SICK OF THE LAG FEST

[pandabearcat]

Yikes, so much animosity. Not sure why WTFast crashes your comp, are you running some crazy os like xp or vista? I have a super old pos machine that runs at 17 fps and it installed and ran fine with me.

As for "this shouldn't be my problem" I'm pretty sure everyone here knows that. But they're not fixing it, so you have three options.

1. Deal with it
2. Quit the game
3. Find some workaround

Not being facetious, but really those are all valid options. If the game is causing you a ton of frustration it simply might not be the game for you. I know I quit wildstar because my pos laptop couldn't handle it (also because that game sucked, but =P)

Anyway, if you're on a console, I can't help you. Sorry. If you wanted customizability and tools to solve your problem, you should've been on a PC. I'm not hating on consoles, but you knew what you were getting into. Similarly, like I knew I wasn't going to play on 4k 60fps ultra on my laptop. You will have to wait for your ISP or Squenix to solve the problem. Maybe the upcoming network maintenance can help.

[Raist]

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.

If you had a bad route to Netflix, it could be the same--there would be millions of customers not affected, but it could be only people from your region/provider that are having problems. If it was your path to PSN or XBL...it could be the same. It could be because of problems in particular regions you are routed through to get to the service and not the service itself.

Until you rule out the known network issues that have been documented time and time again to be at the very least an important contributing factor and correctable by your ISP and/or their routing partners---you can't just dump it all on SE's shoulders.

Have you at least tried checking the status of your service provider? Some have their own internal page (like Telstra), or you can try one of the tracking sites like the downdetector group here in the US. They have a separate site just for Australia as well, called aussieoutages.com:

https://aussieoutages.com/companies

Just glancing at a handful of services/ISP's there seems to be a consistent issue along mostly the southern and eastern borders, but there are also reports coming from the west coast as well. Not talking exactly backwater towns here either---Sidney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adalaide, to name a few.

Those names may not sound that important to you until you look at how traffic gets routed. For example, take a look at a couple network maps. Notice how traffic is routed to North America. Keep in mind that some of the smaller last mile ISP's will use another companyi's undersea lines for transit--so even if you subscribe to Adam or someone else, you may be using Telstra or SingTel for the intercontinental transit.

http://maps.telstraglobal.com/
http://business.singtel.com/coverage/googlemaps/

The same kind of thing happens again when you get stateside. You can get crammed onto a crappy Level3 route to get into Montreal for this game, but for any other service you may get a cleaner route through TATA, Cogent, ATT, or even XO---it depends on how you are getting routed to a specific destination. Just like if you were driving, flying, or traveling by train---the path to Chicago or Miami will be different than to Montreal....and you run the risk of running into slowdowns/delays for a host of reasons no matter what mode of transit you are using to get there.

[Alexika]

Anyway, if you're on a console, I can't help you. Sorry. If you wanted customizability and tools to solve your problem, you should've been on a PC. I'm not hating on consoles, but you knew what you were getting into. Similarly, like I knew I wasn't going to play on 4k 60fps ultra on my laptop. You will have to wait for your ISP or Squenix to solve the problem. Maybe the upcoming network maintenance can help.

Knew what we were getting into? Such an absurd and ignorant comment. Nowhere did it say that those of us with certain ISPs in certain regions would experience lag while the rest of the players get to enjoy it uninhibited. This reeks of retarded PC elitist crap from the get-go.

[Tom1111]

If you had a bad route to Netflix, it could be the same--there would be millions of customers not affected, but it could be only people from your region/provider that are having problems. If it was your path to PSN or XBL...it could be the same. It could be because of problems in particular regions you are routed through to get to the service and not the service itself.

My netflix works fine, every other game works fine, this game used to work fine, if it stays shit I'll just play something else, I'm not dicking around for a game that i pay to play.

[Raist]

My netflix works fine, every other game works fine, this game used to work fine, if it stays shit I'll just play something else, I'm not dicking around for a game that i pay to play.

Missing the point. How many of those other good services are located in Montreal? You take a specific path to get into Ormuco in Montreal---NONE of their peers have more than 3 pathways in...most only have TWO. A problem in one specific region can knacker up access through a specific corridor, and depending on the nature of the event (like widescale, massive congestion, or severe weather related)--it can affect multiple service providers that are going through that same area. Anything NOT using that bad corridor may be just fine.

This is a problem dealing with the internet service providers that SE has no interaction with...no business dealing, no actionable agreement. It is simply not something SE can address. Our ISP's however have agreements in place that CAN remedy these types of situations---be that to alter the routing to avoid the problem area or work with their routing partner to resolve the issue.

Take a look at a thread that ties into this very scenario that started today:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...002-Disconnect

Appears it was an issue between Comcast and Level3 causing the problem, NOTHING to do with SE--no way for SE to exert influence over a problem between those two companies. The issue was being posted at different sites by the way, for multiple services as it was affecting traffic being routed through one specific corridor out of the south. An area you likely are not getting routed through.

It was an area I currently am not routed through (Marietta, GA and Atlanta), though I am just one state away from where the problem occurred. I sometimes do get routed through Atlanta via Cogent, but I am currently routed northward through Raleigh/Durham by TATA (a change TWC made just yesterday when my modem restarted when I was in WP-HM), so I was unaffected by the outage. But there were people on my same data center and world service that were negatively impacted---because their ISP was trying to route them through there.

The short-term workaround to restore access to the game servers was to use a VPN to alter the routing, avoiding the downed exchange until the route could be corrected.

