Server Latency

[Grendahl]

Worldofneil, thanks for the update. I'd love to know why the latency is such an issue then for so many NA players =/

[Raist]

Worldofneil, thanks for the update. I'd love to know why the latency is such an issue then for so many NA players =/

A portion of it is due to issues in route to their servers. Many posts out there going into the details if you browse a bit deeper than the first page. Or you can search on some key words and/or the names of some of the offenders:
Cogentco, Cogent Communications, TATA Communications, i-web, sky.net, tinet.net, alter.net, Verizon FiOS, as6453, extreme lag, high latency, packet loss, tracert, pathping, winMTR, Ashburn, Virginia, Washington, DC area, jfk02, Chicago, Milwaukee, Canadian border, Montreal, Ontario, Toronto ...

There is a long list of threads out there. That's just a handful of the more common phrases/words that pop up in them. It's not just here either, it's common with other online games as well. You can also combine some of these (maybe even include FFXIV: ARR as well if you want) in Google and get some interesting hits outside of the forums as well.

There's issues server side as well, but there is a lot of documentation that clearly shows there are issues with elevated packet loss during periods of high traffic in the routing to Montreal, as well as through Montreal into Ormuco's subnet used by SE's servers. We need to get as much of this information as possible to our ISP's so they can try to make a case with their NOC admins to either lean on these third parties to fix their segments, or start routing around them to more stable segments.

[Facespasm]

It's not just here either, it's common with other online games as well.

Correction: It is common with GLOBAL online games i.e games that are accessible for anyone from any part of the world. Online games that have region based serverparks rarely have issues like the ones we've got in the global online games hosted in one single location.

I'd love to know why the latency is such an issue then for so many NA players =/

Simple. Both the EU and NA players connect through the same pipeline, at the same time. When we do, it creates a bottleneck of sorts.

This, in turn, creates massive packetloss for a majority of players, resulting in rubberbanding/lagspikes (some lasting up to 10 sec for some)/disconnects (90k)/etc.

Packetloss for the EU players however is also partly due to the fact that our information has to travel a LOT further to reach the servers.

[Raist]

Correction: It is common with GLOBAL online games i.e games that are accessible for anyone from any part of the world. Online games that have region based serverparks rarely have issues like the ones we've got in the global online games hosted in one single location.

It happens even with region-centric games. Companies like Blizzard are no strangers to this phenomenon (they run region-centric servers, and some of these ISP's show up frequently in discussions with issues for their online games). Network congestion is far more common than most people realize. It's just far more pronounced when you are more condensed to one region like this, and then it can be compounded even further when there are issues specific to the endpoint.

It's not JUST Canada by the way. Google the major players that have been documented as offenders here. You will see them show up with complaints in all kinds of games, in all kinds of regions. For example, some of these guys (Cogent, TATA, etc.) run segments throughout the US as well as worldwide. So you can run into their shoddy routing on the West Coast, South East, North East, Midwest...they are everywhere, even in Mumbai for heaven's sake.
http://www.tatacommunications.com/do....9_20-7-13.pdf

The point is this isn't an isolated problem just because SE has compressed things into one region over here, and one in Japan. Even if they split them up into something like a West Coast, Central, East Coast JUST for the NA users (a la Blizzard)... you could still be having this problem because of the companies the ISP's have agreements with for routing through different corridors. Note the locations where a lot of problems have been spotted: Seattle, DC, LA, Chicago, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Ashburn, Burlington, Nova Scotia... a host of others I can't recall without doing a lot of searches. This isn't JUST Montreal that is having issues... it is widespread, but it is common to a handful of specific ISP's that manage the failing segments.