Request for information: ISPs and P2P throttling

[czarship]

Myself and a few friends in Chicago, IL are experiencing this issue with the cable company RCN (http://rcn.com/chicago/).

The problem has been persistent since late Sunday night (or early Monday morning) of this week. We've been communicating via Google Hangout while we play and notice we experience lag at the exact same time. Interestingly, prior to Sunday night we haven't experienced any issues with lag throughout beta phase 4, early access, and the first six days of release (besides the obvious login issues).

I'm running a ping to what I believe is our server (Cactuar - 199.91.189.31) from work and home. I never lose a packet at work (high speed business class line with a reputable company) but lose an unusual amount from home. Here's a screenshot of pinging the IP ffxiv.exe is connecting to from work (on the left) and home (on the right): http://i.imgur.com/8yOgVeT.png

I should note that my ping to google.com remains uninterrupted throughout the packet loss experienced at home.

We have yet to raise the issue with our ISP as we were previously convinced it wasn't their problem. We'll be logging a ticket with them tonight if it persists.

[czarship]

Myself and a few friends in Chicago, IL are experiencing this issue with the cable company RCN (http://rcn.com/chicago/).

The problem has been persistent since late Sunday night (or early Monday morning) of this week. We've been communicating via Google Hangout while we play and notice we experience lag at the exact same time. Interestingly, prior to Sunday night we haven't experienced any issues with lag throughout beta phase 4, early access, and the first six days of release (besides the obvious login issues).

I'm running a ping to what I believe is our server (Cactuar - 199.91.189.31) from work and home. I never lose a packet at work (high speed business class line with a reputable company) but lose an unusual amount from home. Here's a screenshot of pinging the IP ffxiv.exe is connecting to from work (on the left) and home (on the right): http://i.imgur.com/8yOgVeT.png

I should note that my ping to google.com remains uninterrupted throughout the packet loss experienced at home.

We have yet to raise the issue with our ISP as we were previously convinced it wasn't their problem. We'll be logging a ticket with them tonight if it persists.

Just wanted to update that I had a chat with RCN and they stated that their engineers have been investigating the problem and found the issue is between ORMUCO-WebHost and ONAM, but because it is not an RCN related issue, they don't have an estimated time of when we can expect a resolution. They recommended using a VPN in the meantime.

[Ricje]

Just wanted to update that I had a chat with RCN and they stated that their engineers have been investigating the problem and found the issue is between ORMUCO-WebHost and ONAM, but because it is not an RCN related issue, they don't have an estimated time of when we can expect a resolution. They recommended using a VPN in the meantime.

We discussed this in another thread (also on the Tech forum) yesterday and came to the same conclusion.
I've even went as far as to send the link of the thread to SE on Twitter but unfortunately, no response on either Twitter or on the forums.
Looking at the Devtracker it seems they're mostly avoiding the subject. I find it odd that;
1: Their customers/players find the problem before they do.
2: They do not communicate with us nor keep us up-to-date about the problem
3: It has been 6 days since the problem started for many players and it has not been fixed yet nor has there been a notification about them working on it.
There never really was a need for us to state our ISPs or countries but hey, whatever helps right?

I feel that Omurco was a bad decision considering that both the EU and NA servers are sharing a datacenter so everything has to be smashed right through their lines in order to reach the servers.
From the looks of the posts here, players from Japan are having issues with the Japanese servers as well.
Surprisingly, the problems started happening after one of their maintenances which could mean that they changed something that started working inappropiately or atleast stopped working properly as a lot of players (including all my friends) don't have any issues at all.

The worst part about this is the lack of communication.
Players have no idea what's going on and are being kept in the dark. This is not a way to earn trust and might actually work against them in the long run.
Even if it's bad news, it's still better to communicate than to stay quiet. Atleast players know what's going on then and what to expect.

So @Reds: If you're reading this, you really have to work on your communication. It's one of the most vital parts of running an MMO.
How do we know you heard us?
How do we know you're taking what is being said in consideration?
How do we know you've done anything at all?
Not communicating creates frustration, annoyance and anger and will drive people away from your game.
I'm not a doomsayer, I'm not a hater but I am stating something obvious because I WANT this game to succeed. I want this game to last longer than a few months. The way it's going right now however is not the correct way and really needs to be improved (Fast).
Remember that the first month of an MMO is the most important. This is the first impression. This is the timeframe that players decide whether it's worth continuing in the game or not.

[Sparky]

We discussed this in another thread (also on the Tech forum) yesterday and came to the same conclusion.
I've even went as far as to send the link of the thread to SE on Twitter but unfortunately, no response on either Twitter or on the forums.
Looking at the Devtracker it seems they're mostly avoiding the subject. I find it odd that;
1: Their customers/players find the problem before they do.
2: They do not communicate with us nor keep us up-to-date about the problem
3: It has been 6 days since the problem started for many players and it has not been fixed yet nor has there been a notification about them working on it.
There never really was a need for us to state our ISPs or countries but hey, whatever helps right?

I feel that Omurco was a bad decision considering that both the EU and NA servers are sharing a datacenter so everything has to be smashed right through their lines in order to reach the servers.
From the looks of the posts here, players from Japan are having issues with the Japanese servers as well.
Surprisingly, the problems started happening after one of their maintenances which could mean that they changed something that started working inappropiately or atleast stopped working properly as a lot of players (including all my friends) don't have any issues at all.

The worst part about this is the lack of communication.
Players have no idea what's going on and are being kept in the dark. This is not a way to earn trust and might actually work against them in the long run.
Even if it's bad news, it's still better to communicate than to stay quiet. Atleast players know what's going on then and what to expect.

So @Reds: If you're reading this, you really have to work on your communication. It's one of the most vital parts of running an MMO.
How do we know you heard us?
How do we know you're taking what is being said in consideration?
How do we know you've done anything at all?
Not communicating creates frustration, annoyance and anger and will drive people away from your game.
I'm not a doomsayer, I'm not a hater but I am stating something obvious because I WANT this game to succeed. I want this game to last longer than a few months. The way it's going right now however is not the correct way and really needs to be improved (Fast).
Remember that the first month of an MMO is the most important. This is the first impression. This is the timeframe that players decide whether it's worth continuing in the game or not.

I'm still utterly convinced that traffic shaping is the problem for many if not most of us here. The reason for this is, a regular as clockwork, the low ping responses occur in my case, beween 6 or 7pm, to 11pm on the dot. As soon as it hits 11pm, my ping returns to normal. Weekends seem unaffected.

That's classic evidence of traffic shaping if ever I saw it.