It should also be noted that AT&T had a downed node last month in Atlanta that knocked out a lot of traffic. Our dealerships lost all access to data for invoicing and such. 17 locations in total had their hands tied for an entire afternoon because of it (took about 5 hours to repair). It wasn't Reynolds that was at fault (our software vender/service)--but AT&T that had the problem, and ONLY AT&T could fix it. About 10 years ago, a similar thing happened in Columbia---a fiber trunk got cut by construction crews. They actually pulled in equipment from the National Guard to help restore service, and it took pretty much all day to do it. It knackered up a LOT of traffic until TWC and ATT got things routed away from Columbia.

[Ash_]

-snip-

Until you rule out the known network issues that have been documented time and time again to be at the very least an important contributing factor and correctable by your ISP and/or their routing partners---you can't just dump it all on SE's shoulders.

Have you at least tried checking the status of your service provider? Some have their own internal page (like Telstra), or you can try one of the tracking sites like the downdetector group here in the US. They have a separate site just for Australia as well, called aussieoutages.com:

https://aussieoutages.com/companies

Just glancing at a handful of services/ISP's there seems to be a consistent issue along mostly the southern and eastern borders, but there are also reports coming from the west coast as well. Not talking exactly backwater towns here either---Sidney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adalaide, to name a few.

-/endsnip-

I spent over 2 hours talking to Telstra's tech support last night and they were absolutely no help whatsoever. I quote "By the way, please be aware that BigPond doesn't guarantee any set Pings times or Latency" from the person I spoke to.

I took this snapshot from pingplotter earlier in the day:


When I was talking to the tech support at Telstra, I had ping plotter running in the background again while talking to them, all those numbers remained consistent except for the last 4 just before Asura's IP; the last 4 (all SE addresses) were reading 100% packet losses. Also of concern is the high jitter next to SE's IP addresses.

Now I do agree there seems to be an issue that Telstra insist doesn't exist. They even tried telling me over twitter that the underwater cable is damaged.. but there is no news regarding any damaged cables. However SE's servers should still never reach 100% packet loss.

And just for the record, this also started happening for me immediately following the emergency maintenance, nothing else affected, not even connections to PSO2's Japan servers are affected. And that game is susceptible to intense lag more than FFXIV.

[Raist]

Yeah.. there is something going on there that needs to be tracked down. I'm on US-East Coast, and I stay mostly 190-200 when I hammer that IP with pings. Trace shows me going across the US to LA, then running undersea lines to asianet. From then on the pathing is fairly similar, except for a few hops:

14   195 ms   195 ms   194 ms  ip-202-147-0-52.asianetcom.net [202.147.0.52]
15   196 ms   195 ms   197 ms  gi1-0-0.gw1.nrt5.asianetcom.net [202.147.0.178]
16   196 ms   197 ms   213 ms  squareco.asianetcom.net [203.192.149.210]
17   197 ms   196 ms   198 ms  61.195.56.129
18   209 ms   197 ms   197 ms  219.117.144.66
19   188 ms   189 ms   290 ms  219.117.144.53
20   187 ms   192 ms   190 ms  219.117.144.41
21   196 ms   195 ms   200 ms  219.117.147.190
22   193 ms   193 ms   192 ms  124.150.157.29

What concerns me is the massive spike you take between 202.84.223.42 and 202.84.249.50 (84 to 227?). They both list with the Hong Kong jurisdiction. Geolocation could be off I guess... wouldn't be the first time. Even if that first one is actually an exchange in AU that connects to transit to HK, that seems a bit higher than it could/should be getting into Japan (not to mention a bit around the elbow to get to the thumb). Time Warner runs more directly to PACNET in Japan, so I only get about a 100ms jump going all the way from LA to Tokyo.

IDK if they have other options for routing you more directly or not---they may have a way to get you more directly into Shinjuku or maybe even further south by way of Osaka should be better. The trick is getting in touch with someone in the know. If they have an online support portal/email option, I wonder if you may gain more traction if you were to forward them the data you have on the route. It's worked for others in the past here in the states.

[TeaTimeBear]

...

I don't know why people assume you cannot find a fix for console. I have.

[PowerRedundancy]

It doesn't really matter if you use WTFast or not, if the Japanese host servers/peering partners are having problems, your latency will be bad in any case.

Having gone a week with normal latency, it has spiked back to 250ms+ again. WTFast servers (JP2) is also having problems routing traffic from certain Oceanic regions. The Montreal servers have higher ping, but they are much more consistent compared to the Japanese servers which seem to hate certain routes/ISPs.

[OrochiSerge]

Hello, PS4 user. I was lucky enough to not have any lag issues until 2.55 where I started to get lag during peak times on week nights, since 2.55 the lag issues progressively become worse. I have Verizon Fios running 75/75 connection, my PS4 is wired to my modem. I don't think it's the service since I've been using Fios since the launch of 2.0 and I haven't had this kind of lag until now. Though I did upgrade my modem/router to one of the Fios Gateway routers this past weekend and the issue still continues.

I really do enjoy this game but it's getting to the point where I can't even consider running Bismark or Ravana EX fights, and there is no way I can do Alexander Savage with these issues on peak nights. I don't think this is an issue with my isp as it just happened with an update with the game, and I've heard many others with different other ISPs having the same issue. I really hope SE is working on this, or at least aware of this.

I'm on Balmung btw, and I know Aether has two of the most populated servers in the game.

I should also add I'm in Northern Virginia too, near Dulles. Unfortunately being a PS4 user I can't use WTFast, and no I will not upgrade my PC for one game.