Lag So Bad Right Now Game is Unplayable

[Squa11_Leonhart]

Do you have a crash every now and then after you teleport? If so, this is a regression to a previous patch done in 2.2 that fixed these issues.

there was never a patch, so there was never a regression

the issue has always been in the amd drivers.

anyway
see: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...AG-PROBLEMS%21

[Ultimatecalibur]

Lag, Rubber Banding and Frame Stutter can have a variety of causes. Some are on SE end, others your end and still others are caused by the 3rd parties between you and the datacenter. Understanding what is happening can make fixing things and dealing with them easier.

[Raist]

Taken mid instance where everything was completely frozen for over 2 minutes.

Ummm...that's a test result to a server in Kansas City, Missouri... Less then 50 miles away from you. No way indicative of your QoS communicating with the game servers all the way up and over in Montreal, Canada. Fewer hops, shorter distance, less chance of hitting high congestion along one if the 7 paths available for getting into Montreal.

And before anyone says it...it's not your bandwidth at play here...it's about higher latency, packet loss, and forced retransmits when those two factors come into the picture. That is the measure of "speed" at issue hear--response times for less than 128Kb per second of data that is transferred on average.

[LalaRu]

If it was SE everyone would have it, it's your ghetto internet.

The common reasons usually are:

- yes, ghetto internet (some providers now will scale down what they think is some kind of torrent, failing on the guess...)
- or downloading weird stuff while playing (windows update too, tricked me sometime)
- or playing on the busiest server worldwide on peak hours
- or having the issue once but reporting on forum it happens 24/7
- or PC power so low (or driver bugged) that is busy on rendering and no time for game communications

[Nutz]

I've been having constant connectivity issues since 2.4 as well. I was getting sporadic lag results when I pinged Behemoth (199.91.189.40) from the command prompt. I increased the number of pings and found it to be oddly rhythmic. 10 or so consecutive pings usually between 50 and 60 ms, then 1 over 3,000 ms. This is consistent with how the game has been playing for me over the past week. Plays fine for 10 seconds followed by a massive lag spike. I never disconnect, but you can't really play much if your character pauses for 3 seconds every 10 seconds. Here's a selection of ping results:

Pinging 199.91.189.40 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 199.91.189.40: bytes=32 time=52ms TTL=243
Reply from 199.91.189.40: bytes=32 time=53ms TTL=243
Reply from 199.91.189.40: bytes=32 time=51ms TTL=243
Request timed out.
Reply from 199.91.189.40: bytes=32 time=51ms TTL=243
Reply from 199.91.189.40: bytes=32 time=53ms TTL=243
Reply from 199.91.189.40: bytes=32 time=53ms TTL=243
Reply from 199.91.189.40: bytes=32 time=53ms TTL=243
Reply from 199.91.189.40: bytes=32 time=52ms TTL=243
Reply from 199.91.189.40: bytes=32 time=52ms TTL=243
Reply from 199.91.189.40: bytes=32 time=52ms TTL=243
Reply from 199.91.189.40: bytes=32 time=53ms TTL=243
Reply from 199.91.189.40: bytes=32 time=51ms TTL=243
Reply from 199.91.189.40: bytes=32 time=2992ms TTL=243
Reply from 199.91.189.40: bytes=32 time=51ms TTL=243
Reply from 199.91.189.40: bytes=32 time=53ms TTL=243
Reply from 199.91.189.40: bytes=32 time=51ms TTL=243
Reply from 199.91.189.40: bytes=32 time=54ms TTL=243
Reply from 199.91.189.40: bytes=32 time=52ms TTL=243
Reply from 199.91.189.40: bytes=32 time=53ms TTL=243
Ping statistics for 199.91.189.40:
Packets: Sent = 20, Received = 19, Lost = 1 (5% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 51ms, Maximum = 2992ms, Average = 206ms

I don't really know how to interpret pathping and route trace results exactly, but here they are:
route trace:

Tracing route to 199.91.189.40 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 29 ms 24 ms 23 ms cpe-74-136-224-1.swo.res.rr.com [74.136.224.1]
3 10 ms 10 ms 9 ms tge0-7-0-7.edwkkyai02h.midwest.rr.com [74.139.3.61]
4 15 ms 18 ms 14 ms be24.lsvmkyzo01r.midwest.rr.com [65.29.31.50]
5 2644 ms 22 ms 26 ms be24.clmkohpe01r.midwest.rr.com [65.189.140.162]
6 35 ms 34 ms 34 ms bu-ether35.cr0.chi30.tbone.rr.com [107.14.19.60]
7 32 ms 32 ms 31 ms 66.109.1.76
8 34 ms 33 ms * lag-8.ear2.Chicago2.Level3.net [4.68.111.33]
9 1668 ms 52 ms * ae-10-10.car2.Montreal2.Level3.net [4.69.153.86]
10 * * * Request timed out.
11 53 ms 52 ms 54 ms ORMUCO-COMM.car2.Montreal2.Level3.net [4.59.178.74]
12 52 ms 52 ms 53 ms 10.2.2.1
13 51 ms 52 ms 52 ms 192.34.76.2
14 51 ms 52 ms 54 ms 199.91.189.234
15 2240 ms 52 ms 53 ms 199.91.189.40

