Server Lag (not due to routing!)

[CommissarRage]

Hey guys! Bought the game a couple of days ago, been able to log into Ultros pretty consistently, but have been plagued by the omnipresent lag to the point of unplayability. In game, my outbound latency is generally less than 100ms, but inbound is either zero or five digits. It's impossible to interact with any npcs, enemies, etc for a few minutes until I error 90k DC.

I've performed several tracerts to the montreal datacenter (though not to the specific world server), and notice packets consistently drop at 38.122.42.34 (whois identifies this as a cogent server). However, if I VPN to an exit location elsewhere in the country (I live in texas), or in another country I bypass this node entirely and no packets are dropped--- but I'm still horribly laggy in game. To me, this indicates that it's likely not a routing issue, no?

To complicate matters, my younger brother lives with me and has had no trouble connecting to or playing on his server, Phoenix. He reports that the inbound and outbound latencies can read somewhat high in game, but that it has little to no discernible effect on actual gameplay.

To cover all the other bases--- I'm on a 30 down/5 up cable connection, confirmed with a speedtest, and pingtest shows 20ms latency, zero packets lost and zero jitter to a nearby server. As above, using VPN I drop no packets when pinging the montreal datacenter. Does anyone have any suggestions, or can I chalk this up to server side mischief? Thanks.

Edit: I played in beta and never had any trouble. I'm also subscribed to two other mmos and never have any trouble.

[ntall1]

I love how SE just lets us all sit here and speculate.

[Gonzothegreat198]

It could still fall under the heading of routing, just not the kind that anything can be done about at least on our end. Your ISP or VPN can only reroute you to a certain point, once it gets to that point in the route, thats the only way it can go to get there, i would guess this would be the backbone for the datacenter though it could be before that. If theres not enough bandwidth to support the amount of connections to the datacenter on that primary route, then it's going to get congested easily. That being said, it could also still be the networking hardware not being capable enough to hand the amount of incoming connections, hence why most mmo's usually split up NA and EU to their own datacenters. Heck, iirc blizzard uses MULTIPLE NA datacenters for wow, i think they've got both west coast and east coast ones. Though maybe thats a different MMO i'm thinking of.

[CommissarRage]

It could still fall under the heading of routing, just not the kind that anything can be done about at least on our end. Your ISP or VPN can only reroute you to a certain point, once it gets to that point in the route, thats the only way it can go to get there, i would guess this would be the backbone for the datacenter though it could be before that. If theres not enough bandwidth to support the amount of connections to the datacenter on that primary route, then it's going to get congested easily. That being said, it could also still be the networking hardware not being capable enough to hand the amount of incoming connections, hence why most mmo's usually split up NA and EU to their own datacenters. Heck, iirc blizzard uses MULTIPLE NA datacenters for wow, i think they've got both west coast and east coast ones. Though maybe thats a different MMO i'm thinking of.

Blizzard has NA datacenters in NY, Chicago, Phoenix, and LA--- one per time zone.

The routing issue doesn't make sense considering my brother in the next room, accessing the servers through the same network hardware and route, has no problems. That points to my box being the trouble, but I have no problems in any other game or application, and all of my diagnostics come up perfect. I want so badly to lay this on SE, but if it's a their hardware/the trunk feeding it, then why are only certain people afflicted? It's incredibly frustrating, and I've seen many mmos over the years damned for less.

[Ruprect]

The router after the 38.122.42.34 does not respond to pings, that is why all 3 time out and it moves on to the next hop. It is completely normal and not the reason you have lag. This is 100% an SE problem, they have been plagued with server issues on the NA/EA since open beta and cannot seem to fix it but make it worse.

6 23 ms 23 ms 23 ms bbr01chcgil-bue-1.chcg.il.charter.com [96.34.0.9
]
7 23 ms 23 ms 23 ms bbr02chcgil-bue-6.chcg.il.charter.com [96.34.0.6
7]
8 16 ms 18 ms 16 ms 38.122.181.65
9 17 ms 17 ms 17 ms be2004.mpd22.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.5.
9]
10 40 ms 39 ms 39 ms be2082.ccr22.yyz02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.28
.10]
11 42 ms 42 ms 40 ms be2090.ccr21.ymq02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.30
.206]
12 42 ms 42 ms 43 ms 38.122.42.34
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 112 ms 105 ms 97 ms 192.34.76.2
15 59 ms 56 ms 76 ms 199.91.189.234
16 102 ms 72 ms 64 ms 199.91.189.74

Trace complete.

I removed the first few for security. As you can see I have no problem getting to the server yet I have had horrible lag issues since beta. This is an se problem.

[Myschaella]

I played all day today with zero lag until about 6pm CET (I live in Europe) then I started getting a little lag (was in AK at the time), but playing was no problem. Anyway I went to eat and came back at 8pm CET and wow game unplayable again. I stated in another thread this problem has only been since last weeks maintenance and is now even worse after this weeks maintenance. The other 4 MMOs that I am currently messing about in have zero lag issues. So I would say despite the best efforts of a few to persuade me otherwise in another thread, this is a SE problem and with my sub up in next few days some comment from SE about it to persuade me to re new would be nice (ie we are aware of the problem and are working hard to resolve it). I hate when companies are talkative with the player base when everything is going right but as soon as something is wrong they clam up and leave the players hanging.

[Yoggi]

I played all day today with zero lag until about 6pm CET (I live in Europe) then I started getting a little lag (was in AK at the time), but playing was no problem. Anyway I went to eat and came back at 8pm CET and wow game unplayable again. I stated in another thread this problem has only been since last weeks maintenance and is now even worse after this weeks maintenance. The other 4 MMOs that I am currently messing about in have zero lag issues. So I would say despite the best efforts of a few to persuade me otherwise in another thread, this is a SE problem and with my sub up in next few days some comment from SE about it to persuade me to re new would be nice (ie we are aware of the problem and are working hard to resolve it). I hate when companies are talkative with the player base when everything is going right but as soon as something is wrong they clam up and leave the players hanging.

Exactly the same happened to me. Unplayable from Sweden, 300-500ms latency.

[Twilite]

I played all day today with zero lag until about 6pm CET (I live in Europe) then I started getting a little lag (was in AK at the time), but playing was no problem. Anyway I went to eat and came back at 8pm CET and wow game unplayable again. I stated in another thread this problem has only been since last weeks maintenance and is now even worse after this weeks maintenance. The other 4 MMOs that I am currently messing about in have zero lag issues. So I would say despite the best efforts of a few to persuade me otherwise in another thread, this is a SE problem and with my sub up in next few days some comment from SE about it to persuade me to re new would be nice (ie we are aware of the problem and are working hard to resolve it). I hate when companies are talkative with the player base when everything is going right but as soon as something is wrong they clam up and leave the players hanging.

A lot of players free trials are not up yet, including mine. They will start caring when 'expected' subs aren't coming in as expected.

[StarMarmot]

I'm by no means a techie, but I had similar issues and found someone here on the tech support boards suggesting to disable LargeSendOffload for your ethernet adapter. Seemed to help some for me, making the spiky periods less frequent. Of course could be unrelated, but it's easy to try. Googling that and it seems to be a common culprit with excessive latency. You can find instructions here in the thread with !FIX! something in the header or google if it's no longer here.

Also just now tried one of those routing services for a free 30 days - that did actually help me quite a bit, going from very laggy and spiky to a seamless 120 ms post installing. I do however live in europe, and I suppose the benefits for me would be more helpful.

[Noah_]

38.122.42.34 (whois identifies this as a cogent server)

38.122.42.34 is not cogent, whois says it is owned by Ormuco