Need help finding the cause of these seemingly connectivity-based issues.

[Aeliott]

After constantly erratic performance, I'm getting pretty frustrated with this and would at least like to get to the bottom of the cause. Firstly, PS3 system. Though I'm not sure how much of a factor that is.

Now most of the time the game runs fine enough, but every few weeks I seem to get stuck with some issues that make the game pretty much unplayable. Client goes fine, title screen goes fine...then I get into the game. If I'm lucky, rubber banding. Usually though, people are frozen and friend/FC lists don't load - as though you lost connection - this lasts from...30 seconds to a minute before the game gives up and gives me the 90k error message. I get sent back to title screen, log in again, same thing happens every time. Although chat channels will still update, I can read and type in FC chat and I will be seen. Also, I am still connected to the internet on other device such as my laptop, but that should be obvious considering I can log right back in after getting booted.

It seems pretty stable if I stay in an inn room, but occasionally even then it will lag in updating player lists. I should add my connection signal is usually good-excellent.

Sometimes when it strikes, it will lay off for a few hours. For example the night before last the game was unplayable, but yesterday I was able to do coil before it struck again. Another "lesser" side effect sometimes is that I can play somewhat normally, but in dungeons player and enemy locations don't update. So on my screen my tank will be chilling in one of the previous rooms when he's actually in front of me taking hits, but I can't heal him because my skills are "redded" out as though he's too far away. Sometimes a model isn't even there so they're completely untargetable. In coil turn 1 yesterday as an example, on one attempt that should have been successful, the second snake remained in the center of the room on my screen, and I could do nothing. If I try and attack where it appears for me the skills won't register. If I move to where I know it is, I could hit it with untargeted AoE but nothing else. That was an embarrassing one.

As I understand it, throttling would be a constant thing if that was the issue, so I'm doubtful if that's the cause, though I have to admit I don't really know how it functions exactly. Both most severe occasions have been towards the end of the month, but I've been well within my 40gb per month usage (to be honest I'd be rid of the cap altogether, but I that's out of my hands).

On some occasions I've had errors on signing in to PSN when this has happened. While it would be easy to assume that this is the case, other times when I suffer this problem I've had trouble connecting to PSN, but infrequently. So I wouldn't know if PSN was the problem or if that was just another side effect of whatever the problem is.

The symptoms imply connectivity issues...I think. But then why sometimes is it fine when I've changed nothing? It's like it even when nobody else on our broadband connection is downloading or anything. A week or so later it'll go back to being okay.

[Lurkios]

Network problems can be a bit of a pain to diagnose. At first glance I'd say this sounds a lot like packet loss.

What service are you using, and how are you connecting to it? (Are you using satellite, cable, fiber, 3/4g access point? Connected via wired or wireless?)

During one of these periods of poor connectivity, try running the command: "ping -n 120 8.8.8.8 > C:\out.txt" from a Windows systems command prompt or run menu. It will create a file called "out.txt" in your "C:\" directory which you can then upload to a site like www.pastebin.com for us to have a look at (this file will include your Windows username near the top, feel free to redact that).

[Aeliott]

BT Homehub router, connected wirelessly. I just tried that command prompt, but it said access is denied?

[Marishi-Ten]

Basically, you would need to enable either copying from the command prompt to drop into a .txt file so you can paste them in either a reply here or upload it to a cloud. Can you provide some information?

Location - <Country>
Speed - <up/down mb/s>
Connectivity - <wireless I believe>

<ping -n 199.91.189.22>

<tracert 199.91.189.22>

Most of the stuff you will see won't be of real value. You will have to ping during the times you are having connectivity issues as well as tracert. You want to look for any hop with an asterisk and ping values over 200. If you can find the packet loss, you can at least know where it's coming from.

PS3's can't really use VPN programs (at least not easily) so I'm not sure how much help we can provide.

