Unplayable lag

[Raist]

It's less likely to be serverside and more likely to be along your route. That is why it improved when using a VPN--it allowed you to bypass the problematic routing policy. This has been shown extensively to be the case for Verizon lately---especially where they are peering with Level3 to get people into Montreal (they don't HAVE to use Level3--they also have peering agreements with Cogent, TATA, and their own Business Class peers directly with Ormuco as well, who is SE's ISP). Lots of people have resolved most if not all these problems by using a VPN, and not just Verizon---it is because of the routing problems getting to Montreal (and in some cases Japan as well).

Need to look at your route...likely to find signs of congestion along the way that need to be addressed. If you aren't comfortable/knowledgeable enough to run the tracert and interpret it, lean on your ISP to investigate. Give them the DNS names to the lobby servers in Canada for testing:

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

(for Japan, they use the odd numbers 01, 03, and 05 in the names)

And 10ms to the servers in Montreal? Do you live down the street? That sounds more like a ping to something local.

[Sarnen508]

It's less likely to be serverside and more likely to be along your route. That is why it improved when using a VPN--it allowed you to bypass the problematic routing policy. This has been shown extensively to be the case for Verizon lately---especially where they are peering with Level3 to get people into Montreal (they don't HAVE to use Level3--they also have peering agreements with Cogent, TATA, and their own Business Class peers directly with Ormuco as well, who is SE's ISP). Lots of people have resolved most if not all these problems by using a VPN, and not just Verizon---it is because of the routing problems getting to Montreal (and in some cases Japan as well).

Need to look at your route...likely to find signs of congestion along the way that need to be addressed. If you aren't comfortable/knowledgeable enough to run the tracert and interpret it, lean on your ISP to investigate. Give them the DNS names to the lobby servers in Canada for testing:

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

(for Japan, they use the odd numbers 01, 03, and 05 in the names)

And 10ms to the servers in Montreal? Do you live down the street? That sounds more like a ping to something local.

I tried a tracert but nothing really red flag-ish jumped out at me. I have heard that FIOS uses are really suffering lately but I couldn't find a consensus on who was at fault really (some say SE changed something about the servers a few patches ago and thats causing hte problems).

[Raist]

I tried a tracert but nothing really red flag-ish jumped out at me. I have heard that FIOS uses are really suffering lately but I couldn't find a consensus on who was at fault really (some say SE changed something about the servers a few patches ago and thats causing hte problems).

Ormuco had a maintenance that might have made networking changes...not SE. In the past, that has been optimizations though--one of them a while back added Verizon's alter.net/UUNET as a direct peer. Haven't seen any major new ASN's crop up yet from this last maintenance though--was hoping maybe they were adding another big name. They could have been adding more ports at an exchange point...who knows. But so far each one of Ormuco's maintenance cycles has improved things and not hurt them.

What has changed however is the amount of traffic in general and not just for this game. Unfortunately, we are pushed through already heavily trafficed areas--and when usage ramps up it impacts us at specific points. Points around Southern California and Seattle/Vancouver, Austin, Atlanta, Charlotte/Raleigh-Durham, Ashburn/DC, Chicago, several points around Ohio, the Northeast is a hot mess--especially around NY/NJ and even MA and ME. Some other choking points... just escaping me at the moment.

When everyone and their brother is getting crammed through the same exchanges for various content, routing needs to be adjusted on the fly to compensate--some teams just do a better job at it than others. Lately, Verizon seems to be dropping the ball. A while back it was Comcast...before that it may have been Time Warner. It moves around because it is largely dependent on with whom they assign for peering to get to Ormuco.