SICK OF THE LAG FEST

**Rover1983** · 07-17-2015 05:52 AM

Originally Posted by Raist

Is every one of those games running on servers in Montreal, hosted by Ormuco...who peers with only 5 companies, none of which provides more than 3 entry points into Montreal?

You can't compare performance against something hosted elsewhere with far more access to more routes.

I understand that the servers in Montreal, but can you explain to me why ever-single-night at literally the same exact time of 5ish PM - 8ish PM shit hits the fan. Rest of the day its perfectly fine. Every single night when Im off of work I cant log in or I can but choose not to because I will encounter hefty, unplayable lag within that time range.

**Raist** · 07-17-2015 06:34 AM

Originally Posted by Rover1983

I understand that the servers in Montreal, but can you explain to me why ever-single-night at literally the same exact time of 5ish PM - 8ish PM shit hits the fan. Rest of the day its perfectly fine. Every single night when Im off of work I cant log in or I can but choose not to because I will encounter hefty, unplayable lag within that time range.

The same reason you have traffic jams at certain times of day and not others. The same reason Walmart is a major fustercluck on Black Friday. Countless other real life examples where a bunch of people clump up and clog up the flow of traffic in an area.

Everyone is getting crammed into a handful of exchanges along with everyone else (Ormuco peers with only 5 ISP's for Montreal and everyone has to ride one of those networks to get in). Ormuco themselves have tons of bandwidth to support the game's traffic, but either our ISP's or the ones they partner with to get to Ormuco have not negotiated enough upstream bandwidth to get us from here to here. And that leads us to another part of the problem-- hot spots of congestion throughout the US as well. That is again an issue of the ISP's not arranging enough upstream bandwidth at popular exchange points to properly support the high bandwidth plans they have been selling us locally.

Look at the route you take. You may see hops in areas like LA or elsewhere in Southern California, then coming across the US and up the east coast there are a few hot spots around TX, OH, most everyone makes a stop in Chicago, and eventually most everyone hits either the Washburn/DC area and/or the NY/NJ area. Then you finally hit Canada. Unless you came across one of the two or three routes around Vancouver you have about a 50/50 shot of going right to Montreal..other wise you are likely to tap Toronto first. If you are east of the US most of you are coming in through Maine, Nova Scotia, or NY/NJ. Note also that most the traffic west of California comes into the US by way of South Cali--only a small portion comes in up near Canada by way of Washington/Vancouver (this is may be an election made by the ISP's servicing those regions--someone like Telstra may be able to choose either a northern or southern path with the undersea lines).

Lots of choking points in heavily populated areas, that also have heavily utilized networks during prime time--lots of people using the internet in general, clogging the pipes.
Someone in LA can be impacted by issues occuring in Dallas, Austin, Chicago, New York---or any combination of all of them.

Edit:
Finally got home so I can pull up some links to some visuals to help illustrate the problem. Here are network maps for the 5 peers Ormuco uses:

Tata Communications (will show AS6453 in traces)
Notice how they only have TWO corridors for service into the US---and they connect in the North East---as in the NY/NJ area.

Level 3 Communications
Zoom in and you will see once again essentially TWO corridors for service to the US--by way of the north east again as well.

Cogent Communications
This one actually has an image that should render in the forums. Notice once again the limited pathways specifically into Montreal (again, only TWO):

Alter.net/UUnet (their Verizon Business peer)
It's not as easy to follow as the others, but if you zoom in on the Global mesh...you will see TWO corridors feeding into Canada

TiNET/SPA (actually GTT Telecom)
Another one that can render directly in the forum. Notice once again, only TWO corridors specifically into Montreal for the US (looks like a third, but it actually slingshots Vancouver/Toronto first to get to Seattle--it condenses into the one line between Toronto and Montreal at the end)

Until they added Verizon this past year, over 2/3's of the traffic was on Level3, TATA, and Cogent--that's right, it used to be MUCH worse. Here is their current peering breakdown:

Ormuco's Registered IPv4 Peer listing

Code:

AS701 	Verizon Business/UUnet
AS3356 	Level 3 Communications, Inc.
AS6453 	TATA COMMUNICATIONS (AMERICA) INC
AS174 	Cogent Communications
AS3257 	Tinet SpA

THAT is why we have congestion problems. These top tier ISP's have massive bandwidth available. If you look at their maps, you see how they provide a lot of cross-country transit--you likely use some of these same ISP's to access lots of content elsewhere. But along the particular exchange points to get to Montreal, their are still peering agreements that are not providing enough bandwidth to properly support the loads along the way to Montreal. A major part of the responsibility to remedy that is on the last mile ISP's we purchase internet service from.

