Latency issues

[Raist]

I'm sorry, and I'm sure you know your stuff, but you don't understand 2 simple things:


1) I have no idea what you are talking about, I am not knowledgeable in the technical stuff, and I don't want to be either.
2) This is very important. I was online playing FFXIV non stop for almost a week before Wedneday, outside of sleeping (off work due to broken leg). I had zero problems. Have also been playing FFXIV since August 2013 with zero problems. On Wednesday, I am online playing FFXIV, and maintenance happens as I was online. I log in immediately as the servers are back up, and I have this problem immediately from that time since now. It is Square-Enix's fault.

I've actually been trying to explain it to you without getting too technical. The internet is highly unstable and a route can simply go down at the drop of a hat for a long list of reasons. If it was SE's fault as you keep saying, then everyone would be suffering at the same time--which is clearly not the case. People would not be staying in-game for hours upon hours with absolutely no issues if that were the case (I just spent over 6 hours farting around myself in fact, even with my latency spikes around Charlotte).

Every online game suffers from these symptoms at one time or another for players from different regions at different times. You can google popular online games and phrases like "high latency" or "high packet loss" and get hits on stories about people experiencing the very things you guys are dealing with here. It's nothing new... been fighting it myself since 1996. Granted, there have been times where we did indeed find issues client or server side, but the vast majority of times it was problems with a segment between the two--which was always resolved through my ISP, and not the company at the other end of the connection.

Traffic on the internet ebbs and flows just like traffic on the highway. And just like the way a major accident or big construction project on the interstate can completely knacker up people's commute through an area, the same thing happens with the internet. Look at the outage map thumbnail pic and the downdetector status page for Comcast I linked to earlier. The more current map at that status page shows an even more focused view of specific areas for Comcast that are having problems. If you are getting routed through there--you may very well be getting caught up in one of those traffic jam scenarios and suffering from delayed packets, or even worse: dropped packets. Either of those problems can cause dropped connections if it is bad enough.

It is a known problem with the infrastructure across North America...it's a dirty little secret the industry has been trying to hide for quite some time now. They grossly oversold local markets without upgrading their upstream bandwidth to properly support all the ramped up bandwidth they've been selling us. In 20 years, the norm has gone from 1.5mb/s up to 20mb/s, but the upstream bandwidth has not increased proportionally and we now have massive choking points at the major exchanges across the continent.

It is a problem that our ISP's have collectively created through negligence over the years, and it is up to them to remedy it. You pay them for their service, and they are simply dropping the ball. Need to hold them accountable for it.

Edit: Just pasting in something for a better visual of what I'm talking about. These are outage maps for various services tracked at downdetector. Notice how they can show problems in roughly the same regions. Traffic jams may be in full effect, possibly impacting everyone coming through those areas until the ISP's route people around the congestion.

XBL - https://downdetector.com/status/xbox-live


PSN - https://downdetector.com/status/playstation-network


Call of Duty - https://downdetector.com/status/call-of-duty


Time Warner Cable - https://downdetector.com/status/time-warner-cable


Comcast - https://downdetector.com/status/comcast-xfinity


AT&T - https://downdetector.com/status/att

[Spiroth]

I've actually been trying to explain it to you without getting too technical. The internet is highly unstable and a route can simply go down at the drop of a hat for a long list of reasons. If it was SE's fault as you keep saying, then everyone would be suffering at the same time--which is clearly not the case. People would not be staying in-game for hours upon hours with absolutely no issues if that were the case (I just spent over 6 hours farting around myself in fact, even with my latency spikes around Charlotte).

Every online game suffers from these symptoms at one time or another for players from different regions at different times. You can google popular online games and phrases like "high latency" or "high packet loss" and get hits on stories about people experiencing the very things you guys are dealing with here. It's nothing new... been fighting it myself since 1996. Granted, there have been times where we did indeed find issues client or server side, but the vast majority of times it was problems with a segment between the two--which was always resolved through my ISP, and not the company at the other end of the connection.

