Internet connection is being hogged/destroyed/lost when opening FFXIV: Heavensward

Let me start off by saying that this is something that never happened previous to this expansion.

This is a intermittent thing but if I go to log into Final Fantasy XIV, the launcher has no issues, but as soon as the game starts, FFXIV completely decimates my internet connection and it is replicated to everyone connected to my router (Yes I've tried without anyone else connected).

To ensure that it was FFXIV that was causing the problem, I downloaded a free trial for a software called 'PingPlotter'. The following is a picture of the program while I opened FFXIV.

http://i.imgur.com/CSJT8Ts.png

The bottom of this picture shows the incident when connecting to the NA servers (I live in North Carolina, so it's my correct one). The start of the huge red block was when I hit 'Play DirectX11' and the game launched. It continued through me pressing 'Play' and then finally ends once the game closes due to the 2002 error that I receive.

As I stated, this is intermittent and sometimes it lets me login ALTHOUGH, when I am able to login, FFXIV still hogs the majority of it. If I run a speedtest without FFXIV open, I'll average a 13mbp/s download but if I run it while logged into FFXIV, it'll give me an astonishingly low 1 mbp/s download.

The following is the same program over the course of 10 minutes of play. The red lines in the graph at the bottom indicate completely unresponsive lag spikes where nothing happens in the game for a good 5-10 seconds.

http://i.imgur.com/lj8l2Bq.png

Wrong address. That is a webserver hosted on i-web across town from the game servers that are hosted on Ormuco. The servers in Canada start with 199, and most of them in Japan start with 124.

You can get the proper address from Resource Monitor (resmon from search/run box). Alternatively you can use the lobby servers:

neolobby02.ffxiv.com. (This is what I use for Aether getting to Midgard)
neolobby04.ffxiv.com
neolobby06.ffxiv.com

Otherwise it looks like you have localized issues. Either something is up with more local hardware or you may have an infection. Have you run a malware/AV scan yet? Shutdown in needed background programs and removed/disabled unnecessary devices?

Don't think it's due to malware, getting a lot of lag spike at PS4, don't live at North America (Brazil here), but still not even near on how normaly play, before official release was getting no lag spike, after it that started, when play at PC other games conection go normal, same for anything that use internet conection, netflix, youtube and etc, but when playing at PS4 this game the spike start.

OP is loosing packets on own network. Something is going on locally. Some malware can proxy lock a system or create "backdoor" connections and may generate the same symptoms. A security scan is one if the typical first steps in diagnosing such issues.

I highly doubt that the issue would be malware seeing as it only occurs with FFXIV (I also play online games such as Dota 2, GTA V Online, Vindictus, etc without any issues) but I'll give it a try. I'll let you guys know what I come up with.

Edit: Initial scan with Malwarebytes didn't find anything and the problem still persists. Running a full scan now.

Edit2: Full scan done, nothing found but false positives. Removed them anyway to be thorough and no change.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raist

Wrong address. That is a webserver hosted on i-web across town from the game servers that are hosted on Ormuco. The servers in Canada start with 199, and most of them in Japan start with 124.

You can get the proper address from Resource Monitor (resmon from search/run box). Alternatively you can use the lobby servers:

neolobby02.ffxiv.com. (This is what I use for Aether getting to Midgard)
neolobby04.ffxiv.com
neolobby06.ffxiv.com

Otherwise it looks like you have localized issues. Either something is up with more local hardware or you may have an infection. Have you run a malware/AV scan yet? Shutdown in needed background programs and removed/disabled unnecessary devices?

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Thank you for the information about the server IPs.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raist

OP is loosing packets on own network. Something is going on locally. Some malware can proxy lock a system or create "backdoor" connections and may generate the same symptoms. A security scan is one if the typical first steps in diagnosing such issues.

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The packet loss from these pictures is on my side partially, but that is exactly what FFXIV is causing to happen. Here is a picture of PingPlotter when I'm not running FFXIV:

http://i.imgur.com/ErPKmFp.png

And heres with FFXIV open, standing in Limsa:

http://i.imgur.com/0KRVCjA.png

I'll be the first to admit that I don't know a whole lot about networking and packet loss, but I imagine that the packet loss shouldn't change simply because the game is running. This change in packet loss also occurs if the game is open when I'm pinging something like google.com.

Bumping until I get a response from Square...

You have something seriously wrong with your local network. You should not be seeing response times of 9 to 63 at your first hop. They should be consistently 1 or less...at worst maybe 2 or the occasional 3 or so if WiFi in play.

And this is a user to user support forum. If you want support directly from SE you should contact them more directly through the portal. It looks like you need local support though...maybe a tech saavvy friend or your local ISP techs can help. If you have a modem/router combo from your ISP they should be able to assist.

Looks like it's not on my end after all. After downloading the latest patch, I'm not have any issues whatsoever anymore. They must've fixed it on their end cause I haven't changed anything.

Hasn't been a patch to the game for a couple days now...they've been doing mogstation and such the last couple days.

Likely something changed at the networking level. As mentioned earlier, you had network issues starting as early as your first hop--it was present even when XIV was not loaded.

I'm not going to fight with you over this, but I'm 100% sure it wasn't on my side. I'm dropping it now and you should too. Thanks for trying to help, as misguided as it was.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RitikaNavaar

I'm not going to fight with you over this, but I'm 100% sure it wasn't on my side. I'm dropping it now and you should too. Thanks for trying to help, as misguided as it was.

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Misguided?

There hasn't been a game patch in several days (6/29 or 6/30 I think). Your graphs clearly showed a common networking issue occurring even when XIV wasn't running. Some of that appeared to be localized to you as well as upstream but well before Ormuco...not really something SE could address even if they had patched the client.

Perhaps you should give this post from Blizzard a read, or bookmark it for future reference:
https://us.battle.net/support/en/art...g-a-traceroute

There are known issues that have known symptoms---was passing on common details/troubleshooting approaches to narrow down your problem. If those problems are in fact present and do not get addressed properly we may see you right back in here again the next time networks get overloaded. It is a pattern we have seen repeated time and time again for those not willing/able to follow through with the process (we have seen this play out for many and resolving the network problems resolved their problems in-game).

Hopefully your ISP looked further into things and resolved your jitter issues. If not, guess we'll see you back with the same symptoms later this year...

It seems like it may of not been a patch, but a discussion between SE and the ISP itself.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...P2P-throttling

It seems that my ISP has been reported multiple times in this thread. The issue most likely wasn't my local network but the way that the ISP itself was seeing FFXIV as a program. This would explain why it was localized to only when I'm running the game. Either way, the main problem is fixed (The internet is no longer snail-speed when FFXIV is open) and I've lived with w/e this jitter could be causing for years without any issues. I'll call the ISP if I ever have this issue again and have the time to sit on the phone for hours or be home mid-week for a technician to come out.

Thanks for the suggestions