Here is a post I made in another thread that has links to articles posted by professionals in the field (these guys have been going to the FCC for some time now about the issue, btw) and statistical data/outage maps to further demonstrate things in case anyone wants to learn more:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post3149203

**Alexika** · 07-17-2015 10:54 AM

Look, I am sick and tired of this crap. We pay our ISPs and SE for a service. Neither of them seem to care. SE could be going to bad for us, the little guy, who can't seem to get our ISP to care about anything.

Raist, you post all these fancy sayings and images but not one part of your posts actually tell us WHAT TO SAY to our ISPs to get a resolution. Some of us are layman and need more than your continued repetitive explanation with no insight on how to get it resolved.

I am also sick of the people coming in here and just saying oh get WTFast and it resolves it. That's great. Too bad I can't use it on my PS3/PS4 so for the last 9 months or more I have had an unplayable game every night from 7 to 11 PM, I mean horrendous packet loss with 10+ seconds of no data exchange. And no, I don't have some boony ISP, it is FiOS and I pay for great speeds. Speeds I literally get everywhere else, no lag in any other game or service.

So, for the love of all that you hold holy, please someone give us real direction and someone with some pull actually get things rolling, because this unacceptable. I can't raid because of this, I am not getting 2 services I pay for. You can say SE is not to blame, but they are, they are aware that some of their users have an issue and stay silent and don't get something done. They have more resources and pull with gigantic international companies that could give two craps about the rest of us.

**Raist** · 07-17-2015 02:11 PM

It has been covered time and time again...by myself and others (details were presented in this thread in fact). If you are so familiar with my posts on the matter, then you have followed threads where it has been explained/discussed how to deal with your ISP. It isn't rocket science. The hardest part about it is not taking "no" for an answer and pushing for someone more important until you find someone that will actually accept the information you have gathered and escalate the matter.

"I have <insert description of problem here, examples could be bad lag, packet loss, constant disconnections> getting to my game's servers. I have run tracerts to the game server and can forward them to you for review." They may ask for additional information like your modem's connection logs and such---should walk you through how to get them if needed.

If you are in chat, you may be able to paste in directly, or they may have an email address to use. If you are generating a support ticket through a portal, you may be able to paste it in or attach it. If it is a forum, again... paste or attach. If you are sending them an email... paste or attach.

That link to my post in another thread has a link to Blizzard's how-to for generating this magic tracert report that has been a staple diagnostic tool for 30 some odd years in the industry. It also included addresses for the game that can be used for testing (the Blizzard guide gives addresses to their servers---good idea to capture traces to both for comparison). Here it is again in case you missed it:

Running a Trace Route (a how-to from Blizzard for investigating problems)

Lobby server addresses in Canada that can be used for testing in case you don't have the actual IP address you use when playing the game:

neolobby02.ffxiv.com (this is Aether, unsure which of the other two is on what address)
neolobby04.ffxiv.com
neolobby06.ffxiv.com

The person with the pull is you. The party you need to demand the assistance from is your ISP. It is their policies that have created the problem, and they need to address it.

**Rover1983** · 07-18-2015 12:09 AM

Originally Posted by Raist

The same reason you have traffic jams at certain times of day and not others. The same reason Walmart is a major fustercluck on Black Friday. Countless other real life examples where a bunch of people clump up and clog up the flow of traffic in an area.

Everyone is getting crammed into a handful of exchanges along with everyone else (Ormuco peers with only 5 ISP's for Montreal and everyone has to ride one of those networks to get in). Ormuco themselves have tons of bandwidth to support the game's traffic, but either our ISP's or the ones they partner with to get to Ormuco have not negotiated enough upstream bandwidth to get us from here to here. And that leads us to another part of the problem-- hot spots of congestion throughout the US as well. That is again an issue of the ISP's not arranging enough upstream bandwidth at popular exchange points to properly support the high bandwidth plans they have been selling us locally.

Look at the route you take. You may see hops in areas like LA or elsewhere in Southern California, then coming across the US and up the east coast there are a few hot spots around TX, OH, most everyone makes a stop in Chicago, and eventually most everyone hits either the Washburn/DC area and/or the NY/NJ area. Then you finally hit Canada. Unless you came across one of the two or three routes around Vancouver you have about a 50/50 shot of going right to Montreal..other wise you are likely to tap Toronto first. If you are east of the US most of you are coming in through Maine, Nova Scotia, or NY/NJ. Note also that most the traffic west of California comes into the US by way of South Cali--only a small portion comes in up near Canada by way of Washington/Vancouver (this is may be an election made by the ISP's servicing those regions--someone like Telstra may be able to choose either a northern or southern path with the undersea lines).

