Lagging on perfect connection.

I've been lagging for a few days now making it very difficult to run instances. In fact, I couldn't even cap poetics lastnight because the lag was just way too bad. It's not my connection as I have been in touch with my ISP and ran mutliple speed tests and am running on a perfect connection and even sometimes better connection than what I am allowed.

I am on Malboro, not sure if it's the server end or what but I can't play like this.. I even did a PC clean. I never lag.. and I'm a tank so this is unacceptable.. I died twice on the way to the first boss of Keep of the Lake lastnight. That never would happen.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/4370826432.png

Edit: might have to copy and paste link for it to work.

Edit2: Ran benchmark

Tested on: 5/19/2015 10:17:14 AM
Score: 7030
Average Frame Rate: 57.330
Performance: Extremely High
-Easily capable of running the game on the highest settings.
Loading Times by Scene
Scene #1 4.489 sec
Scene #2 7.329 sec
Scene #3 6.815 sec
Scene #4 5.622 sec
Scene #5 5.418 sec
Scene #6 2.194 sec
Total Loading Time 31.869 sec

Grade B- is not perfect. On that note, you just checked it to your local server, what is it to the SE servers? You're probably being routed all over the place before making the connection to SE. Clogged pipes.

Pretty sure it's Grade B- compared to the higest connections like broadband 100-150 or something. My ISP sub is supposed to give me 30mbps and I'm getting a better connection than that because my ISP allows it.

How do I check my connection to the SE servers?

Edit: I'm also on a NA server living in NA.

check where you are being routed. speed tests do nothing to show your connection to the server.

Ping 184.107.107.176 ( I think)

How do I do that? I'm not sure I understand...

Hit start button, type "cmd" then enter. Command prompt opens up.

Type in "tracert -d 184.107.107.176"

This will show you the route you take to the NA datacenter, and if there are any blockages along the way.

Use this test: I have A grade connection with 15/10 Mbps 5-8ms.

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest

Grading does not depend on your speed, it is how responsive under heavy bandwidth usage.

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/508924.png

I'm being routed to 9 different ip address's before I reach the destination. One of them times out, this just seems insane.

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Originally Posted by BigTough

I'm being routed to 9 different ip address's before I reach the destination. One of them times out, this just seems insane.

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It's standard to go through that many hops. It starts with your computer, to your modem, to your ISP, then through the tubes that make up the internets. Any hops over 100ms are borderline slow, a total trip over 500ms will cause you to lag at times.

The one timing out is likely your issue, and programs like wtfast will allow your computer to stop banging its head against that wall every few seconds, and just go around it.

One of the hops/ip address's times out. I can't imagine that's normal?

Some server won't report back anything.

PingZapper is another good one.

Well I got on with tech support and they just told me to open a few ports. I did and then I couldn't even connect to the data center after that. Would a static IP help with the ports being open at all?

Lag is not often caused by your connection or ISP... It's most often caused by the route taken between your home and the Data Center.

Download WTFast, (30 day free trial). This is a GPN that will optimize the route and most likely fix your problem. If it does not, the probable cause is the FF server itself or your ISP.

You say one of your hops is timing out... this is the problem in the current route, and the cause of your lag. Your ISP won't fix it, SE won't fix it. A GPN will.

Wrong address. That 186 address is a webserver that hosts sites in the EIDOS lineup as well as a few games from SE. It is on i-web lines and has nothing to do with the game servers on Ormuco's lines.

You can get the actual address you use while logged fully into the game by either running the netstat command from a CMD prompt or by running Resource Moniter (resmon from the search/run box) and looking for the address ffxiv is using under the TCP or network sections. The servers in Canada start with 199. For Japan they will usually start with 124, but occasionally may see one starting with 202.

Alternatively you can use the lobby server DNS names.

neolobby02.ffxiv.com
neolobby04.ffxiv.com
neolobby06.ffxiv.com

Those are the ones for Canada. The ones in Japan look the same but use odd numbers (01,03,05).