Traffic on the internet ebbs and flows just like traffic on the highway. And just like the way a major accident or big construction project on the interstate can completely knacker up people's commute through an area, the same thing happens with the internet. Look at the outage map thumbnail pic and the downdetector status page for Comcast I linked to earlier. The more current map at that status page shows an even more focused view of specific areas for Comcast that are having problems. If you are getting routed through there--you may very well be getting caught up in one of those traffic jam scenarios and suffering from delayed packets, or even worse: dropped packets. Either of those problems can cause dropped connections if it is bad enough.

It is a known problem with the infrastructure across North America...it's a dirty little secret the industry has been trying to hide for quite some time now. They grossly oversold local markets without upgrading their upstream bandwidth to properly support all the ramped up bandwidth they've been selling us. In 20 years, the norm has gone from 1.5mb/s up to 20mb/s, but the upstream bandwidth has not increased proportionally and we now have massive choking points at the major exchanges across the continent.

It is a problem that our ISP's have collectively created through negligence over the years, and it is up to them to remedy it. You pay them for their service, and they are simply dropping the ball. Need to hold them accountable for it.

Edit: Just pasting in something for a better visual of what I'm talking about. These are outage maps for various services tracked at downdetector. Notice how they can show problems in roughly the same regions. Traffic jams may be in full effect, possibly impacting everyone coming through those areas until the ISP's route people around the congestion.

XBL - https://downdetector.com/status/xbox-live


PSN - https://downdetector.com/status/playstation-network


Call of Duty - https://downdetector.com/status/call-of-duty


Time Warner Cable - https://downdetector.com/status/time-warner-cable


Comcast - https://downdetector.com/status/comcast-xfinity


AT&T - https://downdetector.com/status/att

Again, you didn't read my number 2.
It's not a "hiccup". Game is constantly unplayable, 100% of the time, taking effect the moment the last maintenance ended. Immediately at that point. I was online at that exact moment and witnessed it.

It's Square-Enix. Whatever they did, whatever they maintenanced, whatever switch they pressed, Ii want it unmaintenanced, unpressed, and the performance of version of the game that I had pre Wednesday.

[Raist]

no.. I read it, that's why I tried providing an analogy you might be able to grasp since you don't seem to be digesting how things work on the internet. I'm not just blowing smoke here. This information has been posted here time and time again...and people have posted back that they found issues and got it resolved. For whatever reason you are just not seeing the logic and insist on blaming SE for the problem without even considering any other possibility for what may be at fault here. Let's see if we can simplify it even further for you.

Ever been in an accident that rendered your car undrivable? Or maybe there was a mechanical failure, dead battery, or you got a flat tire? You had to first identify the problem, than go through the process necessary to get it fixed before you could drive it again.

Ever suffered a power outage because of a bad storm or maybe an accident took out a telephone pole or a transformer simply blew because it was old and worn out? You either had to contact the power company to report the outage, and/or had to wait for someone to inspect/repair the downed line/pole before your power was restored.

The same exact principles apply to the internet. When you have 17 potential points of failure on your path to the server, any one of those can go tits up at any given moment, for a host of sometimes bizarre reasons. When you have millions of people cramming themselves into narrow corridors on the internet, sh!t happens with absolutely no warning sometimes. Though, some of it is somewhat predictable... like when March Madness is in full effect, or the World Cup, or any other major entertainment event is pending you can expect all that extra streaming bandwidth to wreak havoc in specific corridors. Then there are these script jockies like Lizard Squad and Anonymous that like to launch attacks on servers to make statements, often announcing them publicly (they were monkeying with PSN last week, btw). You can also have a major storm system moving through an area so you might expect some communication disruptions throughout that region. Ever see the power companies bring in extra trucks and techs when hurricanes and tornadoes are in season?