Lots of choking points in heavily populated areas, that also have heavily utilized networks during prime time--lots of people using the internet in general, clogging the pipes.
Someone in LA can be impacted by issues occuring in Dallas, Austin, Chicago, New York---or any combination of all of them.

Edit:
Finally got home so I can pull up some links to some visuals to help illustrate the problem. Here are network maps for the 5 peers Ormuco uses:

Tata Communications (will show AS6453 in traces)
Notice how they only have TWO corridors for service into the US---and they connect in the North East---as in the NY/NJ area.

Level 3 Communications
Zoom in and you will see once again essentially TWO corridors for service to the US--by way of the north east again as well.

Cogent Communications
This one actually has an image that should render in the forums. Notice once again the limited pathways specifically into Montreal (again, only TWO):

Alter.net/UUnet (their Verizon Business peer)
It's not as easy to follow as the others, but if you zoom in on the Global mesh...you will see TWO corridors feeding into Canada

TiNET/SPA (actually GTT Telecom)
Another one that can render directly in the forum. Notice once again, only TWO corridors specifically into Montreal for the US (looks like a third, but it actually slingshots Vancouver/Toronto first to get to Seattle--it condenses into the one line between Toronto and Montreal at the end)

Until they added Verizon this past year, over 2/3's of the traffic was on Level3, TATA, and Cogent--that's right, it used to be MUCH worse. Here is their current peering breakdown:

Ormuco's Registered IPv4 Peer listing

Code:

AS701 	Verizon Business/UUnet
AS3356 	Level 3 Communications, Inc.
AS6453 	TATA COMMUNICATIONS (AMERICA) INC
AS174 	Cogent Communications
AS3257 	Tinet SpA

THAT is why we have congestion problems. These top tier ISP's have massive bandwidth available. If you look at their maps, you see how they provide a lot of cross-country transit--you likely use some of these same ISP's to access lots of content elsewhere. But along the particular exchange points to get to Montreal, their are still peering agreements that are not providing enough bandwidth to properly support the loads along the way to Montreal. A major part of the responsibility to remedy that is on the last mile ISP's we purchase internet service from.

Here is a post I made in another thread that has links to articles posted by professionals in the field (these guys have been going to the FCC for some time now about the issue, btw) and statistical data/outage maps to further demonstrate things in case anyone wants to learn more:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post3149203

Damn dude you put some effort into this. I appreciate it.

Here's another question for you that stumps me - My friend plays this on his PS4 FLAWLESSLY, zero connection issues and we're using the same router, same house, right next to each other in the same room. I'm on my PC and lag like crazy. Why the massive difference? It's somehow PC related because he has ZERO lag when we play together, meanwhile I lag like crazy

**Rover1983** · 07-18-2015 12:18 AM

Originally Posted by Alexika

Look, I am sick and tired of this crap. We pay our ISPs and SE for a service. Neither of them seem to care. SE could be going to bad for us, the little guy, who can't seem to get our ISP to care about anything.

Raist, you post all these fancy sayings and images but not one part of your posts actually tell us WHAT TO SAY to our ISPs to get a resolution. Some of us are layman and need more than your continued repetitive explanation with no insight on how to get it resolved.

I am also sick of the people coming in here and just saying oh get WTFast and it resolves it. That's great. Too bad I can't use it on my PS3/PS4 so for the last 9 months or more I have had an unplayable game every night from 7 to 11 PM, I mean horrendous packet loss with 10+ seconds of no data exchange. And no, I don't have some boony ISP, it is FiOS and I pay for great speeds. Speeds I literally get everywhere else, no lag in any other game or service.

So, for the love of all that you hold holy, please someone give us real direction and someone with some pull actually get things rolling, because this unacceptable. I can't raid because of this, I am not getting 2 services I pay for. You can say SE is not to blame, but they are, they are aware that some of their users have an issue and stay silent and don't get something done. They have more resources and pull with gigantic international companies that could give two craps about the rest of us.

I don't know why I ran into problems with WTFast but once I installed it, my whole computer crashed, restarted and continuously got a blue screen error over and over and couldn't get past it. Got into safe mode and uninstalled that piece of shit software. I may try it again but am very hesitant to repeat that process.

**Alexika** · 07-18-2015 01:03 PM

Originally Posted by Raist

It has been covered time and time again...by myself and others (details were presented in this thread in fact). If you are so familiar with my posts on the matter, then you have followed threads where it has been explained/discussed how to deal with your ISP. It isn't rocket science. The hardest part about it is not taking "no" for an answer and pushing for someone more important until you find someone that will actually accept the information you have gathered and escalate the matter.

"I have <insert description of problem here, examples could be bad lag, packet loss, constant disconnections> getting to my game's servers. I have run tracerts to the game server and can forward them to you for review." They may ask for additional information like your modem's connection logs and such---should walk you through how to get them if needed.

