Connection Issues Due To Faulty Backbone Node?

[Evander_Lefoux]

Greetings and salutations, everyone!

I am posting here today as I am experiencing some rather.. hefty lag and latency. To the point where the game is nigh-unplayable.

I have checked in with my Internet Service Provider and, sadly, there is nothing they can do on their end. After speaking with someone in my Free Company who deals in this sort of work daily, I believe that the fault does not lie with the game's servers, either.

The purpose of this post, therefore, is to glean a possible source of the lag and latency outside of the dungeons, as well as to seek potential remedies and/or gather further information so that myself and others might be able to play once more.

I believe, after running numerous TraceRoutes and Ping Tests, that the fault for my issues currently lies with Cogent/CogentCo/Cogent Communications. In particular note, multiple TraceRoutes have revealed that I hit a wall most often with a particular node in CogentCo's lines - my response times jumping from a maximum of 28-42 ms to a hefty 208-209 ms. The following hops often experience high response times and occasional timeouts.

I have scoured this forum and have taken note of others in the past having issues with the same entity causing lag and latency. Is there anything to be done in regards to this wall I, and others, seem to be hitting?

If it should be required or requested, I am prepared to post screenshots of said TraceRoute results, as well as my SpeedTest and PingTest results when testing areas around the North American Data Centers.

[Raist]

Your ISP is responsible for dealing with this. They are the ones that negotiated the route you are using that is sending you through Cogentco to get to Ormuco (SE's ISP). Need to be in touch with your ISP's tier3 people. Let them know you have traces and such indicating potential packet loss or heavy shaping in route at their routing partner's hops that is negatively impacting your connection to the game servers. They should have an email that you can forward your data to--it may even be readily available via their website/forums.

You may also want to run some tests against a couple other popular services as well (like google/youtube, yahoo, netflix, justin.tv) to see if you can spot a similar pattern elsewhere. If you do, it can go a long way to encouraging them to investigate further.

[Evander_Lefoux]

Your ISP is responsible for dealing with this. They are the ones that negotiated the route you are using that is sending you through Cogentco to get to Ormuco (SE's ISP). Need to be in touch with your ISP's tier3 people. Let them know you have traces and such indicating potential packet loss or heavy shaping in route at their routing partner's hops that is negatively impacting your connection to the game servers. They should have an email that you can forward your data to--it may even be readily available via their website/forums.

You may also want to run some tests against a couple other popular services as well (like google/youtube, yahoo, netflix, justin.tv) to see if you can spot a similar pattern elsewhere. If you do, it can go a long way to encouraging them to investigate further.

I took a moment to speak with my Internet Service Provider once more on the matters you raised. Initially, they did not seem to have any idea what you were speaking of, nor the mention of the routing or traces - and then quickly adopted a "our services are otherwise working fine and you have a functional internet connection, so there is nothing we can do from our end." approach to the issue.

Is there perhaps a way I can be more clear about the issue with them, or explain it in terms any customer service representative would be able to understand and navigate?

Or should I attempt to directly contact CogentCo and see if I can resolve it in that fashion?

[Malzian]

I took a moment to speak with my Internet Service Provider once more on the matters you raised. Initially, they did not seem to have any idea what you were speaking of, nor the mention of the routing or traces - and then quickly adopted a "our services are otherwise working fine and you have a functional internet connection, so there is nothing we can do from our end." approach to the issue.

Is there perhaps a way I can be more clear about the issue with them, or explain it in terms any customer service representative would be able to understand and navigate?

Or should I attempt to directly contact CogentCo and see if I can resolve it in that fashion?

CogentCo is not likely to be responsive or even acknowledging of a problem. You're not one of their customers, so they're really not even going to worry about talking to you and refer you back to your ISP. As far as talking to your ISP tech, the main rule is do not deal with the first 2 people you talk to. Generally those people are reading from scripts and have no real technical knowledge. Ask them to elevate you to tier 3, as was suggested before. These are the real tech support who actually understand what Latency, Traceroutes and the like are and what they mean.