It's kind of the same thing here--your ISP may simply need to get more proactive in detecting and managing the congestion. It is a fairly simple thing to check for...either you can do it yourself or your ISP should be willing to check it for you. All you need is a valid IP for the service you are having issues with, and run some traces and such to see if there's anything out of sorts along the route. They may even be able to simply monitor your router/modem to capture where you are connecting while playing and take things from there. They have tools to detect and repair these kinds of problems, but you need to bring in the right people (Tier3), and if you can provide decent information (like a trace report) it helps support your case and prods them in to action much faster. Here's an article from Blizzard about doing some of this basic testing for their games:
https://us.battle.net/support/en/art...g-a-traceroute

There are many more articles like this out there... because it is a known problem that is frequently checked when these issues come up. I just like to post that one because it also provides server addresses for their games that you can also run tests against for a comparison. You can get the IP of your world service by running netstat or resmon once you are logged fully into the game, or you can test against the lobby servers by their DNS names (note that some of the lobby servers may change once the EU servers go online):

Canada
neolobby02.ffxiv.com
neolobby04.ffxiv.com
neolobby06.ffxiv.com

Japan
neolobby01.ffxiv.com
neolobby03.ffxiv.com
neolobby05.ffxiv.com

Frontier server that the launcher connects to:
frontier.ffxiv.com

Patch/version manager:
patch-gamever.ffxiv.com

Secure login server:
secure.square-enix.com

All of those addresses are embedded in the executable files, and if your ISP monitors your connections throughout login and gameplay, they should see you hitting some of those. Or, you could just provide them the list up front to do testing against if you aren't willing to do any of the legwork to prod them along. Unfortunately, some of them have a very laissez-faire approach to their customer service and you need to push them to take action. Generating some of these reports and submitting them is often an effective way to push them into taking action--but you may need to demand to speak to a supervisor or to get transferred specifically to Tier3 support before you get someone actually willing to look at the data.

The points are, there are known issues with congestion across the internet that can just crop up seemingly out of nowhere at any given time. Sometimes, they just refuse to clear up on their own and you need to bring it to someone's attention to get it resolved in a more timely fashion. There are simple tests that can be run either by yourself or your ISP to confirm it. And yes... these things ARE the responsibility of your ISP to detect and correct for you--and not SE. In fact, in much of these cases, SE is virtually powerless to do anything about it. You are the the one with the binding agreement with your ISP, who in turn has the binding agreements with their routing partners. You need to hold the ISP accountable to test and maintain the stability of the service you are paying them to provide you, not SE.

Now, if you've gone through the motions and confirmed your route to the server is stable enough, then you can move on to the less common problems. Local security, changes in your system that may have injected a new problem (not uncommon for Windows or other software updates to cause problems...Microsoft, McAfee, Avast, AVG...many companies suffer this problem), a failing router that just can't effectively manage two other people streaming to a set-top box while you are playing, corrupted data because your game crashed unexpectedly (could apply server-side as well), and so and so and so forth. You may in fact find everything is fine leading up to the server, in which case you would need to open a formal ticket with SE at the support portal for a proper investigation. This is a user-to-user support forum, and not for requesting support directly from SE (read the sticky welcoming you to this forum for clarification on that point). We are simply players trying to help other players understand and rectify issues based on our past experiences.

But you are just digging in the heals and dumping everything on SE and not willing to entertain the possibility that it might be something else at fault. Things that are far more commonly found to be the sources of instability. If you aren't willing to take the time to try to flush out the more common problems, then you may simply be SOL until it magically resolves itself somewhere down the line because someone else eventually took their time to track down a potential source for the problem and got the proper people to look into things.

The choice is yours... try to do something about it yourself, or sit on your duff and wait it out.

[Spiroth]

no.. I read it, that's why I tried providing an analogy you might be able to grasp since you don't seem to be digesting how things work on the internet. I'm not just blowing smoke here. This information has been posted here time and time again...and people have posted back that they found issues and got it resolved. For whatever reason you are just not seeing the logic and insist on blaming SE for the problem without even considering any other possibility for what may be at fault here. Let's see if we can simplify it even further for you.

Ever been in an accident that rendered your car undrivable? Or maybe there was a mechanical failure, dead battery, or you got a flat tire? You had to first identify the problem, than go through the process necessary to get it fixed before you could drive it again.

Ever suffered a power outage because of a bad storm or maybe an accident took out a telephone pole or a transformer simply blew because it was old and worn out? You either had to contact the power company to report the outage, and/or had to wait for someone to inspect/repair the downed line/pole before your power was restored.

