Lag spikes - looking for potential reason

[Garreon]

Hello,

I started playing FFXIV recently and I'm struggling with some short lag spikes. Normally the connection is good but once in few moments the game doesn't catch up for few seconds.

Playing from Europe on EU hub. Trying to figure out if it might be issue on side of my ISP or rather it's on SE. Below is tracert from WinMTR - if anyone here can read it and say if it is any indicator, I'd appreciate. Thanks!

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| WinMTR statistics |
| Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
| 192.168.200.69 - 0 | 2033 | 2033 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| host-193-39-71-110.dag.pl - 0 | 2032 | 2032 | 1 | 2 | 13 | 2 |
| squid.dag.pl - 2 | 1900 | 1866 | 1 | 3 | 21 | 3 |
| non-registered.plix.pl - 3 | 1876 | 1836 | 2 | 5 | 195 | 5 |
|te0-0-1-2.rcr13.b016833-0.waw01.atlas.cogentco.com - 2 | 1912 | 1881 | 2 | 5 | 32 | 6 |
| be2456.ccr21.waw01.atlas.cogentco.com - 2 | 1906 | 1874 | 2 | 5 | 28 | 4 |
| be2252.ccr41.ham01.atlas.cogentco.com - 2 | 1908 | 1876 | 15 | 17 | 55 | 17 |
| be2186.ccr41.ams03.atlas.cogentco.com - 2 | 1911 | 1880 | 24 | 26 | 47 | 25 |
| be2182.ccr21.lpl01.atlas.cogentco.com - 2 | 1919 | 1890 | 107 | 109 | 133 | 110 |
| be2391.ccr41.lon13.atlas.cogentco.com - 2 | 1903 | 1870 | 106 | 109 | 141 | 107 |
| be2317.ccr41.jfk02.atlas.cogentco.com - 2 | 1903 | 1870 | 108 | 111 | 142 | 109 |
| be2324.ccr21.jfk04.atlas.cogentco.com - 3 | 1879 | 1840 | 110 | 118 | 817 | 111 |
| 38.88.194.82 - 2 | 1916 | 1886 | 113 | 116 | 139 | 115 |
| po23.cr4.mtl.iweb.com - 2 | 1915 | 1885 | 113 | 116 | 154 | 115 |
| te7-3.dr9.mtl.iweb.com - 2 | 1915 | 1885 | 113 | 121 | 431 | 114 |
| 72.55.128.44 - 2 | 1895 | 1860 | 114 | 116 | 150 | 114 |
| 184.107.107.176 - 2 | 1900 | 1866 | 113 | 115 | 149 | 115 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|
WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider

[Raist]

Invalid IP address. That is a website server on the other side of town, hosted by a different company (i-web). The game runs on servers hosted by Ormuco in Canada, and all the addresses start with 199.

Regardless, you have an extreme amount of jitter, and it appears to be consistent throughout your route---starting with your first hop out (best of 2, average of 2, worst of 13). When you get handed off into Cogent's lines, it runs 2, 5, and 32. Way to much swing in your response times.

You should try testing to either the IP your client actually uses when logged fully into the game (can get that from Resource Monitor's network or TCP section: resmon from the search/run box). Alternatively you can try your lobby server's address. Not sure which one Chaos uses, but it should be either neolobby04.ffxiv.com or neolobby06.ffxiv.com. I am on Aether and use neolobby02, so it shouldn't be that one.

[Garreon]

@Raist, thank you very much for the feedback. I've checked server which I'm connecting to and performed similar tracert. Below are results. Would you - or any other kind soul - could help me interpreting this so a) I know if it's my ISP's fault as I assume, and b) I have some arguments when contacting them?

To clarify:
host-193-39-71-110.dag.pl - this is host directly in hands of my ISP
squid.dag.pl - this is host directly in hands of my ISP
non-registered.plix.pl - this is network that my ISP belongs to

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| WinMTR statistics |
| Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
| 192.168.200.69 - 0 | 1504 | 1504 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| host-193-39-71-110.dag.pl - 0 | 1506 | 1506 | 1 | 2 | 7 | 1 |
| squid.dag.pl - 3 | 1375 | 1342 | 1 | 5 | 40 | 6 |
| non-registered.plix.pl - 3 | 1376 | 1343 | 2 | 8 | 213 | 3 |
|te0-0-1-2.rcr13.b016833-0.waw01.atlas.cogentco.com - 3 | 1379 | 1346 | 3 | 7 | 45 | 4 |
| be2456.ccr21.waw01.atlas.cogentco.com - 3 | 1372 | 1337 | 2 | 7 | 44 | 5 |
| be2252.ccr41.ham01.atlas.cogentco.com - 3 | 1368 | 1333 | 15 | 20 | 57 | 21 |
| be2186.ccr41.ams03.atlas.cogentco.com - 3 | 1380 | 1348 | 106 | 111 | 148 | 110 |
| be2194.ccr41.lon13.atlas.cogentco.com - 3 | 1388 | 1358 | 107 | 111 | 154 | 111 |
| be2391.ccr21.lpl01.atlas.cogentco.com - 3 | 1381 | 1349 | 106 | 111 | 148 | 111 |
| be2384.ccr21.ymq02.atlas.cogentco.com - 3 | 1384 | 1353 | 106 | 110 | 149 | 111 |
| 38.122.42.34 - 3 | 1372 | 1338 | 107 | 111 | 149 | 110 |
| 192.34.76.10 - 3 | 1369 | 1334 | 106 | 112 | 169 | 110 |
| 199.91.189.242 - 3 | 1384 | 1353 | 107 | 112 | 186 | 114 |
| 199.91.189.138 - 3 | 1368 | 1333 | 106 | 109 | 146 | 108 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|

Thank you in advance!

[Raist]

Same as before...there is way too much jitter, and it starts early in your route before the peering exchange into Cogent (we frequently see choking points at or near such exchange points).

Your min/max should be much closer in their response times. And there shouldn't be large variances between any two successive pings--typically anything greater than about 20-25% is an indication of congestion or something like signal quality issues. You should run some standard tracerts and pings and save the reports, as they may better demonstrate the abnormal variances. With the ping command you can tell it to ping more than the default 4 times with the -n switch. For example to ping neolobby04 25 times you can use this command:

ping neolobby04.ffxiv.com -n 25