Horrible lag on Balmung the past two evenings.

[Empty-handed]

It can't be all our different ISPs are having routing issues. -.-

[Claire_Pendragon]

On a side note, had a few groups where everyone lagged at the same time, and couldnt dodge attacks at the same time.
(Though one person in the group would be like, why are all of you just sitting there, not attacking anymore?)

Happened in quite a few groups, and was only recently, which I wonder has anything to do with the fact Balmung had too many transfers during the free transfer week.

[Raist]

It can't be all our different ISPs are having routing issues. -.-

When around one fourth (or more) of Ormuco's traffic goes through one peering ISP's network (like Level3), and that ISP is having issues...yes, it can be affecting a lot of different ISP's at the same time. That is why it is important to get your route checked out.

You don't connect directly from your modem to SE. Just as an example, you might connect to AT&T locally and bounce around a couple routers on localized segments to get to a trunk line. Then you get switched to a backbone. If AT&T doesn't peer directly with the destination network, then you may get switched around to get to a third party network that does peer with them, and then you bounce around their network for a bit until they switch you into the destination network.

This process can cause you to run across a dozen or more different networks. Each one is a potential point of failure along the way, and you can take a dramatically different route when connecting to a different service--even if the servers are physically next door to each other.

Your ISP'S routing policies determine which of those third parties you will be switched to for that peering portion of the route. Not SE, and not their ISP--your ISP. Thus, they have the quicker means if remedying bad routing through a troublesome peering partner--they can either work with your existing peering partner to clear or avoid the failing segment, they can alter pathing on their network to see if switching into that peer along a different vector avoids it, or they can use an alternate peer.

Alternatively, using a VPN may allow you to accomplish similar changes yourself...and if it does it gives you a way to demonstrate it to them and <hopefully> prod them into taking action.

When the problem stems from routing issues, your ISP can and should be stepping in to correct it, as it can be an issue impacting a large group of their customers at once.

[Gyson]

Your ISP'S routing policies determine which of those third parties you will be switched to for that peering portion of the route. Not SE, and not their ISP--your ISP. Thus, they have the quicker means if remedying bad routing through a troublesome peering partner--they can either work with your existing peering partner to clear or avoid the failing segment, they can alter pathing on their network to see if switching into that peer along a different vector avoids it, or they can use an alternate peer.

Alternatively, using a VPN may allow you to accomplish similar changes yourself...and if it does it gives you a way to demonstrate it to them and <hopefully> prod them into taking action.

Two things:

1) I'm not going to pay an extra fee per month to a VPN service to get a better route from an internet provider I'm already paying a monthly fee to, just so I can play an online game I'm already paying a monthly fee too. Asking for one more monthly fee on top of that is too much.

2) I have a dynamic IP address that changes on a daily basis, if not multiple times per day. I can not ask my ISP to reroute the internet traffic of all the hundreds of IP addresses I may use in the future.

Neither of those solutions is practical.

[Orchidias]

Square-Enix needs to resolve this, not us. Whatever you're suggesting doesn't work at all especially when you're on a PS4. It's ridiculous to have to call our ISPs that are working completely as they should, for us to play something that is a known problem for the game service provider, *not* our existing ISP. If so many players are suffering from lag, then it's not their fault.

I've been having the same issue on Jenova server, as is my bf who has it worse. I don't see any lag in housing instances or residential areas but going into populated zones like Idyllshire or dungeons will definitely kill any attempt at playing properly and I can't have that, as a healer.

[Raist]

They don't alter routing for your specific connection. They could alter information to connect you to a different gateway as a sort of quick and dirty fix (which has been applied a few times)---this effectively may cause different metrics to come in play that route you differently. That is what gets altered basically, the metrics used in route decisions. If they flip the numbers to give Tata priority over Level3 for the Durham area it can alter the pathing for all the lookups through that location. Alternatively they could also change the method they use for route decisions...there are several protocols that can be used.

That is why it requires Tier3 involvement. It involves decisions deeper into the infrastructure that impact an entire area and not just your individual account. The investigation we opened back at launch eventually led to half of Florence being rehomed to different gateways as a quick fix. I have yet to be reassigned to Florence's gateway since. I have been on Hilton Head, Orangeburg, Columbia, Santee, Charlotte, Myrtle Beach, and have been on Conway for a while now. All of it in an effort to spread traffic out to fight stability/congestion issues. What makes it happen is a group of users (mostly gamers from different areas-and not just XIV) that regularly communicate with them on it.

