A response needs to be demanded by everyone from SE

[Maza]

That's just it... we have figured out what needs to be done to get it resolved. Unfortunately, it requires player participation to get the ball rolling.

In the scenario of your motorcycle, if it was something you could not fix yourself and you needed to take it to someone to fix it... just what is your course of action? Do you just call someone and say it's broke, fix it... or do you arrange to get the motorcycle to a mechanic, and describe your problems in detail, perhaps giving specific details on how to reproduce your problem?

That is what we need to do here. The tracert clearly details the problem, where it lies, and in and of itself provides clues for courses of action for your ISP to take. Without that important piece of information, all you are telling them otherwise is "my internet doesn't work right for a certain program". That does NOTHING to effectively troubleshoot/fix your problem. Providing a tracert DOES.

All I'm saying is if you aren't willing/able to participate/contribute to that solution, don't go crying foul when SE does not fix something for which they are not responsible, and also has no power to fix.

Okay dangit Raist ; ) I looked it up and learnt some stuff and here is my tracert (minus my addy) to ffxiv na. What do I do from here please?

[Raist]

Need to trace to the Canadian server. There should be at least 2 connections opened by FFXIV--that one is to Japan, and typically those are not causing problems for those having issues with the NA/EU servers that are in Canada.

As mentioned earlier, the 124 address is the JP one that spends most of it's time idle for those on the NA servers. The problems seem to be with the more active session to the CA server. So far, the ones I have seen posted have started with 199, but that's been for NA users--EU might be in a different subnet. Considering you are coming through the Louisiana area, I'm guessing you are in the US, or at least hiting a NA server? If so, look for another session being used by FFXIV that starts with 199 and trace to that IP and open a support ticket with your ISP (and optionally SE), forwarding that trace to them. If the other FFXIV session doesn't start with 199, but something other than 124 or 202 (another JP block, houses SE's DNS servers among other things)--try tracing to that one instead.

It might be helpful to include the name of the group that manages the bad segments if you can. You may see these show up: cogentco, i-web, or as6453. The first two are the actual names of the providers, the last is used by TATA for a lot of their hops. Probably 90% or more of the time, it winds up being one of those three companies that is having issues--Cogent, i-Web, or TATA. Sometimes the i-Web hops won't say i-web though, as well as some of the TATA won't say as6453--but cogentco is pretty consistent for Cogent Communications. You can search on the IP address at www.arin.net and get the name of the group if you want to include it in your support request, as well as lots of other information. Makes it a bit easier to keep up with who keeps showing up when you make note of those common names, so you may know at a glance if they've done something different with your routing after you submit a ticket.

People can "poo-poo" on this as much as they want, but it CAN actually bring about a change in your routing-hopefully for the better as a whole. Back when TWC was partnered with RR, I had a direct email and phone to tech's in both Myrtle Beach and Columbia, and when I found failing segments in Virginia and Nova Scotia that were affecting my FFXI connections (separate instances, years ago), they switched my DHCP and DNS on my modem and routed me differently. Ever since they started homing me out of Charlotte a few years back, I haven't had any need to have it redone. I'm sometimes getting a little more latency then when I was on a closer network for my 4th hop, but it has had fewer problems with packet loss and such.

[Ljonesj]

I live near Atlanta, GA USA (as my traceroute would suggest, being a network engineer though I'm sure you could tell) and use Comcast. I have their highest available speed home internet (which is pretty redonkulous) so as far as paying a premium, I'm already there. Again, nothing else triggers any form of filter on my ISP. "However FFXIV sends/receives the data it is tripping a filter with your ISP and you get the connection issues." Oh, sounds like a SE problem to me with how they handle data. I've tried many things, including no firewalls, DMZ, direct connection; nothing changes the issue.

Actually comcast is one of the ones that limit bandwidth to a lot of people in the United states after you hit a certain data limit

[HoroBoro]

So... Just my 2 cents here. Not a network engineer.

But the traces your running don't seem to matter. I don't feel 150 ms of lag.

From the videos it seems to me like 1000 ms of lag. Or more.

I mean I can run stuff through Wireshark and check out what's going on behind the scenes, but... I kinda feel like it's on SE to resolve the issue. It's not just 1 or 2 people. It's a lot. We have pages and pages of people concerned about this problem.

The most effective way would be for them reach out to us. Acknowledge there is some sort of problem. Ask us to do tests so we can provide them with feedback. Then provide us with feedback. I doubt it, but heck, but thousands of people could be incorrectly routed to horrible internet connections.

That's not happening so we're in the dark. Which is OK with them apparently. That's my biggest concern.

[Appleh4x]

Actually comcast is one of the ones that limit bandwidth to a lot of people in the United states after you hit a certain data limit

Depends on the location, in my area they have no limiting policies. I can download 500 terabytes and they won't shut me off.

