Throttling...

[necrosis]

This. Any one of us can create a character on a low population server, and play lag free 99% of the time. Why are our ISP's not throttling THAT connection? Because throttling doesn't do anything to a connection using so little bandwidth it's barely noticeable. I can play FFXIV, stream videos on my PC, and my wife watch netflx at the same time, and still speedtest 40Mb/sec speed. How am I being throttled? My bandwidth is fine.

The problem is and always has been server congestion, and SE haven't done anything to fix it. Anyone wonder why we just started noticing the problem when they increased server capacity shortly after launch? That's when I started noticing lag. Before that when there were only 5000 connections, it ran smooth, even if you couldn't get in most of the time.

On the other side of the coin, I've seen people post that they and their roomate play from the same apartment, and one is lagging like crazy and the other isnt. This would suggest it's not a server problem, but also not an ISP problem...

Regardless of what is causing the issues, SE refusing to comment or offer help to those affected is piss poor business practice. Most subs won't stick around long if things don't improve. I'm waiting til PS4 before I decide, as I think my problems have as much to do with PS3 as the server.

And you completely miss the problem. Your ISP thinks the data heading to SE's servers... AND ONLY the data heading to SE's servers is P2P traffic so ONLY THAT traffic gets filtered. This is how packet shapers work. They have rules set to only trigger when certain things are met. It is not perfect. Things will get slowed that should not be. And this is whats happening with FFXIV. While some of the moderate lag might be the connection overseas. The heavy throttling (especially when it happens at dead on specific times) is crap done by your ISP.

Also blaming SE for issues that are outside their network is just a stupid thing to do. They have no control over it. Period. People need to stop doing this.

[Raist]

And you completely miss the problem. Your ISP thinks the data heading to SE's servers... AND ONLY the data heading to SE's servers is P2P traffic so ONLY THAT traffic gets filtered. This is how packet shapers work. They have rules set to only trigger when certain things are met. It is not perfect. Things will get slowed that should not be. And this is whats happening with FFXIV. While some of the moderate lag might be the connection overseas. The heavy throttling (especially when it happens at dead on specific times) is crap done by your ISP.

Also blaming SE for issues that are outside their network is just a stupid thing to do. They have no control over it. Period. People need to stop doing this.

It's also possibly not just throttling at play here. There have been a lot of problems tied to congestion in routing that may not be a result of traffic shaping (throttling and such). Off and on periods of high packet loss has been tracked on network segments either passing through certain regions or managed by certain companies.

Keep in mind this also falls in-line with the angle of issues resulting from the dramatic increase in the player numbers on the servers as well. You can run into a bottleneck at the routers just as easily as you can at the server. Any networking device can become a choking point if it is overloaded. Not flatly saying there aren't potentially problems for SE to address at the server level (we can speculate and make educated guesses that likely are correct, but can't actually prove it 100%). However, people can and have identified choking points in route to the servers. These are a real issue, and can and will cause some of the problems people are experiencing. Even if SE is able to set things up on their end to run perfectly, the problem will still exist for those experiencing such issues in route.

[svann]

And you completely miss the problem. Your ISP thinks the data heading to SE's servers... AND ONLY the data heading to SE's servers is P2P traffic so ONLY THAT traffic gets filtered.

No I think you missed what he was saying. He is saying that if you play on a low pop server then you dont see the lag. If that is true then the throttling explanation makes no sense. Why would your isp throttle a connection to a high pop server but not a low pop server? It wouldnt.

[Raist]

It's not necessarily a fair comparison though. Lets say the low population server is a JP vs CA one. Also, it's possible that the problems may actually not be taking place on the player's ISP's segments, but somewhere else down the line. Also, you may be switching into a region that simply knows how to handle heavy loads better in general. So, if you are now routing over to asianet instead, you may completely bypass any congestion all together (not just servers, but all devices along the way that can potentially get knackered under load... lets face it, that region REALLY works on their Fiber).

[svann]

It's not necessarily a fair comparison though. Lets say the low population server is a JP vs CA one. Also, it's possible that the problems may actually not be taking place on the player's ISP's segments, but somewhere else down the line. When you are routing over to asianet instead, you may completely bypass the troubled segments, (lets face it, you are then going into a region that REALLY works on their Fiber).

The quality of the fiber routing would have no effect on the question of whether the isp is throttling, which is the dispute that brought up the issue of low vs high pop server.

[Raist]

The quality of the fiber routing would have no effect on the question of whether the isp is throttling, which is the dispute that brought up the question of low vs high pop server.

Actually, it does. They throttle because they can't afford to let people have all that bandwidth---most often because the infrastructure simply can't take the abuse. Again, it may not be someone like TWC that you pay for the internet who is doing the shaping---it could be a routing partner 8 hops away from you that is shaping to mitigate congestion. We in fact saw this phenomenon a couple years back with the BT/O2/Orange fiasco in the UK.

[Boretalith]

Greetings,

It seems that there have not been any further posts about this concern being an ongoing issue. Because of this, we are considering it to be resolved. If this does continue to be a concern, please create another thread to further discuss resolutions or contact the Support Center at support.na.square-enix.com for assistance.