The same exact principles apply to the internet. When you have 17 potential points of failure on your path to the server, any one of those can go tits up at any given moment, for a host of sometimes bizarre reasons. When you have millions of people cramming themselves into narrow corridors on the internet, sh!t happens with absolutely no warning sometimes. Though, some of it is somewhat predictable... like when March Madness is in full effect, or the World Cup, or any other major entertainment event is pending you can expect all that extra streaming bandwidth to wreak havoc in specific corridors. Then there are these script jockies like Lizard Squad and Anonymous that like to launch attacks on servers to make statements, often announcing them publicly (they were monkeying with PSN last week, btw). You can also have a major storm system moving through an area so you might expect some communication disruptions throughout that region. Ever see the power companies bring in extra trucks and techs when hurricanes and tornadoes are in season?

It's kind of the same thing here--your ISP may simply need to get more proactive in detecting and managing the congestion. It is a fairly simple thing to check for...either you can do it yourself or your ISP should be willing to check it for you. All you need is a valid IP for the service you are having issues with, and run some traces and such to see if there's anything out of sorts along the route. They may even be able to simply monitor your router/modem to capture where you are connecting while playing and take things from there. They have tools to detect and repair these kinds of problems, but you need to bring in the right people (Tier3), and if you can provide decent information (like a trace report) it helps support your case and prods them in to action much faster. Here's an article from Blizzard about doing some of this basic testing for their games:
https://us.battle.net/support/en/art...g-a-traceroute

There are many more articles like this out there... because it is a known problem that is frequently checked when these issues come up. I just like to post that one because it also provides server addresses for their games that you can also run tests against for a comparison. You can get the IP of your world service by running netstat or resmon once you are logged fully into the game, or you can test against the lobby servers by their DNS names (note that some of the lobby servers may change once the EU servers go online):

Canada
neolobby02.ffxiv.com
neolobby04.ffxiv.com
neolobby06.ffxiv.com

Japan
neolobby01.ffxiv.com
neolobby03.ffxiv.com
neolobby05.ffxiv.com

Frontier server that the launcher connects to:
frontier.ffxiv.com

Patch/version manager:
patch-gamever.ffxiv.com

Secure login server:
secure.square-enix.com

All of those addresses are embedded in the executable files, and if your ISP monitors your connections throughout login and gameplay, they should see you hitting some of those. Or, you could just provide them the list up front to do testing against if you aren't willing to do any of the legwork to prod them along. Unfortunately, some of them have a very laissez-faire approach to their customer service and you need to push them to take action. Generating some of these reports and submitting them is often an effective way to push them into taking action--but you may need to demand to speak to a supervisor or to get transferred specifically to Tier3 support before you get someone actually willing to look at the data.

The points are, there are known issues with congestion across the internet that can just crop up seemingly out of nowhere at any given time. Sometimes, they just refuse to clear up on their own and you need to bring it to someone's attention to get it resolved in a more timely fashion. There are simple tests that can be run either by yourself or your ISP to confirm it. And yes... these things ARE the responsibility of your ISP to detect and correct for you--and not SE. In fact, in much of these cases, SE is virtually powerless to do anything about it. You are the the one with the binding agreement with your ISP, who in turn has the binding agreements with their routing partners. You need to hold the ISP accountable to test and maintain the stability of the service you are paying them to provide you, not SE.

Now, if you've gone through the motions and confirmed your route to the server is stable enough, then you can move on to the less common problems. Local security, changes in your system that may have injected a new problem (not uncommon for Windows or other software updates to cause problems...Microsoft, McAfee, Avast, AVG...many companies suffer this problem), a failing router that just can't effectively manage two other people streaming to a set-top box while you are playing, corrupted data because your game crashed unexpectedly (could apply server-side as well), and so and so and so forth. You may in fact find everything is fine leading up to the server, in which case you would need to open a formal ticket with SE at the support portal for a proper investigation. This is a user-to-user support forum, and not for requesting support directly from SE (read the sticky welcoming you to this forum for clarification on that point). We are simply players trying to help other players understand and rectify issues based on our past experiences.