Note that even though you play on a server in Canada you still connect to Tokyo for authentication, version checking, and content in the launcher and such. It is vey easy for things to go south along a route and knacker things up. It happens often, and has been shown time and time again to be an issue in route to the servers and not the servers themselves. Some of the more frequent offenders are Level3, TiNet/Spa, and alter.net.

If you spot issues in a trace you need to get the results forwarded to your ISP's Tier3 support team. They will be the best people to analyze the route and file for escalation to pull in the right people or to otherwise tweak things to try to get around any failing/congested nodes.

That is what typically is at fault here...bad network segments that are ramping up latency and causing retransmits or loss of session. Your "speed" is not an issue...what you are actually testing is throughput, more appropriately gauged as your bandwidth and not speed. The electrons all flow at the same speed according to the medium used (copper or fiber). The difference is how many are bundled per cycle--that is your bandwidth. The two work together to provide your capacity (or throughput) of say 50mbps.

This game barely requires more than dialup levels of bandwidth for normal gameplay. ADSL lite is more than enough for this game. The problem is your latency..more specifically it's consistency to remain low so packets are sent/received in a timely and orderly fashion so as to avoid retransmits or packet loss.

I got the right IP... and It's starting to make sense.. but SE tells me it's my ISP and my ISP tells me it's SE. I don't think either of them even looked to see where this hop is dropping from. There isn't even a hop name or ip or anything. Just times out and is blank. It's the second one(hop) too.

Going to call my ISP back and really press them to look into this further.

Thanks everyone for all the help, really appreciate it! Will get back if anything changes.

I'm no IT guru but I think the second one is your ISP, the first is your router.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BigTough

Well I got on with tech support and they just told me to open a few ports. I did and then I couldn't even connect to the data center after that. Would a static IP help with the ports being open at all?

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Remove the port forwarding. That should only be necessary to avoid security like you would find in workplace or university environments. It forwards all inbound traffic on specific ports to a specific address--used mostly to allow unsolicited inbound traffic for things like remote desktop, inbound VPN, and servers. You are requesting an outbound connection first, so the stateful firewall and routing will allow the return traffic (SPI and NAT built into the router do this). So you should not need port forwarding in the typical setup. It can actually create problems under some conditions.

Also disable UPNP on your router if it is active. It has been known to cause stability issues in the past.

I'm struggling with the same issue. This started precisely on the day of the poetics cap increase, and has frustrated me as the evenings have become lag fests that make running dungeons for poetics challenging to say the least. The mornings have not been much of an issue, and prior to that I rarely had any issues at all in three months of playing.

Tracert is reporting the 4th and 5th hops timing out consistently. I don't really understand all the technical aspects here, I'm at a loss as to what to do. WTFast charges per month to reroute don't they?

I'd appreciate any help, this issues is becoming unbearable.

i must agree, i have been playing flawlessly since launch and now after the poetic cap increase, i now have lag on Primal/Malboro servers. i did a pathping and IP trace to the NA data center and i was around 73 ms average with no packet loss, but yet i get players and spells will stop, then speed up really fast to catch up, this is a SE server problem and i know this because why would my game run great for over a year and then after a emergency maintenance on the 17th for Primal, it starts acting up?

Also note that i had my ISP's Tier 3 tech on the phone and at my house checking things out and "its not on my end" and im not paying WTfast to play a game, thats just stupid. my route is only 5 stops to NA data center through Century link.
The server is having problems and needs to be looked at and i have a good deal of my FC that will prove the lag on Malboro just started. Please fix.

Been having the same issue as well. When Poetics increased I get lag big time in the evening hours (central time zone) even though my connection is fine as it always is...In the morning everything seems to be fine, that's when I do FCOB & haven't experienced this.
But in the evening is usually when I play on an Alt, which is a Ninja so that sucks even worse >_<
*Sigh* My Mudras :(

Quote:

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Originally Posted by flicken

i must agree, i have been playing flawlessly since launch and now after the poetic cap increase, i now have lag on Primal/Malboro servers. i did a pathping and IP trace to the NA data center and i was around 73 ms average with no packet loss, but yet i get players and spells will stop, then speed up really fast to catch up, this is a SE server problem and i know this because why would my game run great for over a year and then after a emergency maintenance on the 17th for Primal, it starts acting up?

