Connection issues.

[Vejjiegirl]

getting a lot of lag again this week, I did a ping test here are the results.

[Raist]

getting a lot of lag again this week, I did a ping test here are the results.

That IP isn't even used for the game. It hosts websites for various Squenix/EIDOS titles. The game servers in Canada all start with 199. You can get the actual IP used by your client by running netstat (from DOS window) or resmon (from Run/Search box) while fully logged into the game. Alternatively, you could test against the lobby servers. Here are the registered DNS names for them:

neolobby01.ffxiv.com
neolobby02.ffxiv.com
neolobby03.ffxiv.com
neolobby04.ffxiv.com
neolobby05.ffxiv.com
neolobby06.ffxiv.com
(odd numbers are Japan, even are Canada).

Some of this may change though once they get the new EU data centers up, but for now this is the case.

Should note though, that even though you were hitting a website server hosted on iWeb in a different section of Montreal, you are showing signs of too much jitter in that sample for a gaming connection. It's fine for generic web hosting, but for live streams that depend on timely, orderly delivery of packets to avoid retransmit requests, 5ms jitter against an average of 44ms (~11%)--and look at the min/max swing: 38ms to 61(over a 50% swing)--is too much variance. You may very well find there are some issues in route to Canada at play for your connections.

Would be a better idea to run a series of tracerts to both the game and other services--and also during both good and bad times as well. When you do run a ping test though, you may not want to use the default counts. Sometimes you get lucky and catch a bad spike in just a few hops, but it's not uncommon for it to take around 10 or more to see the troublesome ones--doing the longer ones may also reveal a steady pattern, like 1 spike every 7-10 times. You can use the -n switch to set a count, like this:

C:\Windows\System32>ping neolobby02.ffxiv.com -n 25

Pinging neolobby02.ffxiv.com [199.91.189.74] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 199.91.189.74: bytes=32 time=60ms TTL=48
Reply from 199.91.189.74: bytes=32 time=60ms TTL=48
Reply from 199.91.189.74: bytes=32 time=62ms TTL=48
Reply from 199.91.189.74: bytes=32 time=59ms TTL=48
Reply from 199.91.189.74: bytes=32 time=58ms TTL=48
Reply from 199.91.189.74: bytes=32 time=59ms TTL=48
Reply from 199.91.189.74: bytes=32 time=63ms TTL=48
Reply from 199.91.189.74: bytes=32 time=60ms TTL=48
Reply from 199.91.189.74: bytes=32 time=62ms TTL=48
Reply from 199.91.189.74: bytes=32 time=59ms TTL=48
Reply from 199.91.189.74: bytes=32 time=60ms TTL=48
Reply from 199.91.189.74: bytes=32 time=61ms TTL=48
Reply from 199.91.189.74: bytes=32 time=61ms TTL=48
Reply from 199.91.189.74: bytes=32 time=61ms TTL=48
Reply from 199.91.189.74: bytes=32 time=62ms TTL=48
Reply from 199.91.189.74: bytes=32 time=61ms TTL=48
Reply from 199.91.189.74: bytes=32 time=61ms TTL=48
Reply from 199.91.189.74: bytes=32 time=60ms TTL=48
Reply from 199.91.189.74: bytes=32 time=59ms TTL=48
Reply from 199.91.189.74: bytes=32 time=60ms TTL=48
Reply from 199.91.189.74: bytes=32 time=62ms TTL=48
Reply from 199.91.189.74: bytes=32 time=61ms TTL=48
Reply from 199.91.189.74: bytes=32 time=62ms TTL=48
Reply from 199.91.189.74: bytes=32 time=60ms TTL=48
Reply from 199.91.189.74: bytes=32 time=59ms TTL=48

Ping statistics for 199.91.189.74:
    Packets: Sent = 25, Received = 25, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 58ms, Maximum = 63ms, Average = 60ms

This is more along the pattern you want to see. Min/max only has a 5ms gap, and the average is close to right in the middle of the two. The average jitter from ping to ping is just under 2ms (1.75), which is just under 3% of the average response time (2.92%)--it could be a touch better, but it's far better than what that sample to the webserver was showing.