But you are just digging in the heals and dumping everything on SE and not willing to entertain the possibility that it might be something else at fault. Things that are far more commonly found to be the sources of instability. If you aren't willing to take the time to try to flush out the more common problems, then you may simply be SOL until it magically resolves itself somewhere down the line because someone else eventually took their time to track down a potential source for the problem and got the proper people to look into things.

The choice is yours... try to do something about it yourself, or sit on your duff and wait it out.

As I said I'm pretty sure you know your stuff. But again, I don't even want to know all these. All these are terminology which I have to study or put some time into (servers, frontier, neoloby, all those links, Tier 3, DNSs, IPs, etc), in order to understand, and still then, I must also learn the Greek terminology of everything you talked about.

I also don't play on Windows, only PS4, and everything works perfectly, even 7 devices connected at same time streaming videos AND games work, every other online game works, every console/phone/PC works, all except FFXIV (with the other stuff working at same time or everything Off). This started after Tuesday's Maintenanace. Previously everything worked at same time.


My point is simple. The problem I (and others) experience, started the exact second after whatever Square-Enix did on that specific maintenance on Tuesday. This is a fact, I was there at the exact time, I saw it with my own eyes.

I'll try following your advice, and bug my ISP to fix whatever changed from Square's change in Tuesday, because I love this game, and Square-Enix doesn't care for these stuff (like they don't for the dozens of RMT Tells and Friend Requests from the same accounts we get every hour in Malboro).

Thanks for the help, but it's really not acceptable for a user having to go through these stuff because of problem after maintenance on a product I've already put 690 days of hard earned sub money into.
It's not that you have to simplify your post. It's that I am not motivated to solve it for SE, thus your post seems harder than T13 in my eyes.

[Raist]

Looks like you have double trouble now... PSN started going down again last night. Check the link I posted earlier for that service. They have a long history of problems. On top of that, Lizard Squad may still be after them from last week. Not uncommon for them to harass them for weeks at a time.

Sony routinely has problems. Which is another point you seem to be overlooking as well. SE has no control over issues with Sony's authentication. If that extra layer of security that Sony has pushed onto the game has problems, then Sony needs to address it...not SE.

[aerolol]

Same here, started a few days before the patch, got much worse after the patch.

Hardly ever had a lag spikes or latency issues before, now it happens every 2-3 hours for like 30min+ then gets back to normal.

Goblin server, in south america

[NocX7]

They don't seem to care.Not 1 response on this issue and all you see are either players suffering from this error or ppl defending SE and blaming your ISP.

While I understand that in some cases it might be the client's ISP,if the problem not related to SE servers at all why did the problem start for many players the second they introduced a patch?

If the players ISP is to blame then we wouldn't see so many cases where players had zero errors right until we got a game patch.Coincidence? With that many players? I think not.

Fix your servers Square Enix.

[Raist]

There is a limited set of paths into Montreal. It's not uncommon for there to be issues along the routes during times of high traffic. It's not isolated to just this game. It happens all the time all over the place.

The last mile ISP's keep selling higher bandwidth at the endpoints, but their upstream bandwidth is still the same as it was when we were offered half the bandwidth (or less). Effectively, they've just stuck bigger funnels onto the same sized hose, feeding into the same sized bucket. Eventually, the funnel overfills and starts sloshing crap all over the place. When you call them, they look at your local connection and see everything is fine on your end and wash their hands of it all. What they don't do is look at what happens at their exchanges with their routing partners or beyond, which is where the choking is occuring.

In all fairness to the guys that answer the phones though, they aren't typically empowered to look further into things than your local segments. What you need is a higher tier of support--the industry term for that layer is Tier3, but some locals may refer to them as Engineering or simply their Admins. In some cases, you have to push to speak to a supervisor before you get someone who understands what you are asking...unfortunately. Again... those helpdesk guys on the phones often have their hands tied on these matters. You may need to push for someone higher up the chain. I've found I fair better when I use the online options to contact Time Warner. Might be worth checking out your ISP's support portal for an online contact option.

[Riku_HWD]

same here. Behemoth server

[Spiroth]

This is still going on. Didn't allow mw to play at all during the weekend. Let's see if tomorrow's maintenance fixes it.