Ridiculous Lag

[Raist]

The lag in this game sucks. People stopping then teleporting forward. I randomly lag only to have the game "catch up" 15 seconds later. I see people sliding around like they are on ice. My sending and receiving are all over the place all the time. I've pretty much had it at this point.

I don't know how to interpret tracerts, but I know how to perform them, so I figured I'd give mine to SE and hope that they can identify a problem. I haven't seen problems like this for a long time. Is there anything else I can do, or should I just give up on this game?


Tracing route to 199.91.189.28 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 10.0.0.1
2 10 ms 9 ms 9 ms 96.120.14.149
3 10 ms 9 ms 10 ms te-9-4-ur02.yubacity.ca.ccal.comcast.net [68.87.213.133]
4 17 ms 17 ms 18 ms te-9-1-ur02.yubacity.ca.sacra.comcast.net [68.87.212.37]
5 28 ms 36 ms 52 ms 68.86.93.113
6 66 ms 23 ms 31 ms xe-0-2-0.lax20.ip4.tinet.net [77.67.70.181]
7 176 ms 181 ms 179 ms xe-1-3-0.mtl10.ip4.tinet.net [89.149.184.74]
8 100 ms 99 ms 101 ms ormuco-gw.ip4.tinet.net [216.221.156.110]
9 175 ms 177 ms 171 ms 192.34.76.2
10 100 ms 100 ms 98 ms 199.91.189.234
11 178 ms 188 ms 177 ms 199.91.189.28

Trace complete.


For comparison, here is my tracert to my WoW server. It times out at the point where Blizzard filters the ping response, so that is normal.


Tracing route to 63.240.161.189 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 10.0.0.1
2 11 ms 9 ms 17 ms 96.120.14.149
3 12 ms 13 ms 17 ms te-8-4-ur01.yubacity.ca.ccal.comcast.net [68.87.213.129]
4 17 ms 11 ms 11 ms te-0-3-0-4-ar03.sacramento.ca.sacra.comcast.net [68.87.212.29]
5 29 ms 16 ms 15 ms 68.86.90.133
6 20 ms 23 ms 21 ms pos-0-0-0-0-pe01.11greatoaks.ca.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.86.54]
7 33 ms 19 ms 19 ms 192.205.37.1
8 82 ms 68 ms 66 ms cr1.sffca.ip.att.net [12.122.86.198]
9 68 ms 71 ms 71 ms cr1.cgcil.ip.att.net [12.122.4.122]
10 82 ms 98 ms 75 ms gar18.cgcil.ip.att.net [12.122.99.21]
11 68 ms 137 ms 70 ms 12.122.251.14
12 69 ms 69 ms 67 ms 63.240.130.202
13 * * * Request timed out.


Trace complete.

Like many have been posting, you appear to be fighting high congestion coming across and getting out of California--bolded sections show a wide variance in response times. While a litle variance is normal, what you are seeing there (swings anywhere from +20% to +200% delay) is far beyond the normal. The trick will be convincing Comcast to look into the issues on their last segments before handing off to their routing partners--and then communicating effectively with those routing partners to investigate things on their end.

Notice the variance is happening early in your route, and not towards the endpoint when you are hitting SE's servers and their ISP's. Those hops at SE's ISP (Ormuco) are actually showing the normal variance you would expect. The increased ping time isn't that out of whack either, you're talking around 1/7th a second in delay with that response time---not hardly game breaking there, especially considering you are crossing into Canada.

The bigger concern is the wide variances in the delays at the same hops. This signifies a router is either overloaded or approaching an overloaded state, so one of two groups need to step in: the one that is forwarding you to the troubled router, or the ones managing the troubled router. Ultimately, one of two things needs to happen: the congestion is somehow relieved at the sight (this is why ISP's throttle--a byproduct of traffic shaping to control congestion), or you are re-routed to a different router to avoid the congestion.

This is something that will be difficult for you to manage--your ISP and SE will be your best advocates here. The best course of action would be to open a support ticket with both your ISP and SE, including the sample traces. This gives them a roadmap for where you are coming from, going to, how you are getting there--and gives some clues as to where the route is running into issues. They may not be able to act on it right away--but if they get enough reports exhibiting similar signs, it will eventually become actionable and they <should> take action. The trick is getting enough people to report these kinds of findings to them.