Official response concerning the lag plaguing this game?

[Turin]

I have Verizon FIOS and live on the east coast. I lag nearly every night during primetime unless I use WTFast. It's probably not your servers, however, it is affecting your game.

From what I understand, there is packet loss concerning how Level 3 routes this data. Last night, many other players reported lag. It seemed to be affecting about 50% of the players in my free company. A wide variety of reports were documented here:

http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...nd_unbearable/

So I ask, what can be done to resolve this? It seems unfair to have to pay an additional monthly fee to play this game. Verizon (or most other ISPs experiencing this) tells you that it's not their problem. However, I suspect it's not SE's problem either. So how does the player resolve this issue? Is SE trying to work with providers to ensure this doesn't happen? Is this similar to the ISPs throttling Netflix? Is there anything we, as a playerbase, can do to help?

[Recaldy]

inb4 Tuesday excuse

Then again I rarely lag and it was pretty bad last night.

[Turin]

This thread was started in 2013, but the issue still hasn't been resolved.
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...P2P-throttling

Another thread concerning lag during peak hours.
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-at-Peak-Hours

[Codek]

I believe Verizon FIOS actually has it's own issues on top of the Level 3 routes.

All ISP's travel through the Level 3 nodes cause problems for players around patch releases.

I recall Verizon for some reason sends all or the New England connection to a routing station located in New York before heading to Canada. The New York node is also a highly congested one that causes even more problems for those particular players. Add both these issues together and FIOS users basically get the shaft...

[Cluebilly]

I've been getting some pretty bad lag myself. And I had zero issues prior to this patch.

[Clavaat]

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-at-Peak-Hours

I posted this awhile ago which has some more info. I appreciate that you're actually doing the research. I posted some contact info for Verizon in that thread as well, if you want to look into it. I have had no success. Last night was particularly bad, but that seemed to be for everyone. The traceroute I ran actually had congestion on Ormuco's end (the ISP SE's servers are using). It's quite possible Ormuco was having a hiccup. Verizon in particular is a weird case because we (such as myself) don't always pass through Level3, but Alter.net, which is owned by Verizon itself. Like I said, last night could very well be a separate issue, but in general Verizon customers will probably still have problems.

EDIT: In addendum, the reason there has not been a direct "the fault is with X" response is probably due in large part to contracts. SE cannot badmouth Ormuco, Ormuco cannot badmouth Level3, etc etc down the line of bullshit that is sad but true. Doing so could cause them to lose their provider, which knocks everyone completely out until they find a new one. SE honestly has been pretty open about issues involving the game itself, but this goes a bit further than that. I'd like to believe that if the problem was the server itself, we would know about (they have come clean about this in the past).

EDIT again: Also, I have personally made SE aware of the issue with throttling and I would like to believe they are doing all they can. Big companies like Verizon have big egos, so they are quick to say "It's not my fault, it's yours!" There is a possibility that it is a similar issue as Netflix, what with packetsniffers looking for game data and saying "fuck that, who cares?" I'm not positive, my theory is that it's simply Content Delivery Networks being absolute shit in the U.S. What I've done to help is post publicly all over the place, called Verizon many times, called SE many times, etc. AFAIK that's the best we can do.

[PureEclipse]

Tbh I still haven't had any of these "lag" issues since the initial "launch" last year.

While I do sympathize with the people that are experiencing lag, I still don't think pointing the finger at SE is the answer.

[Clavaat]

Tbh I still haven't had any of these "lag" issues since the initial "launch" last year.

While I do sympathize with the people that are experiencing lag, I still don't think pointing the finger at SE is the answer.

(The following questions are hypothetical, you don't have to answer)

Where do you live, geographically? Who is your ISP? How much bandwidth are you paying for? What server do you play on? What hops do you pass through? What are your PC specs? Are you on wireless? Are other people on your house online?

I don't say this to be facetious, but you have to understand that there are a lot of different issues that come into play when dealing with a game tied to an internet connection. It's not always a cut and dry, this person doesn't have it, so it doesn't exist, kind of thing. Or it's X's fault and not Y's.

[Raist]

It is basically an issue with the peering/transit agreements that aren't providing sufficient throughput to avoid the congestion. More specifically, the ISP's in play not wanting to pony up the resources to upgrade things to offset the massive increases in their customers' usage.

It's less an issue with our bandwidth (the game requires very little bandwidth...an ADSL Lite plan is more then enough, provided latency is low and consistent enough), but it is more an issue of not enough throughput at the exchange points. Google can run all the dark fiber they want, but it does no good when their customers get routed through exchanges with only a few 10Gb cards (or worse, restricted by copper) that creates a massive choking point for their users.

We need to put the pressure on them to upgrade/reconfigure as needed to avoid the congested corridors. They have plenty of ways to remedy these issues...they are just choosing not to spend the necessary resources to do it--even when a partner offers to split the costs.

[Clavaat]

We need to put the pressure on them to upgrade/reconfigure as needed to avoid the congested corridors. They have plenty of ways to remedy these issues...they are just choosing not to spend the necessary resources to do it--even when a partner offers to split the costs.

Links/sources/contact info? Would going directly to ISP's be the best route? I'm not sure there's a customer service rep category exactly for this haha. This is getting into territory I'm honestly not 100% sure on, so I'd like to know exactly where/how to make demands. I know I've wanted to make a point of contacting Alter.net or level3 directly, but I'll be damned if you can't get through to anything. I've been at it for months and any other help would be appreciated