good bye FFXIV, thanks to the lag, you lost another customer.

[Raist]

They just upgraded their speed again, not sure how fast it is now exactly but all my other services load very quickly.

Not trying to single out Zephyr specifically, just this part of the comment brings to mind a common misconception about how data moves through the internet. "Speed" on a network is rarely every used appropriately. Unless you are changing the medium (like switching entirely to a fiber-optic network), your speed actually remains the same regardless of what "speed" you purchase from your provider--whether that is the light-weight 2Mb plan or the ultimate 100Mb plan. Physically, your signal's speed is still constrained to the same rate because of the slowest medium in place (many networks still have copper segments in play, so you will likely not get true fiber all the way from your demarcation point all the way to demarcation at the endpoint).

Early on, standard copper was providing a cap of just over 100Mb/second per wire used--but there was a limit on the distance you could use it reliably at that speed. We more or less got faster "speeds" by increasing the number of wires/channels used and bundling them to run on different channels and such in a fashion to make it appear faster, but bit for bit we were still bound to that 100Mb/sec physical limitation. The difference was that we were splitting larger groups of bits across multiple lines/channels either at once in parallel or right behind each other in serial. That principal didn't really change that much until the introduction of alternative mediums like Fiber and such (fiber caps vary based on material and such...but you are talking the gigabit level with fiber, not megabits).

What they are selling you as "Speed" is actually "Bandwidth". It means you are sending a larger cluster of electrons in each burst... but in reality they are all traveling at the same speed. So, as long as the amount of data being sent all fits in one burst---all that extra bandwidth isn't likely providing you any benefit aside from any impact it may have on artificial lag that may be be getting injected from the wait states on the slower line. It's a common practice for slower lines to have a sort of pause injected into the send/receive cycles to slow the line, so all you are doing is removing those odd milliseconds of wait state--otherwise, the data flows at the same speed. Your data bursts for this game are really small. Watch your S/R numbers and you'll notice you're not typically saturating the line with over 11MB of data in one pass in game, the rough limit of a 100Mbit line (there is overhead in protocols and such, and the limit is actually around 120Mb, so the cap is a bit higher but you typically still won't be reaching it for this game). So long as your bandwidth is wide enough so the necessary data bursts can get encapsulated in the same number of passes, you aren't really benefiting anything significant if your latency is the same. THAT is what our problems stem from... network latency.

Think of it as traveling on the interstate. 4 people traveling in a car at 80 MPH on the highway will get from point A to B in the same time as 4 people in a bus traveling at 80 MPH (provided they don't run into any traffic jams). Even if they are on a 4-lane highway vs. 2-lanes, it is the same speed to get there (provided both routes cover the same distance). You have the same number of people traveling the same distance together at the same speed. The differences between the two(you can have more vehicles or a larger number of people moving as one unit along the same path) do not impact the time it takes for the required 4 people to reach their destination. Your need is to move JUST 4 people at once. One may be costing you more to do so (ie the bus getting worse gas mileage than the car) without getting them there any sooner (80 miles to Columbia at 80MPH will still take 1 hour, regardless of which vehicle they are in). The benefit of the wider bandwidth plans is just so you can send either larger chunks of data at once, or to send more chunks of data from multiple devices.

So... unless you are consuming a lot of data elsewhere while playing the game that might cause your packets to get delayed from over-saturation... all that extra bandwidth isn't really increasing how fast your data gets to/from SE's server for this game. That is an issue of latency that depends more on the medium being used (all fiber versus any element using one of the slower mediums like fiber/copper/wireless), distance traveled between segments, and any delays in forwarding between hops along the way.

That is the issue at hand here... problems that are increasing our latency in route and not how fat a pipe you have to the internet.

[Exion]

I am still confused after reading all of this. My game didn't lag at all. Then they release patch 2.38 and I get unplayable lag all the time. So my internet provider changed my internet route on the same day final fantasy released there patch. Is that what you are wanting me to believe?

Sounds like this patch made the game unplayable for some players and rather then address it they are just pushing blame elsewhere and ignoring it. Also strange that every other online game I play didn't start lagging the day final fantasy released patch 2.38.

[Neri]

I am still confused after reading all of this. My game didn't lag at all. Then they release patch 2.38 and I get unplayable lag all the time. So my internet provider changed my internet route on the same day final fantasy released there patch. Is that what you are wanting me to believe?

Sounds like this patch made the game unplayable for some players and rather then address it they are just pushing blame elsewhere and ignoring it. Also strange that every other online game I play didn't start lagging the day final fantasy released patch 2.38.

