Ping issues.

[Jaskerv]

I am living in the OCE area. I suffer from heavy latency issues. Is there a way to reduce my ping. My current data center is at: NA and i get 217 ms.

[Raist]

Guessing you are referring to Oceania? As in Australia and such? 217ms ping actually may be decent from there... limited transit corridors from that region, and if you get stuck coming across the Southern Cross and into Southern California you can run into some heavy congestion at times that makes it spike to 400+ in a heartbeat.

You may be able to mitigate some of that by using a VPN service. Mileage may vary though, because you will still be stuck with the undersea transit for part of the run--but it can dramatically reduce what may be affecting you once you hit the North America shores and get on more optimized routes with the VPN service. Most offer some manner of trial that either gives you the service for so many days, or up to a set amount of bandwidth.

I used some back during beta4 and early launch during testing that seemed to work at times to make things more manageable, and they had free use options that weren't just a trial deal (so many hours a week, get a set amount of data to use for free each month, etc.). Will see if I can dig up my notes I jotted down on them and edit them in just in case some of you guys want to do some testing of your own.

Edit:
Found an old text file I started logging details in. There were a lot in the log, but many would only allow web browsing--game traffic would not pass with their free use plans. You can google and find a lot more probably, but you will want to use their free trial options first to confirm if they work with the game and how well. These are the ones I made notes of that actually let me log into the game at the time of testing.

Again, your mileage may vary, but it may be worth testing...and these all have a way to use them for free for a while so you can check them out with no risk. Should note I have kept Tunnel Bear installed because it's free 500MB/month plan gives me just enough to do some things I need to do on a secure line each month, and I have on occasion used it for proof of concept presentation to TWC techs when I needed to... it has proven to be quite an eye opener for some of the new guys that get assigned to my cases. If using one of these services improves things for you, but don't provide enough access for you on the free plans, some of them are pretty cheap---considerably more than some of the services that target the gaming market specifically. But remember, these are for generic use--the higher prices for some of the battleping and pingzapper style services can be justified because they have more optimized routes geared for the gaming traffic. It may be worth a look at their free trials to compare the quality of the services before you make your final decision on whether to use a VPN service, and if so which one.

https://www.tunnelbear.com
500MB/month free. Has Canadian server.
$5/month or $50/yr for unlimited bandwidth.
****FFXIV:ARR WORKS, BUT CA CONX DROPPING, US SEEMS STABLE?***
****SPEEDTESTS WERE STRONG, 14/1, GOOD PINGS***

https://cyberghostvpn.com/en/product/purchase.html
No Canadian servers, New York and Washington are listed with their free service.
Free plan has a 3 hour connection limit, uses OpenVPN client.
Premium $7/mo, $40/yr, $70/2yrs (one device--Plus gives 5 for $11/70/110)
***Free plan had an ad when connecting, another popped up after @ 2 hours***
***NY connection timed out in tracerts, WA seems to respond well***
***FFXIV:ARR CONNECTS, WILL NEED TO TEST QUALITY, AS PINGS NOT AS GOOD AS TUNNELBEAR****
***SPEEDTEST SHOWED 6/3 SPEEDS, LOW PINGS TO MONTREAL--SHOWS AS A UK CONX??!!***

http://www.hotspotshield.com/
has free VPN, and free proxy--both ad supported.
Ads may pose issues with games if screen looses focus due to a pop-up?
Elite: $30/yr or $20/6 months.
***no Canadian server, and Free is US only.
***FFXIV:ARR CONNECTS WHILE IN 3-DAY ELITE TRIAL, BUT IS THROUGH LA AREA. MAY HAVE ISSUES?***

https://www.sumrando.com/why.aspx
free is 1GB cap, server in New York. (did not note if the 1GB renews monthly, or is just a one time thing)
***FFXIV:ARR CONNECTS, BUT LOOKS TO STILL BE HITTING SAME LEVEL3 HOPS HAVING ISSUES***
***SHOWS UP AS WICHITA, KS AT SPEEDTEST--BENCHED 9-12/1 AT EXIT POINT, UNEVEN GRAPHS***
***SAW SOME LAG SPIKES--TRACERT SHOWED SAME TROUBLE AT CAR2 ON LEVEL3 HOP***

[Skyl1n3]

I would give BattlePing a go, I swear by it now when I got sick of Mudras lagging because of fluctuating ping and now it's buttery smooth all-round.

[Squa11_Leonhart]

battleping won't improve that latency any further, its as good as you can get with this distance.

[Skyl1n3]

battleping won't improve that latency any further, its as good as you can get with this distance.

The best roughly from his area to the US is 170ms, BattlePing will probably help bring it closer to that but won't be magic.

[Squa11_Leonhart]

The best roughly from his area to the US is 170ms, BattlePing will probably help bring it closer to that but won't be magic.

Sorry, but no, 217 is as good as that will get and battleping will more likely increase the latency by routing it away from our transatlantic link.

217ms is not a reason for heavy latency, its actually good latency and you can pwn titan with no issues at anything under 300ms.