Sticky thread for NA tech support for NTT has now moved and been locked...

[ElHeggunte]

You can't trust tracert or pings to tell you the whole story.
My wife explained this to me when I was doing cisco classes.
She is a tier 3 tech for a isp and most of there router have low priority ping/icmp to prevent / curve DDOS.

Yes, thank you. That's something I forgot to mention in my previous reply. This is why you almost always seen "big" jumps in latency or even a slew of timeouts/dropped packets across the last few hops when you ping things like game servers.

[Baingoleth]

The problem is that I've seen many threads with traceroutes showing NTT's routers dropping packets and experiencing high latency intermittently. Sometimes a route is fine and other times it has this issue. A number of players have posted traceroutes in other threads showing when their routes are good and when they are experiencing trouble. I don't have to go through any problematic routers but I can imagine it is getting frustrating because it sounds like this issue has been intermittent but fairly frequent since last summer from the posts that I have read. Low priority responses shouldn't be showing timeouts or jitter in a traceroute. A 20ms response followed by a 190ms response or no response at all is too much variance. My route is consistently jitter-free and I always see responses on the route that only vary by a few ms. All of NTTs routers should respond that way. We also know from the "Status" forum that NTT routing has been an issue (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/forums/625-Status)

Take a look at these player examples of bad routes and they are just a few of the most recent I found with a quick forum search.:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post4688598
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post4679591
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post4679757

Obviouisly NTT isn't going to want to talk to a FFXIV player. It would seem they aren't able to easily solve impairments for SE either. Honestly, I'd keep opening support tickets with SE (nicely) for NTT routing problems. I imagine they want excellent routes through their ISP's network as much as the players do. Maybe with more examples they can build a better case to present to NTT.

Be aware that some players who are experiencing latency problems might have issues with their own local area network or maybe their ISP has an impairment so that's another reason to be nice in the support ticket. If the issue isn't with NTT for your individual case, you probably wouldn't want to be angry with SE for that. If you can include traceroutes for when the route is good and for when the route is bad, the support team might be able to help locate the impairment.

[Zarkovitch]

SE greatest ability hiding stuff it going backlash 1 day it just matter of time.

[Claviusnex]

It isn't just Comcast customers. I have had issues since the server move and I'm on what was TWC. The times I've run a tracert the problem always appeared to be routing problems inside the NTT network sending my stuff every which way but west. When things are running smoothly there are less more direct hops once I hit NTT. I've just kind of given up on see any real improvement as long as things remain the way they are.

[Kerwin]

My thread was moved to closed concerns without even a reply from the moderator.

Swept under the rug to be ignored.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/367406-Lag

Tell you what, this type of support leaves something to be desired.

[tymora]

To be fair, I think there is little a game company can do about ISP routing. I use Comcast as well and I have pretty much resigned myself to my fate.

[Kerwin]

To be fair, I think there is little a game company can do about ISP routing.

Server location is in the company's control. Then again, SE hardly takes feedback from NA anyways and I doubt they consider this a big enough problem to take any action.

It was a really dumb idea to put the server in California in my opinion.

I use Comcast as well and I have pretty much resigned myself to my fate.

Why? Because a company can't provide the services you pay for? It's a blatant rip off and a show of total disregard for their user base. Again, lol, at least the NA side.

[Mesarthim]

I've effectively resigned myself to using a VPN, that's money that won't be going to any optional items. If I wasn't paying for a VPN right now then over the last 3 days I'd be playing with around 200-300ms instead of around 100-110ms. NTT is actually lagging right now but I'm on the VPN to ignore it :l

[NephthysVasudan]

<snip>

Because SE is not the ISP....and because ISP's are greedy foolish and stuck up on themselves in terms of superiority complex's.
Likely because Comcast didn't get paid or something stupid....


Comcast will always respond with some half assed answer in saying "can you connect to it?" The answer being yes and anything past that will be ignored and they hang up on you.

People need to get over the simple truth that SE is not a god of gaming companies...their word is just as strong as any other company in terms of resolving issues when it comes to how ISP's configure their routers and packet routes.

NTT honestly may not even be the problem in the first place...only the conduit connection them to Comcast's nodes.

That is what I keep observing over here (West Coast) with friends/contacts.

If your on comcast and your not seeing this issue...your either paying through the nose for premium traffic or your just very lucky.
I've had friends quit the game over this..cause Comcast is all they got.

Is NTT contributing to the issue? Some say it is...don't know here. But I know Comcast is a significant cause here.

Good luck getting them to fix that.

Its why my landlord ditched them like the trash they are and we went to fiber.

[KisaiTenshi]

Is NTT contributing to the issue? Some say it is...don't know here. But I know Comcast is a significant cause here.

It's always a two-way SLA thing. Tier one ISP's basically do what's called peering, which means they allow each other to send traffic destined for each others network at zero-rated costs. Every ISP that connects to them without a peering agreement is then charged trough the nose for bandwidth. Hence places like Montreal area or San Francisco bay area end up being major peering locations since they can drop in their own fiber and the bandwidth is essentially free.

So basically the FFXIV community has pin-pointed the problem is whatever peering / routing arrangement between Comcast and NTT, in the San Jose area or so. So this is probably not something SE or Comcast customers have any leverage over. You can keep opening tickets until you're blue in the face but unless someone physically goes to check the actual equipment (maybe it's rebooting due to bad RAM that only starts producing errors when the thermal conditions are crossed) most tickets about internet traffic issues are basically "works for me (close)".

I'd almost hazard to guess that a small amount of connection drops are on the comcast side of the equation, and comcast can't be bothered to fix it because they're too big to care. This is why internet service providers should not own other assets (eg TV, TV channels, Movie studios, etc) because that results in robbing the ISP side which is almost pure profit, to fund money-losing content ventures. And since they own those content ventures they can prop them up by making service quality to other content (Eg FFXIV) low priority, while prioritizing their own content.

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/201...et-neutrality/

Comcast has already issued threats of heavy ‘paid prioritization’ surcharges and throttling against Netflix, sources have shared. The threats have been used to force Netflix to sign at least one unfavorable agreement.

And Net Neutrality rules were gutted yesterday, so prepare to see more of this.