/shrug We have got a problem with the connection routing to Singapore on the day patch 2.38 hit which made my download speed went down to like 0.01-20 kb/sec to even download the patch. Once the patch is fully downloaded, I got constant 90k while in game. Checked the connection toward the server showed up with like 60% timeout during that time.

So yeah, it's possible.

[Clavaat]

I am still confused after reading all of this. My game didn't lag at all. Then they release patch 2.38 and I get unplayable lag all the time. So my internet provider changed my internet route on the same day final fantasy released there patch. Is that what you are wanting me to believe?

Sounds like this patch made the game unplayable for some players and rather then address it they are just pushing blame elsewhere and ignoring it. Also strange that every other online game I play didn't start lagging the day final fantasy released patch 2.38.

No, what happened was, one of the nodes on the path was crappy to begin with, and the sheer amount of data an MMO throws at it causes it to lag. People play more immediately after patches, and this patch in particular because of certain additions. Chances are, you were lagging before 2.38 but it was minimal so you didn't notice it, because not that many people were online.

And your last point is still insanely irrelevant. It would only be affecting online games that pass through that node that have a high amount of data transfer. If the game takes a separate path, all good hops, no problem. Apparently Team Fortress 2 is having a strikingly similar issue.

As I've said before, do your research. Run tests, see what's happening before making judgment calls. That's what being rational means.

[Raist]

I am still confused after reading all of this. My game didn't lag at all. Then they release patch 2.38 and I get unplayable lag all the time. So my internet provider changed my internet route on the same day final fantasy released there patch. Is that what you are wanting me to believe?

Sounds like this patch made the game unplayable for some players and rather then address it they are just pushing blame elsewhere and ignoring it. Also strange that every other online game I play didn't start lagging the day final fantasy released patch 2.38.

A crap-ton of other stuff also ramped up at the same time that 2.38 hit the wire. New game releases, football season and shows started their new seasons (remember, analog is out now--all that broadcast is digital now and shares the same wire as your internet), seasonal changeovers in multiple industries, the list goes on and on. Multiple industries have all seen dramatic increases in internet based communication in the last month or so. Your FFXIV traffic is not the only thing moving across these gateways.

http://www.akamai.com/html/technolog...try/index.html

Play with that tool some. Look at what comes up in the different apps available in the two drop menus and such (other monitoring tools show up in the top drop box, the lower one is for filtering the graphs in that one app).

[kidvideo]

Did you try restarting everything on your network? Did you run a speedtest? Did you make sure you network is secure & you don't have a neighbor downloading his torrents (because you're not, right???)?

Did you submit your comments to the FCC's advisory panel on net neutrality, or are you just an internet rager? Did you contact your government representative to work on REAL change, or do you just blame a software publisher for the extortionist dealings going on between the companies that control the internet's interconnections?

[kidvideo]

What they are selling you as "Speed" is actually "Bandwidth".

That's very nitpicky. It might be a misconception when applied to a true measure of speed, but the reality is that this is a common understanding when talking about the internet. Boy you must be fun at parties.

[Zantitrach]

That's very fast. If you want a better answer, go into Command Prompt (Start, type cmd, may need to right-click Run as Administrator). Type tracert 199.91.189.57. Then, type ping 199.91.189.57. Post the results (have to right-click the top bar -> Mark -> highlight what you need -> right-click top bar -> Copy). We can help you get a better answer, and frankly, I'm curious as to what path Comcast takes.

If you're wondering why 199.91.189.57: That's your server's IP address, found here.

Because I'm the guy that just has to know, how do I interpret this data. It looks like I should be interested, especially when most of mine are 30-60ms but then there's this one 329/540 that makes me go, huh.

[Clavaat]

Because I'm the guy that just has to know, how do I interpret this data. It looks like I should be interested, especially when most of mine are 30-60ms but then there's this one 329/540 that makes me go, huh.

Now, use http://whois.net/, and look up the IP address of the hop that has the big ms jump. That will tell you the company that owns it, and gives you sign as to who is responsible.

Use ping to that IP to tell you how much % packet loss you have (over 5% or so is really bad). For ms...basically 100 is starting to get kind of bad, so most of the time you're good. That jump is definitely bad.

Either way, you see how easy that was? And how it only took a few minutes? If everyone experiencing these issues did this, and reported this info to SE / their ISP, we might be able to get something going. Knowledge is power~~~~~~*

[Noshpan]

I live in San Francisco, CA and use Comcast. They just upgraded their speed again, not sure how fast it is now exactly but all my other services load very quickly.

http://testmy.net/ is a great site to find out your upload/ download speeds. And it's far more accurate than Speed Test (as they use scripting that can skewer the results and give you more favorable results than you would really have).