I'm cancelling my subscription due to lack of response from Square Enix

[C-croft]

This is what is happening to Californians below. Once we get routed to San Jose, we take a shit all the way to the Data Center. I am on AT&T, and I have seen other posts stating this happens on TWC in SoCal. It gets worse during prime time.

Tracing route to 184.107.107.176 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 3 ms 2 ms 2 ms homeportal [192.168]
2 29 ms 46 ms 24 ms 108-192-172-2.lightspeed.frokca.sbcglobal.net [1
08.192.172.2]
3 * * * Request timed out.
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 * * * Request timed out.
6 27 ms 23 ms 25 ms 12.83.77.145
7 26 ms 26 ms 26 ms ggr4.sffca.ip.att.net [12.122.86.197]
8 28 ms 28 ms 28 ms 192.205.37.66
9 101 ms 100 ms 100 ms if-1-2.tcore2.SQN-SanJose.as6453.net [63.243.205
.2]
10 118 ms 101 ms 107 ms if-5-2.tcore2.PDI-PaloAlto.as6453.net [64.86.21.
2]
11 122 ms 102 ms 100 ms if-11-3.tcore2.CT8-Chicago.as6453.net [66.198.14
4.58]
12 145 ms 106 ms 103 ms if-3-2.tcore1.W6C-Montreal.as6453.net [66.198.96
.45]
13 101 ms 101 ms 100 ms 66.198.96.58
14 101 ms 100 ms 102 ms te7-4.dr9.mtl.iweb.com [184.107.1.110]
15 102 ms 101 ms 101 ms 72.55.128.44
16 100 ms 101 ms 101 ms 184.107.107.176

Trace complete.

[Arthemisa]

I'm on TWC. So I guess we can go the proverbial south park route and partly blame Canada?

[C-croft]

I'm on TWC. So I guess we can go the proverbial south park route and partly blame Canada?

LOL, not really. San Jose is where it starts...

[Arthemisa]

Pfft I just want to blame Canada, ok?

[Namynyor]

Have you ever considered that the lag issue may be due to your own system hardware, not the router or ISP, but the computer itself? I had this issue with my laptop on v1.0 launch, when I had a 6-15 second lag on any command I tried entering processing into action with a 50MB cable connection. Upgraded the laptop, and I haven't had major lag issues since. I do have an ISP that throttles my connection now, constantly, because they're running us under a 20 year old bandwidth usage cap (240MB/day), and I am still not suffering major lag issues, so from my experiences the system hardware is more likely to be a cause of your lag than problems with SE or your ISP. However, since I don't know what your system stats are, I can't say for sure, or maybe you have a background process on the computer that's causing lag.

[Raist]

It's looking more and more like an issue with the routing partners being used by the ISP's. It's not Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, Verizon, etc. that you pay for service---it's other parties responsible for segments they have agreements with for routing through certain corridors. It's companies like Cogent, TATA, i-Web, alter.net, tinet, a host of other third parties that have failing segments. Without gathering proper documentation to show where your routing is having trouble, it's going to be near impossible to get it resolved. You can run tracert or pathping to your actual game server and forward the results to your ISP and request them to investigate further. Would be good to forward it to SE in a support ticket as well, as they may be able to forward it to Ormuco (their service provider) so they may be able to look into matters on their end as well. Unless you want to roll the dice and contact them directly yourself (you can find contact info on the troublesome IP's by looking them up at arin.net).

By the way... that 184.107.107.176 IP you guys keep using is NOT an XIV game server, it's not even connected to the data center in any way. It is the IP address for the old www.eidos.com web server, which runs on an i-web segment (not Ormuco), and houses about a dozen websites, many for the games in the EIDOS library (now owned by SE). You can run nslookup or ping the websites and you'll get that same IP address if you want to confirm it. They arent' even physically in the same location--offices are about 16 blocks apart, so they may not even be on the same node for that matter. You can see them break off differently once they get into Montreal if you trace them.

In order to properly research your issues, you really need to use the IP address that your client is actually connecting to. You can get that from resmon (Resource Monitor) and looking for ffxiv in the network sections to see what IP's it is connecting to. There will be more than one--the ones starting with 124 are background connections to Japan that remain Idle for the most part. The one you want starts with 199. For an example of what you want, here's a trace for the one I use on midgard:

