Square, your NA/EU data centre has serious issues...

[Appleh4x]

Network admins coming out in doves defending SE. SE doesn't intend to do any investigation on their side.

I'm sick and tired of disagreeing with people. Forget that there are people who have traced and found no issues (timeout/packet loss/high ping), and yet still experience strange lag. Or that there are people who have no problems with any other games during prime time. Time to be negative, take the safe bet, and sound smart (hey 3 birds, 1 stone).

"Learn to call your ISP."

There: problem solved for thousands of people. I'm done keeping up with the lag issue. It doesn't even affect me. I can dodge just fine looking at circles.

Complainers are always wrong. The big company that doesn't even bother to give a response to a 72 page thread is doing it right.

Lol who cares about responsiveness anyways.

I think you mean jobless people claiming to be network admins because they can use google.

[Marishi-Ten]

Raist, you're caught in a devil's proof. You can't establish that this issue is not SE's fault.

1. You have to prove that the reason this issue is occurring is because of infrastructure and not SE server configuration.
2. The only way to prove that is to get a massive amount of data/logs from each user who is having this problem (as 1 ping/trace does nothing)
3. You have no means of obtaining this massive amount of information. The reports you're doing here is like a grain of sand in the desert.

Thus you cannot prove that this is not SE's fault.

Likewise,we are caught in Hempel's Raven

1. If lag affects our game it's SE's fault
2. If we don't have lag, it's not SE's fault.
3. To qualify 1, in the past , when there was a lag, SE has been able to resolve it.
4. We have no lag SE is doing a good job.

By the same reasoning, the statement would be: If we have Lag, SE is not doing a good job. This is paradoxical - I can think of 100s of occasions where I can have lag and it's not SE's fault.

So what is the solution? The problem is that WE'RE LACKING IN INFORMATION. If SE would be so kind to provide us with more INFORMATION we can start finding a solution. It could very well be our fault. However, we don't know without INFORMATION. And there's literally nothing we can do.

1.) Square is not affiliated with Cogent, i-web, as6453, Level3, and the countless other hubs where the bottleneck occurs. I would say it's a fair assumption that the issue is not on the end point.

2.) I have logged some data showing the packet loss and icmp time outs on between client and host. I feel confident that I have enough aggregate data to, at the very least, show a pattern of behavior.

3.) Perhaps, but it shows a pattern. Patterns can lead to educated guesses that are naturally near the mark. Users don't time out at the end IP, they time out at a remote hub. Generally where there's smoke, there is almost always fire.

4.) Lag can occur from the local router all the way to the end point. Latency on a network means nothing until a pattern emerges to narrow down the root cause.

5.) Unless the bottle neck occurred in the Montreal datacenter, it wouldn't be Squares responsibility to fix and they wouldn't be able to even if they wanted.

6.) No, they have been able to mask it. Dumping the DNS cache and refreshing the ports can help alleviate some congestion but the issue will return until the hubs/fiber are physically upgraded. Treating a symptom isn't the same thing as curing the disease.

7.) The hubs and fiber are running efficiently. Routing traffic at full capacity while also maintaining low packet loss is the goal. If this is accomplished, all parties involved are performing satisfactory.

8.) I believe Square can't provide us with said information for a couple reasons. One, to have access to that data they would need to give us root access into their networks which no sane person would allow as this would also give the user access to their ruby/command console as well. Two, Square may not be able to provide it as even they don't have access to it as most hubs and infrastructures are locked down even to clients using the pipeline.

9.) We can educate and inform. We can answer questions and assist to the best of our abilities. The more people know, the more people can field tickets to the right places. Knowledge is power.

Network admins coming out in doves defending SE. SE doesn't intend to do any investigation on their side.

I'm sick and tired of disagreeing with people. Forget that there are people who have traced and found no issues (timeout/packet loss/high ping), and yet still experience strange lag. Or that there are people who have no problems with any other games during prime time. Time to be negative, take the safe bet, and sound smart (hey 3 birds, 1 stone).

"Learn to call your ISP."

There: problem solved for thousands of people. I'm done keeping up with the lag issue. It doesn't even affect me. I can dodge just fine looking at circles.

Complainers are always wrong. The big company that doesn't even bother to give a response to a 72 page thread is doing it right.

Lol who cares about responsiveness anyways.

It's not defense when It's been shown the issue isn't on the end ports. It's point A to point C where data is lost on point B. Is it point C's problem that point B can't send it information? Rhetorical question.

Debate is healthy for issues that are difficult to resolve. I prefer that others disagree as it makes me look over the data points again and make the case for what I think is the cause. I have some data that I was able to store that shows a pattern though you are right, to diagnose a network problem, you have to continuously run network monitoring scripts and store the data. Luckily, Terminal does this for me and runs icmp dumps with custom scripting.

Contacting your ISP and asking for a re route if possible may clear the issue, though I don't think this is what you meant. ISP's have control of their hubs and networks. Century Link can't fix Level3's problem. Why would an individual call a company with no affiliation to the problem end and expect them to fix it? The best thing we can do is request a route change. If this isn't possible, contact the owner of the hub you are seeing the most problems with.

I also don't have any issues with latency save for the mild hiccup every now and then. I post here to help and educate others. Just because a user doesn't have a problem isn't a reason to be apathetic to others that may be experiencing issues.

What would you like Square to say? They are doing the best they can spending millions of dollar upgrading racks for more re routes to help with congestion? We know they are. Would you like them to say that their fiber provider doesn't have enough bandwidth and possibly violating their service agreement costing them money that would better go to making FFXIV better? Or would you like them to say that the issue is on another company without solid proof (let's face it, they don't have root access into their hubs either) possibly causing a law suit that could end up closing FFXIV? Would that really make anyone here feel better? This is the opposite of what anyone wants. Square is a business and by holding back any information they may have is either due to contractual obligations or legal implications. It's easier to be transparent about an issue instead of covering it up. Why go to all this trouble if there isn't a valid reason behind it?

Transparency is a good thing. But people have to understand that just because they aren't saying anything doesn't mean anything is happening.

This isn't a jab at you personally and I'm not saying you're wrong in your thinking. It's more of a general outline of what I think may be happening from my own experiences and technical backround. As always, take it with a grain of salt.

I think you mean jobless people claiming to be network admins because they can use google.

That's an extremely blanked statement. Though Google can answer most queries, we all come from different walks of life and may actually have experience dealing with large scale networks and server clusters under load that no search engine can replicate.

Also, as a rule of thumb, I try not to stereotype others as it makes me sound ignorant of the topic at hand and only serves to agitate and intrench the other party into their line of thinking which does no one any good.

Do you happen to have any insight you care to share? Are you having an issue with latency? If so, can you describe the issue? Users on this forum may be able to shed some light and offer some steps to perform to alleviate it.