Lag recently after an ISP switch

[Lostwind1783]

I realize that the title would make one say "well that new ISP is to blame" and it very well could be, but before I go and talk to tech support about how they promised something I'm not getting, I wanted to get my facts straight, as I am not the most versed in this topic.

I switched from Optimum to Fios recently, and everything has mostly been for the better. Fios wasn't available in my area until recently, they went around and got people to convert, they matched prices, better download/upload speeds, TV movie services, the whole 9 yards, and it has all been working well. But when I play Final Fantasy XIV, (essentially the only online game I play enough to notice this sort of thing) I have been noticing lag and stuttering, specifically enough to mess up the casting of abilities and to react to things, a problem I never had before.

I wanted to find out if anyone else has been having lag recently, or if other players with Fios experience the same issues recently, just to make sure the problem isn't the game I'm playing.

[Raist]

I don't use FiOS (not available here yet), but many have been reporting issues with it. For the most part, the ones having issues are getting routed to Level3 or TiNet/GTT between the Verizon/Alter.net segments and Ormuco on their way to the SE servers. You can check this yourself by running a tracert to the lobby servers. If you see some hops with wide variances in the response times (more than a 10% difference in the times between each of the 3 results for each hop), or a hop that returns a time and a * (timeout event) intermittently--this is something your ISP's Tier3 support will need to investigate further. The key thing there, is to push for Tier3 support--especially if it is anything past the first couple hops that are showing issues. Those local techs can't do anything about issues happening further down your route--it needs to be Tier3 that gets involved.

If you do find such issues geting to the lobby servers, you will also want to run some traces to other services--possibly another game, and something like google and such (want some results to popular services for comparison--it will reinforce your complaint for them to see tests to other sites). I will provide the registered DNS names to the lobby servers, as well as a link to a blog post from Blizzard detailing the use of tracert, as well as the addresses of their game servers for you to use for testing as well.

DNS names for the lobby servers for testing:
neolobby02.ffxiv.com
neolobby04.ffxiv.com
neolobby06.ffxiv.com

Blizzards guide about testing your connection's stability to their servers:
https://us.battle.net/support/en/art...g-a-traceroute

This guide details how to run the trace and dump it to a text file. I would like to edit one thing about what is given in the guide though. It tells you to use a single ">" character for pushing the results to the text file. I would suggest using 2 ">" characters instead so that it appends all your test results to the file. Otherwise, you may be overwriting the file every time you run a trace this way.

 tracert xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx >> c:\tracert.txt

This way, you can have an ongoing log of your tests. Note also that in their example, they are showing a mask for an IP address. You don't have to use the IP--you can use the name you type in the browser like www.google.com and such as well.



Just an afterthought for anyone interested in doing this more regularly, you may want to create a batch file to do it directly from your desktop from time to time. Doesn't have to be too complex, just a few lines really--the trick is to save it in a file that ends with .bat. By default, windows will want to create your new document as a .txt file or something--but you need to change it to .bat at the end. Here's an example for anyone of those adventurous types ^-^

Open your file browser or My Documents and drill down to where you want to save the file. Right-click a blank spot in the file browser and click "New", then "Text Document. Hold the delete key so it completely deletes the file name, then type in the name, ending it with .bat (maybe something simple like FFXIV_Trace.bat), and press the enter key. You should get a warning about changing the file type, just override it. Right-click to edit the file in notepad, then copy the following code into it (edit the IP/server name or even the folder path and file name as you see fit) and save it. Then you can create a shortcut to desktop that you can just right-click and run as administrator at will and it will keep a running log of your tests, complete with a date/time stamp each time you run it.

ECHO OFF
CLS
ECHO. >>c:\tracert.txt
ECHO %time% %date% >>c:\tracert.txt
ECHO Tracing path to neolobby02.ffxiv.com
TRACERT neolobby02.ffxiv.com>>c:\tracert.txt
ECHO. >>c:\tracert.txt
pause
start c:\tracert.txt

This batch file will generate a log of the traces with a date/time stamp, with some double spaces to sort of block it out and make it a bit easier to follow. Note that you won't see any output on the screen, since it is set to dump everything to the text file. I put the pause statement in there so it will prompt you to press any key before continuing the script (in case you are in game--don't want that pesky window just popping up). Once you flip focus back to the window and press any key on the keyboard, it will open the file and then close the script.