If you are in chat, you may be able to paste in directly, or they may have an email address to use. If you are generating a support ticket through a portal, you may be able to paste it in or attach it. If it is a forum, again... paste or attach. If you are sending them an email... paste or attach.

That link to my post in another thread has a link to Blizzard's how-to for generating this magic tracert report that has been a staple diagnostic tool for 30 some odd years in the industry. It also included addresses for the game that can be used for testing (the Blizzard guide gives addresses to their servers---good idea to capture traces to both for comparison). Here it is again in case you missed it:

The person with the pull is you. The party you need to demand the assistance from is your ISP. It is their policies that have created the problem, and they need to address it.

That's not what I mean. I get all that. What do I ask for? What is the jargon for the actual fix, how do I get them to change my routing, what are the key words?

**Alexika** · 07-19-2015 01:15 PM

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| WinMTR statistics |
| Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
| Wireless_Broadband_Router.home - 0 | 200 | 200 | 1 | 4 | 134 | 2 |
|lo0-100.PRVDRI-VFTTP-306.verizon-gni.net - 0 | 200 | 200 | 4 | 10 | 155 | 4 |
| T0-2-0-9.PRVDRI-LCR-22.verizon-gni.net - 0 | 200 | 200 | 6 | 12 | 130 | 8 |
| xe-1-0-8-0.BOS-BB-RTR2.verizon-gni.net - 0 | 200 | 200 | 6 | 25 | 163 | 9 |
|xe-9-0-2-0.NY325-BB-RTR2.verizon-gni.net - 0 | 200 | 200 | 16 | 28 | 121 | 21 |
| 0.ae7.BR1.NYC1.ALTER.NET - 0 | 200 | 200 | 15 | 20 | 134 | 15 |
| No response from host - 100 | 41 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| ae-11-11.car2.Montreal2.Level3.net - 0 | 200 | 200 | 39 | 74 | 247 | 39 |
| ae-11-11.car2.Montreal2.Level3.net - 1 | 197 | 196 | 39 | 71 | 482 | 40 |
| ORMUCO-COMM.car2.Montreal2.Level3.net - 0 | 200 | 200 | 39 | 44 | 158 | 40 |
| 192.34.76.10 - 0 | 200 | 200 | 38 | 48 | 179 | 86 |
| 199.91.189.242 - 0 | 200 | 200 | 40 | 49 | 136 | 41 |
| 199.91.189.33 - 0 | 200 | 200 | 41 | 49 | 181 | 42 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|
WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider

**Alexika** · 07-19-2015 01:25 PM

And for reference, this is after I launched VyprVPN:

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| WinMTR statistics |
| Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
| 192.168.68.37 - 0 | 200 | 200 | 18 | 24 | 369 | 19 |
| 192.168.64.1 - 0 | 200 | 200 | 20 | 25 | 371 | 25 |
| 216.166.96.152 - 0 | 200 | 200 | 18 | 24 | 368 | 19 |
| be4125.ccr41.iad02.atlas.cogentco.com - 0 | 200 | 200 | 19 | 25 | 367 | 20 |
| be2171.ccr41.dca01.atlas.cogentco.com - 0 | 200 | 200 | 20 | 24 | 378 | 23 |
| be2148.ccr41.jfk02.atlas.cogentco.com - 0 | 200 | 200 | 26 | 32 | 372 | 28 |
| be2106.ccr21.alb02.atlas.cogentco.com - 0 | 200 | 200 | 29 | 35 | 378 | 35 |
| be2088.ccr21.ymq02.atlas.cogentco.com - 0 | 200 | 200 | 34 | 40 | 384 | 36 |
| 38.122.42.34 - 0 | 200 | 200 | 35 | 40 | 384 | 36 |
| 192.34.76.10 - 0 | 200 | 200 | 33 | 42 | 381 | 35 |
| 199.91.189.242 - 0 | 200 | 200 | 33 | 39 | 383 | 35 |
| 199.91.189.33 - 0 | 200 | 200 | 33 | 38 | 384 | 34 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|
WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider

**Tom1111** · 07-19-2015 06:05 PM

Originally Posted by Raist

"everything else" is not hosted on Ormuco's lines out of Montreal Canada. You need to have your routes specifically to your game servers checked and verified to have consistent, low latency and no significant packet loss. If it does not meet all of those criteria the routing your ISP has assigned to you is at the very least an important part of your problem.

You shouldn't have to go through this crap for one game. I'm in Australia playing on a JP server and heaps of Aussies seem to be having trouble and it's only started in the last few days. If it keeps up I'll just cancel my sub and move on rather than dick around VPNs and routing.

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