[Aeliott]

Location - England
Speed - Upload: 0.38 MB/s (approx), Download: 2.17 MB/s (approx). This is at present, while these issues are going on in-game.
Connectivity - Wireless

Pinging 199.91.189.22 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 199.91.189.22: bytes=32 time=118ms TTL=240
Reply from 199.91.189.22: bytes=32 time=114ms TTL=240
Reply from 199.91.189.22: bytes=32 time=114ms TTL=240
Reply from 199.91.189.22: bytes=32 time=113ms TTL=240
Reply from 199.91.189.22: bytes=32 time=114ms TTL=240
Reply from 199.91.189.22: bytes=32 time=115ms TTL=240
Reply from 199.91.189.22: bytes=32 time=130ms TTL=240
Reply from 199.91.189.22: bytes=32 time=120ms TTL=240
Reply from 199.91.189.22: bytes=32 time=123ms TTL=240
Reply from 199.91.189.22: bytes=32 time=115ms TTL=240

Ping statistics for 199.91.189.22:
Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 113ms, Maximum = 130ms, Average = 117ms

Tracing route to 199.91.189.22 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 2 ms 99 ms 99 ms BThomehub.home [192.168.1.254]
2 28 ms 29 ms 28 ms 217.32.141.128
3 29 ms 35 ms 29 ms 217.32.141.190
4 33 ms 35 ms 33 ms 212.140.235.66
5 32 ms 34 ms 39 ms 31.55.164.191
6 33 ms 40 ms 33 ms 31.55.164.109
7 32 ms 32 ms 33 ms acc2-10GigE-0-5-0-6.bm.21cn-ipp.bt.net [109.15
248.228]
8 44 ms 39 ms 39 ms core1-te-0-13-0-4.ilford.ukcore.bt.net [109.15
248.136]
9 37 ms 37 ms 37 ms peer2-xe3-3-0.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net [109.159
54.231]
10 38 ms 38 ms 37 ms t2c3-xe-0-2-0-0.uk-lon1.eu.bt.net [166.49.211.
0]
11 43 ms 40 ms 39 ms be3035.ccr21.lon01.atlas.cogentco.com [130.117
4.169]
12 40 ms 38 ms 38 ms te0-2-0-4.mpd21.lon13.atlas.cogentco.com [154.
.57.94]
13 45 ms 46 ms 46 ms be2285.ccr21.lpl01.atlas.cogentco.com [130.117
9.126]
14 126 ms 127 ms 126 ms te0-2-0-4.ccr21.ymq02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.
.0.70]
15 115 ms 114 ms 114 ms 38.122.42.34
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 116 ms 157 ms 116 ms 192.34.76.2
18 115 ms 115 ms 117 ms 199.91.189.234
19 118 ms 115 ms 115 ms 199.91.189.22

Trace complete.

The above looks rather normal as far as I know, apart from hop 16.

[Marishi-Ten]

Location - England
Speed - Upload: 0.38 MB/s (approx), Download: 2.17 MB/s (approx). This is at present, while these issues are going on in-game.
Connectivity - Wireless





The above looks rather normal as far as I know, apart from hop 16.

Hop 16 is internal in the Montreal Data Center. Look at the huge latency spike between hops 13 and 14. You go from 46ms to 126ms. Though latency is additive, you shouldn't see a spike that high between two points.

Well, well. Looks like Cogent is having all sorts of issues today (namely between SBC and AT&T). This is more than likely the cause of the rubber banding. backbones experiencing latency with one another. It happens sometimes (you get hit the worst as your data stream has to go from the UK to Canada). Nothing we can really do about it, but the good news is they usually resolve the issues rather quickly.

You could contact your ISP and request (they may or may not do it) that they reroute you around either Cogent, AT&T, and SBC nodes.

http://www.internetpulse.net/

[Aeliott]

Thanks a lot for the clarification really appreciate your time.
Glad they get resolved, but it is of course frustrating getting hit every so often. At least now I have an idea of what the cause most likely is. Coincidentally enough my game appears to be running fine just now.

[Marishi-Ten]

I'm glad it's working for you now!

On a related note; if your ISP won't reroute you, use a proxy server to get around the problem backbones. I use battleping where I'm proxied into their Chicago server. Latency is non existent at this point for me.

Also, it looks like Cogent and Level3 are having major issues with one another. Fix A only to have B break... Welcome to the world of IT!

[Heartlly]

Haveing the same issuse as OP since last friday when i done coil.
Had the same problem happening in the past but they went away by them self.

[Furlamseere]

It seems that there have not been any further posts about this concern being an ongoing issue. Because of this, we are considering it to be resolved. If this does continue to be a concern, please create another thread to further discuss resolutions or contact the Support Center at support.na.square-enix.com for assistance.