Here's a sample of the results:

 
21:40:40.08 Tue 01/06/15 

Tracing route to neolobby02.ffxiv.com [199.91.189.74]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  LPTSRV [10.10.100.1] 
  2    32 ms    12 ms    22 ms  cpe-075-176-160-001.sc.res.rr.com [75.176.160.1] 
  3    18 ms    17 ms    26 ms  cpe-024-031-198-009.sc.res.rr.com [24.31.198.9] 
  4    20 ms    18 ms    21 ms  24.31.196.212 
  5    22 ms    20 ms    25 ms  be33.chrcnctr01r.southeast.rr.com [24.93.64.182] 
  6    30 ms    27 ms    38 ms  bu-ether44.atlngamq46w-bcr00.tbone.rr.com [107.14.19.46] 
  7    28 ms    26 ms    23 ms  107.14.19.11 
  8    26 ms    28 ms    27 ms  te0-0-0-10.ccr21.atl02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.12.109] 
  9    28 ms    26 ms    28 ms  be2050.ccr41.atl01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.0.165] 
 10    35 ms    33 ms    37 ms  be2168.ccr21.dca01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.31.94] 
 11    42 ms    40 ms    41 ms  be2148.ccr41.jfk02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.31.118] 
 12    45 ms    43 ms    46 ms  be2106.ccr21.alb02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.3.50] 
 13    48 ms    50 ms    50 ms  be2088.ccr21.ymq02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.43.17] 
 14    75 ms    62 ms    65 ms  38.122.42.34 
 15    47 ms    49 ms    49 ms  192.34.76.10 
 16   193 ms   200 ms   116 ms  199.91.189.242 
 17    50 ms    50 ms    47 ms  199.91.189.74 

Trace complete.
 
21:51:17.37 Tue 01/06/15 

Tracing route to neolobby02.ffxiv.com [199.91.189.74]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  LPTSRV [10.10.100.1] 
  2    34 ms    22 ms    14 ms  cpe-075-176-160-001.sc.res.rr.com [75.176.160.1] 
  3    19 ms    30 ms    16 ms  cpe-024-031-198-009.sc.res.rr.com [24.31.198.9] 
  4    20 ms    24 ms    18 ms  24.31.196.212 
  5    27 ms    27 ms    21 ms  be33.chrcnctr01r.southeast.rr.com [24.93.64.182] 
  6    28 ms    41 ms    30 ms  bu-ether44.atlngamq46w-bcr00.tbone.rr.com [107.14.19.46] 
  7    25 ms    27 ms    58 ms  107.14.19.11 
  8    25 ms    27 ms    27 ms  te0-0-0-10.ccr21.atl02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.12.109] 
  9    24 ms    27 ms    25 ms  be2050.ccr41.atl01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.0.165] 
 10    35 ms    34 ms    36 ms  be2168.ccr21.dca01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.31.94] 
 11    38 ms    41 ms    41 ms  be2148.ccr41.jfk02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.31.118] 
 12    43 ms    44 ms    47 ms  be2106.ccr21.alb02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.3.50] 
 13    50 ms    49 ms    48 ms  be2088.ccr21.ymq02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.43.17] 
 14    64 ms    65 ms    63 ms  38.122.42.34 
 15    47 ms    49 ms    61 ms  192.34.76.10 
 16    49 ms    51 ms    50 ms  199.91.189.242 
 17    47 ms    48 ms    47 ms  199.91.189.74 

Trace complete.

Oh yeah.. another note. Since it is saving the file to the root of the system drive, you won't be able to edit the file unless you first open the editor (notepad, textpad, etc.) by right-clicking it to run as administrator and then opening it from the file/open menu. That's why you have to run the commands with Admin authority--so it can overwrite the file at the C:\ level. Pesky Windows Security "Features" in the newer OS's... bleh. So, you may want to change the folder path to a friendlier location... maybe create a new temp folder path to save to like C:\FFXIVTEMP\tracert.txt

[papichulo123]

I don't know but I was laugh the other day I hate lag they. Red to fix their servers

[Melondra]

Its not youe internet been getting massive disconnection errors whenever I transfer to the instance server

[Squintina]

Actually there have been other Verizon Fios users who've experienced problems.

there's quite a few in this thread (myself included)
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-playing-FFXIV
and this one
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ttling/page216

and another
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t....3-Massive-Lag

and the verizon/level 3 thing was also discussed here:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...x-your-servers

Personally I notice lag every day roughly 9PM-11:30PM EST on weekdays (not continuously. It spikes on and off).

Many times when it spikes, the lag isn't just annoying but unbearable. I don't do dungeons (partially because I don't want to but partially also because I know if I do, I have to wait for the weekend's early hours). Even then the lag when doing crafting can lead to macros not working properly, and just annoying when doing manual crafts because of the wait. Also annoying when gathering because a swing can take up to 10 seconds to swing, then another 10-20 seconds to show results. Fishing during lag can lead to losing fish. The bright side is that I'm a late bird so 12am-2am is a great time for me to play as the lag is usually nonexistent then. When it's laggy, I just play while watching anime so it makes the wait more tolerable. Sometimes I'll be distracted by the anime, then when I pay attention to the game again, the spike's gone down, when it comes back up - back to anime.

I'm hoping that with students about to start their semester and people getting back to work from their vacation, that it might go down a little just because there will be less traffic.

All traceroutes I've bothered doing stop at level 3.