And no one is saying you have to pay for a VPN. Most all of them have a free trial period you can use for testing, and some offer ongoing free use policies as well. Some may provide more usage than others, but at the very least they can be a valuable diagnostic tool. If you can demonstrate that sling-shotting a different region or peering partner than the one your ISP is assigning stabilizes your sessions, it is a clear indication they need to work on their routes...be that improving connectivity upstream (maybe adding bandwidth, opening new peering agreements/routes, or tweaking shaping rules--which just happens to be a fix Orange made about 2 years ago in the UK), or altering parameters making the routing decisions.

When it is a problem ultimately triggered by an ISP's policies...those policies need to be tweaked to resolve the issue. No matter how good things are at the client and server ends, shoddy routing in between will continue to negatively impact the experience until those routing issues are resolved somehow. When it is the ISP's that establish and maintain those routes, it is up to them to make the needed corrections.

This was a major issue in the net neutrality movement...trying to get everyone to play under fair practices. There are filings with the FCC where certain ISP's were caught red-handed intentionally not making needed changes, effectively choking customer bandwidth simply to make more money (forcing content providers to pay fees for access to their customers and such). This isn't some cockamamy theory...it is a known and well documented problem with our infrastructure that we the consumers need to be pressuring the ISP's to address. Where we have been able to put enough pressure on them we have effected positive change...but there needs to be more people taking a proactive stance to fix more of the identified bottlenecks.

[Tarjaturunen]

Hi. Ive been having the same issues, other people freezing etc. It seems a lot of people are having problems, so I think it must be a problem from SE's end.

[RocheKat]

YES, THATS WHATS HAPPENING TO ME! I can't make it stop, I tried reseting my router, I tried pinging the server and I get this

Reply from 199.91.189.74: bytes-32 time=92ms ttl=45
Reply from 199.91.189.74: bytes-32 time=92ms ttl=45
Reply from 199.91.189.74: bytes-32 time=92ms ttl=45
Reply from 199.91.189.74: bytes-32 time=91ms ttl=45

average is 91ms. So I honestly don't know why I get the whole freeze, stop freeze stop. I can't play this game anymore till its fixed.

run it for longer... you can go long periods with perfect connection and then get ping spikes and packets lost for a bit and then go back to a perfect connection.

[Gyson]

This isn't some cockamamy theory...it is a known and well documented problem with our infrastructure that we the consumers need to be pressuring the ISP's to address. Where we have been able to put enough pressure on them we have effected positive change...but there needs to be more people taking a proactive stance to fix more of the identified bottlenecks.

A route that is, unfortunately, not going to change anything before I get tired of the nightly sessions of heavy lag and cancel my FFXIV account all together. I don't need this fixed in months or years, I needed it fixed yesterday. There are plenty of online games I can be playing that don't have this issue (whether it's because they don't route through that provider or not), which means if the FFXIV developers are interested in keeping our business they need to start moving mountains on their end. They, as a corporation, are more equipped to do that than any one individual gamer.

What's the point in having a technical support forum if the only thing that happens here is two end-users debating about whose responsibility the fix falls to?

[Samezuka]

I am located in the bottom tip of Florida and play on jenova. I used to be able to play fine until maintenance last Tuesday too. My game starts freezing up and being hit by heavy lag the later in the evening it gets. I reported it in a chat with square Enix where they told me to disable the firewall for ps4 and enable port forwarding to their ports so I asked AT&T to set up port forwarding for the ps4 on my router but that didn't help at all. If anything the lag was worse. I am not sure what more I can do on my own end to fix it since AT&T already said they're not allowed to reroute it through any other way than the one I am already using. They refuse to make any changes so the suggestions to reach out to them while reasonable in theory are ineffective in practice. It is starting to seem like rather than the individual ISPs, there is a problem further down the route that all our connections are running through to get to the servers in Montreal. If that's the case, I hope square Enix investigates it otherwise I won't be able to enjoy 3.1 at this rate and may have to let my subscription run out as well.