[Raist]

So... Just my 2 cents here. Not a network engineer.

But the traces your running don't seem to matter. I don't feel 150 ms of lag.

From the videos it seems to me like 1000 ms of lag. Or more.

I mean I can run stuff through Wireshark and check out what's going on behind the scenes, but... I kinda feel like it's on SE to resolve the issue. It's not just 1 or 2 people. It's a lot. We have pages and pages of people concerned about this problem.

The most effective way would be for them reach out to us. Acknowledge there is some sort of problem. Ask us to do tests so we can provide them with feedback. Then provide us with feedback. I doubt it, but heck, but thousands of people could be incorrectly routed to horrible internet connections.

That's not happening so we're in the dark. Which is OK with them apparently. That's my biggest concern.

That's just it though... people have been posting traces with 400ms+ delays and timeouts in route. As I stated earlier, I have only experienced issues once. This past weekend I had some choppiness and when I traced I had timeouts around the DC hop (which is where my trace typically flirts with the 100ms mark). I've stated in multiple treads that I have good traces, and don't experience the lag--but there are posted traces with really bad hops in route. The problem is there's dozens of threads out there, and it's hard to find the examples at this point to link or quote them into other threads.

[Maza]

Need to trace to the Canadian server. There should be at least 2 connections opened by FFXIV--that one is to Japan, and typically those are not causing problems for those having issues with the NA/EU servers that are in Canada.

As mentioned earlier, the 124 address is the JP one that spends most of it's time idle for those on the NA servers. The problems seem to be with the more active session to the CA server. So far, the ones I have seen posted have started with 199, but that's been for NA users--EU might be in a different subnet. Considering you are coming through the Louisiana area, I'm guessing you are in the US, or at least hiting a NA server? If so, look for another session being used by FFXIV that starts with 199 and trace to that IP and open a support ticket with your ISP (and optionally SE), forwarding that trace to them. If the other FFXIV session doesn't start with 199, but something other than 124 or 202 (another JP block, houses SE's DNS servers among other things)--try tracing to that one instead.

I'm in Arizona with Cox hispeed. The first numbers from my isp are single digit. I input na.finalfantasyxiv.com to get that. I don't know enough to check other traces? It's cool, i'll get on the horn with cox and see what I can do. Thanks for all the info though.

[Istym]

That's just it... we have figured out what needs to be done to get it resolved.

When you say we, do you really mean you?

Regardless I been down the tracert road hundreds of times. And when its taking 10 seconds to cast my fishing rod after pressing the cast button tracert shows zero issues. The common denominator however seems to be when the servers are, you know, creaking at capacity.

To state SE are in no way responsible, well I just have to question your motives tbh.

[Raist]

When you say we, do you really mean you?

Regardless I been down the tracert road hundreds of times. And when its taking 10 seconds to cast my fishing rod after pressing the cast button tracert shows zero issues. The common denominator however seems to be when the servers are, you know, creaking at capacity.

To state SE are in no way responsible, well I just have to question your motives tbh.

no.. a lot of people have been posting/reviewing trace postings in other threads and have spotted patterns. A good bit had been posted in the sticky about the P2P throttling, but there's been a bunch of other threads over the last couple weeks in both the Tech Support and General sections. But, if you haven't been following the lag/latency debate threads you probably missed them.

{Edit}: Teebz tried to get a thread going to consolidate links to the various discussions, but it's just a small portion of what is out there:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...connect-Issues

And I never said that they are in no way responsible---I've stated they aren't responsible for issues that occur in route when it occurs on segments they have no influence over. I've also stated that if we can manage to get some action taken to resolve such issues, than SE can no longer use the tactic of blaming the ISP's for the problem. Even specifically pointed out several times across threads that even IF SE pinpoints and corrects issues within their own infrastructure---there will still be the issues that are happening in route.

All of this is about pinpointing problems in peering on the way to the endpoint, and forwarding it to people that might actually be able to get someone to resolve those issues. No matter how good the servers are, if your route is FUBAR, you will still have problems. This is something that we actually stand a chance at impacting---issues on SE's end are completely up to them to resolve. This particular part of the problem is NOT on their end, but in between us and them.

[Istym]

And what I am saying is... if I have no problems on the way to the end point why do I still have problems with major lag in game? And why for example was it fine for the whole week prior to this weeks maintainence.

I understand your angle here but I'm really failing to see the correlation and believe me I would love too, because then I too could go banging on the doors I need to in order to realise resolution.

I agree maybe many have routing issues.

My point is also many don't.

And regardless SquareEnix have a duty of care to engage their customers in a more professional manner because the apparent lack of support via many channels is borderline none existent and frankly arrogant.