C:\Windows\System32>tracert 199.91.189.74

Tracing route to 199.91.189.74 over a maximum of 30 hops
<initial hops removed for security>
4 37 ms 30 ms 43 ms xe-7-0-0.rlghncpop-rtr1.southeast.rr.com [24.93.64.40]
5 37 ms 34 ms 46 ms 107.14.19.44
6 * 33 ms * ae-4-0.a0.lax91.tbone.rr.com [66.109.1.113]
7 38 ms 36 ms 43 ms ix-17-0.tcore2.AEQ-Ashburn.as6453.net [216.6.87.149]
8 89 ms 86 ms 81 ms if-2-2.tcore1.AEQ-Ashburn.as6453.net [216.6.87.2]
9 86 ms 91 ms 88 ms 64.86.85.1
10 99 ms 91 ms 87 ms if-10-2.tcore1.TTT-Scarborough.as6453.net [64.86.32.33]
11 98 ms 102 ms 83 ms if-9-9.tcore1.TNK-Toronto.as6453.net [64.86.33.25]
12 105 ms 87 ms 114 ms if-7-2.tcore1.W6C-Montreal.as6453.net [66.198.96.61]
13 85 ms 84 ms 88 ms 66.198.96.50
14 87 ms 86 ms 87 ms 192.34.76.2
15 109 ms 117 ms 90 ms 199.91.189.234
16 101 ms 94 ms 85 ms 199.91.189.74

Trace complete.

Note the issue that crops up just as I'm trying to get off of TWC, and into a third party's routers:

6 * 33 ms * ae-4-0.a0.lax91.tbone.rr.com [66.109.1.113]
7 38 ms 36 ms 43 ms ix-17-0.tcore2.AEQ-Ashburn.as6453.net [216.6.87.149]
8 89 ms 86 ms 81 ms if-2-2.tcore1.AEQ-Ashburn.as6453.net [216.6.87.2]

This is an ongoing work in progress, trying to resolve some issues with routing for those of us in the Southeast region. We were going down into Atlanta and getting put into Cogent Communication (cogento), then getting forwarded up to Seatle, where it was frequently running into issues as we crossed the border into Canada. They've been moving my routing around the last couple weeks trying to get it ironed out, but we haven't had much luck resolving the packet losses (well, not just MINE, but mine has been changing in the last month since we started flooding TWC with reports). Don't understand the move to LA... That area (and especially San Jose) has been very flaky in the last month or so, and we also have been warning them that TATA (as6453.net) is another known offender for this problem. Yet, they managed to stick us with them this time around. Another thing that surprises me too is how they are also sending us back into Ashburn again--another corridor known to have issues in the past.

But... at least they are actually TRYING to do something about it finally. Note that this is an effort being taken by our ISP, after a lot of people contacted them and provided a lot of data identifying their problem getting to Montreal. This is NOT SE working on the problem, but TIME WARNER CABLE. Granted, it is not resolved and still a work in progress... but, at least progress IS being made... of sorts.

[Arthemisa]

Have you ever considered that the lag issue may be due to your own system hardware, not the router or ISP, but the computer itself? I had this issue with my laptop on v1.0 launch, when I had a 6-15 second lag on any command I tried entering processing into action with a 50MB cable connection. Upgraded the laptop, and I haven't had major lag issues since. I do have an ISP that throttles my connection now, constantly, because they're running us under a 20 year old bandwidth usage cap (240MB/day), and I am still not suffering major lag issues, so from my experiences the system hardware is more likely to be a cause of your lag than problems with SE or your ISP. However, since I don't know what your system stats are, I can't say for sure, or maybe you have a background process on the computer that's causing lag.

Well my computer is pretty new. I had somebody build it using this list http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/Pu...umber=20051612 and i'm running windows 7. I honestly doubt it's a hardware issue given that I (like i have said many times already) do not have any latency issues with any other game but FF14.

[Raist]

Well my computer is pretty new. I had somebody build it using this list http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/Pu...umber=20051612 and i'm running windows 7. I honestly doubt it's a hardware issue given that I (like i have said many times already) do not have any latency issues with any other game but FF14.

You likely don't have latency problems with other games because you don't have everyone running through the same networking channels as the XIV players. When the routers along your routing path get to a certain congestion level, traffic shaping rules start clamping down and that's where our packet loss and extended delays come in. It's more an issue between you and SE at play here--not something at the end points.

[Arthemisa]

And that I understand (or I think I do), but it's getting a bit tiresome to have to give the same answer to people who didn't quite read any of my posts where I've already said I've had contacted my ISP, checked my computer, posted in that thread about throtting, etc. and keep telling me the same thing: that the problem is only on my side. With all the replies I've got, it's clear that, as you said, this latency is happening somewhere in between SE and me. The thing is that I didn't have any issues until about 4 weeks ago, soon after SE added new servers and after a Saturday maintenance. That alone suggests me SE changed something that is now affecting a lot of random players, but honestly it feels like we're the ones doing all the work while SE sits there and says nothing.

[Raist]

It's due in large part to the increased traffic. Before, access was extremely restricted. Remember, SE was only letting a limited number of people get on each server at once. Now they've opened up that restriction, AND population has likely increased as well. So, those already strained network devices are getting hammered even harder now.

Look at it this way. Previously, a certain hop was already struggling when SE was having 3100 concurrent log-ins per server, when population was restricted to 5000. Now, that population restriction may be 7500 and they are allowing up to 5000 concurrent connections. Well, that hop managed by TATA, i-web, Cogent, etc. has NOT been updated to compensate as well. So, that choking point is now further pronounced than it was before.