Trace complete.

path ping:

Hop RTT Lost/Sent = Pct Lost/Sent = Pct Address
0
0/ 100 = 0% |
1 419ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 192.168.1.1
0/ 100 = 0% |
2 459ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% cpe-74-136-224-1.swo.res.rr.com [74.136.224.1]
0/ 100 = 0% |
3 424ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% tge0-7-0-7.edwkkyai02h.midwest.rr.com [74.139.3.61]
0/ 100 = 0% |
4 431ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% be24.lsvmkyzo01r.midwest.rr.com [65.29.31.50]
0/ 100 = 0% |
5 439ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% be24.clmkohpe01r.midwest.rr.com [65.189.140.162]
0/ 100 = 0% |
6 482ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% bu-ether35.cr0.chi30.tbone.rr.com[107.14.19.60]
0/ 100 = 0% |
7 449ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 66.109.1.76
0/ 100 = 0% |
8 450ms 1/ 100 = 1% 1/ 100 = 1% lag-8.ear2.Chicago2.Level3.net [4.68.111.33]
0/ 100 = 0% |
9 486ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% ae-10-10.car2.Montreal2.Level3.net [4.69.153.86]
0/ 100 = 0% |
10 491ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% ae-10-10.car2.Montreal2.Level3.net [4.69.153.86]
0/ 100 = 0% |
11 477ms 2/ 100 = 2% 2/ 100 = 2% ORMUCO-COMM.car2.Montreal2.Level3.net [4.59.178.74]
0/ 100 = 0% |
12 --- 100/ 100 =100% 100/ 100 =100% 10.2.2.1
0/ 100 = 0% |
13 472ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 192.34.76.2
0/ 100 = 0% |
14 503ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 199.91.189.234
0/ 100 = 0% |
15 503ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 199.91.189.40

Trace complete.

I'm perfectly willing to use a 3rd party program if necessary, but the trial period of Battleping has not been working for me. It doesn't seem to matter which of the many servers I select, the problem persists unabated.

UPDATE: Thanks for the help Raist. I just figured I'd post an update since I finally fixed the problem (for me). Turns out it had nothing to do with SE (as expected), nothing to do with TWC (shocking, but I eventually found the same delays when pinging my router), and was in fact not a hardware issue of any kind. Autodesk updater, somehow, was interfering with my PC's ability to send/ receive data once every 10 seconds. I merely closed the application and everything went back to normal (while it's not running -- mind you it wasn't actually updating anything). I really only closed it and checked on a whim and didn't expect it to work since it's also running on a PC that doesn't have this issue. Just goes to show you lag can be caused by literally anything.

[Raist]

Nutz, you have issues closer to home that need to be addressed first. Need to be in contact with the TWC/RR Tier3 techs, providing them this data. May want to test other destinations as well (Google/YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, TwitchTV, other game, etc.) to see if you can show the problem more consistently and not just this one path--it will build a stronger case for them to get involved. With this data, you are showing bad latency within their network (particularly in Ohio...imagine that... they've had issues forever). That is just going to compound anything that may be happening from the hand-off into Level3/Cogent/TATA and beyond.

Get them to fix your more localized line conditions (they will make you jump through the hoops with local techs first), and then they can push for escalation to the nodes further out until they home in on their problems. Then you can revisit the route to see if there are issues at the IPX to see if they need to switch you off of Level3 and onto Cogent or TATA to see if it improves.

[LunarCain]

Maybe its you connection as im not experiencing any of this unless on weekends due to peak hours

[craig_meredith2003]

Ya terrible lag tonight error code 9k 5 times in hatali hm thank god the party was patient and another 4 dcs in 45 min just being in town or the inn room. Is a little nuts but I remb in 1.0 was like that too after a patch with the post patch peeps that would play a week or two after the patch then leave again and ther lag stopped. Not gonna cap tomes this week because of it >.<

[Bablioteca]

I'm from Goblin server, and get lag spikes now and again in waves. Pretty frustrating.

I had thought they were just teasing Time Mage.

[ruskie]

FC mate of mine has been having lag for a while now. I hit it myself a few times and it was like 2-5s full stop then stuff caught up. Was scary since it was in t7 as well.