connection is working as expected, I see a latency of approximately 80ms and no packet loss.
Additionally, considered from a geographic standpoint going Regina->Toronto->Chicago->San Jose->Sacramento (if I'm reading those hostnames right) seems like a really inefficient route, but I have no idea who I would contact to get that fixed if it even can be fixed.