Also note that i had my ISP's Tier 3 tech on the phone and at my house checking things out and "its not on my end" and im not paying WTfast to play a game, thats just stupid. my route is only 5 stops to NA data center through Century link.
The server is having problems and needs to be looked at and i have a good deal of my FC that will prove the lag on Malboro just started. Please fix.

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You may still have issues along your route. You stated 73ms average, but how bad is the jitter? That average is awfully high for you to be that close (Wisconsin?). I'm in South Carolina with a 17 hop route, and I stay well under that--and I sometimes wind up sling-shotting Toronto to get there. I'm talking <64ms all the way there, with under a 10% variance between each ping across each hop. That is what is important here... consistent latency.

downdetector is getting reports from areas around you and/or your potential routes that may be impacting you intermittently--which would be in line with your rubber-banding description:

https://downdetector.com/status/centurylink

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Recent reports mainly originated from: Denver, Iowa City, Boise, Des Moines, Portland, Phoenix, Saint Paul, Ottawa, Chicago, and Los Angeles. View on map

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The bulk of them appear to be internet complaints too (80%). The thumbnail used as a link to the live outage map tracks recent history, and it shows problems have recently been much more widespread than just what is showing on the more current map (live map is linked in that quote):
https://cdn.serinus42.com/maps/20023/latest-small.jpg

Edit: there's some threads over at the broadbandreports forum about some weirdness with their lines during foul weather and other complaints occurring as well. who knows, you may find some help/suggestions over there as well: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/centurylink

So there may be more there than what you are capturing with smaller snapshots. Pathping isn't going to track the jitter that may be occurring along the route--it just gives you the average response times. You need to see the min/max as well, and need to see it track over time so you can see how much it may be varying. You may get a hint of the impact of the jitter with something like pingtest.net (although, it doesn't have a site for Montreal, but it may demonstrate the issue--it pings 250 times and tracks the average jitter between each ping for you).

When jitter is bad enough to cause packets to be delayed/received far enough out of order you will get a lot of retransmits. If it gets far enough out of whack you can actually loose your session. This is the kind of data that needs to be collected (how much variance there is along the route) as it can be a good indicator of where there may be intermittent pockets of elevated congestion/packet loss--which is what will cause the rubber-banding phenomenon you described.

Oh, and just to be clear... I don't typically experience this on my line, and when I do my route gets changed rather quickly and it clears up. I have worked with TWC's team to track the entire route, which has ultimately resulted in our routing getting changed quite often. At least once or twice a month (about 3 weeks on average) I get swapped to one of their other peering partners when latency starts to climb. Time Warner is doing this... NOT Square Enix. It appears to be the worst when I get paired with Level3... and when I do, I usually get switched off in about a week, sometimes less. Cogent and TATA seem to be the better choices of the three in play from here.

So I'm back to normal. After trying all these fixes in different variations and whatever, I finally undid everything and put my settings back to high and just stopped playing. The only thing I left off was the UPNP on my router, logged on late lastnight and suddenly everything was back to normal.

I wish I could say the same. Every evening the spikes start, and they are relentless for a while.

I don't even have a UPNP setting on my router, it uses ipv6 or somesuch.

*edit* for clarification, it's only my connection to the ffxiv servers that's spiking. I'm on Adamantoise server.

*edit* emergency maintenance just announced. I'm hoping its to address this issue.

May want to disable IPv6 if you can... SE is still using V4 addresses, so you are injecting a slight bit of lag in there. While it may typically only be on the order of up to 10ms or 30ms at worst, it is also an additional layer of translation that may bring it's own weirdness to your environment, and you would need to track down if it is happening at the Windows stack, the router, your modem, or somewhere further up the chain.

I should mentioned that it is disabled. I've also been hearing reports in game of lag and inability to log in. I suspect this emergency maintenance tonight is going to address this issue

I loooooooooove Network related Topics.

Everyone who knows ping and tracert get´s an Expert Grade in Computer Science xD

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