Lagging on perfect connection.

[BigTough]

One of the hops/ip address's times out. I can't imagine that's normal?

[MiniTofu]

Some server won't report back anything.

PingZapper is another good one.

[BigTough]

Well I got on with tech support and they just told me to open a few ports. I did and then I couldn't even connect to the data center after that. Would a static IP help with the ports being open at all?

[Jonny_Tapas]

Lag is not often caused by your connection or ISP... It's most often caused by the route taken between your home and the Data Center.

Download WTFast, (30 day free trial). This is a GPN that will optimize the route and most likely fix your problem. If it does not, the probable cause is the FF server itself or your ISP.

You say one of your hops is timing out... this is the problem in the current route, and the cause of your lag. Your ISP won't fix it, SE won't fix it. A GPN will.

[Raist]

Wrong address. That 186 address is a webserver that hosts sites in the EIDOS lineup as well as a few games from SE. It is on i-web lines and has nothing to do with the game servers on Ormuco's lines.

You can get the actual address you use while logged fully into the game by either running the netstat command from a CMD prompt or by running Resource Moniter (resmon from the search/run box) and looking for the address ffxiv is using under the TCP or network sections. The servers in Canada start with 199. For Japan they will usually start with 124, but occasionally may see one starting with 202.

Alternatively you can use the lobby server DNS names.

neolobby02.ffxiv.com
neolobby04.ffxiv.com
neolobby06.ffxiv.com

Those are the ones for Canada. The ones in Japan look the same but use odd numbers (01,03,05).

Note that even though you play on a server in Canada you still connect to Tokyo for authentication, version checking, and content in the launcher and such. It is vey easy for things to go south along a route and knacker things up. It happens often, and has been shown time and time again to be an issue in route to the servers and not the servers themselves. Some of the more frequent offenders are Level3, TiNet/Spa, and alter.net.

If you spot issues in a trace you need to get the results forwarded to your ISP's Tier3 support team. They will be the best people to analyze the route and file for escalation to pull in the right people or to otherwise tweak things to try to get around any failing/congested nodes.

That is what typically is at fault here...bad network segments that are ramping up latency and causing retransmits or loss of session. Your "speed" is not an issue...what you are actually testing is throughput, more appropriately gauged as your bandwidth and not speed. The electrons all flow at the same speed according to the medium used (copper or fiber). The difference is how many are bundled per cycle--that is your bandwidth. The two work together to provide your capacity (or throughput) of say 50mbps.

This game barely requires more than dialup levels of bandwidth for normal gameplay. ADSL lite is more than enough for this game. The problem is your latency..more specifically it's consistency to remain low so packets are sent/received in a timely and orderly fashion so as to avoid retransmits or packet loss.

[BigTough]

I got the right IP... and It's starting to make sense.. but SE tells me it's my ISP and my ISP tells me it's SE. I don't think either of them even looked to see where this hop is dropping from. There isn't even a hop name or ip or anything. Just times out and is blank. It's the second one(hop) too.

Going to call my ISP back and really press them to look into this further.

Thanks everyone for all the help, really appreciate it! Will get back if anything changes.

[Eye_Gore]

I'm no IT guru but I think the second one is your ISP, the first is your router.

[Raist]

Well I got on with tech support and they just told me to open a few ports. I did and then I couldn't even connect to the data center after that. Would a static IP help with the ports being open at all?

Remove the port forwarding. That should only be necessary to avoid security like you would find in workplace or university environments. It forwards all inbound traffic on specific ports to a specific address--used mostly to allow unsolicited inbound traffic for things like remote desktop, inbound VPN, and servers. You are requesting an outbound connection first, so the stateful firewall and routing will allow the return traffic (SPI and NAT built into the router do this). So you should not need port forwarding in the typical setup. It can actually create problems under some conditions.

Also disable UPNP on your router if it is active. It has been known to cause stability issues in the past.

[HKagemusha]

I'm struggling with the same issue. This started precisely on the day of the poetics cap increase, and has frustrated me as the evenings have become lag fests that make running dungeons for poetics challenging to say the least. The mornings have not been much of an issue, and prior to that I rarely had any issues at all in three months of playing.

Tracert is reporting the 4th and 5th hops timing out consistently. I don't really understand all the technical aspects here, I'm at a loss as to what to do. WTFast charges per month to reroute don't they?

I'd appreciate any help, this issues is becoming unbearable.

[flicken]

i must agree, i have been playing flawlessly since launch and now after the poetic cap increase, i now have lag on Primal/Malboro servers. i did a pathping and IP trace to the NA data center and i was around 73 ms average with no packet loss, but yet i get players and spells will stop, then speed up really fast to catch up, this is a SE server problem and i know this because why would my game run great for over a year and then after a emergency maintenance on the 17th for Primal, it starts acting up?

Also note that i had my ISP's Tier 3 tech on the phone and at my house checking things out and "its not on my end" and im not paying WTfast to play a game, thats just stupid. my route is only 5 stops to NA data center through Century link.
The server is having problems and needs to be looked at and i have a good deal of my FC that will prove the lag on Malboro just started. Please fix.