Reporting Latency Related Issue (NA Data Center)

[Virtguy]

Name of your Internet Service Provider (ISP): Time Warner Cable
Ticket or reference number from your ISP: Ticket opened on DSLReports TWC Direct Forum
State/Country: NC, USA
Date/Time (When did the issue start happening, at what specific times does this issue arise, if any.): At least 10 months, every night
Frequency (How often does the issue occur?): Nightly, typically between 5pm and 11pm
Content (Which content were you playing in-game when the issue occurred?): Any
Which in-game World were you playing on when the issue occurred?: Ultros
Traceroute records (optional) (Learn how to generate traceroute record):

TL;DR: Nightly packet loss lasting for several hours has been ongoing for months, and generally makes the game unplayable. Using a VPN (WTFast or Pingzapper) bypasses the affected routes and results in perfectly smooth gameplay. Multiple cases opened with TWC, but no issues acknowledge on their end.

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I've been monitoring Ultros for over a year with PRTG. Here's a current 2 day view of the issue, which depicts packet loss and the corresponding increase in latency:


This is a weekly view:


And a monthly view:


The issue has been ongoing for months. I'm no longer running PingPlotter, but this is are some screenshots from when I was. Notice the packet loss after the traffic leaves the TWC network (first hops redacted for personally identifiable info):




It's important to note that the issue is not local to my house, neighborhood, or region. There is no corresponding increase in packet loss or latency when monitoring one of the last hops out of the TWC network. As mentioned in the TL;DR, I'm able to use a VPN service and play the game without any issues, further ruling out any local or regional problems. Here's a monthly view of one of those hops, notice the average response time is very flat for the entire month, without the nightly spikes:


WTFast provides a bit of data, but does themselves a disservice the way they calculate ping spikes. The important data is the packet loss over the internet, and no packet loss over the tunnel, and the resulting latency difference between the two:


I'm starting up PingPlotter again to capture more current data. For now, here's pathping results showing the current route, but too short of a sample period to show packet loss and latency:

Windows PowerShell
Copyright (C) 2014 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

PS C:\Users\Administrator> pathping 199.91.189.36

Tracing route to 199.91.189.36 over a maximum of 30 hops

  0  lab-hv01 [172.16.1.180]
  1  172.16.1.1
  2  cpe-65-190-176-1.nc.res.rr.com [65.190.176.1]
  3  cpe-65-190-176-1.nc.res.rr.com [65.190.176.1]
  4  cpe-174-111-104-057.triad.res.rr.com [174.111.104.57]
  5  cpe-024-025-062-024.ec.res.rr.com [24.25.62.24]
  6  be31.chrcnctr01r.southeast.rr.com [24.93.64.186]
  7  bu-ether24.atlngamq46w-bcr00.tbone.rr.com [107.14.19.18]
  8  0.ae1.pr0.atl20.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.177]
  9  twc-telus.pr0.chi10.tbone.rr.com [66.109.9.70]
 10  ae-11-11.car2.montreal2.level3.net [4.69.141.1]
 11  ae-11-11.car2.montreal2.level3.net [4.69.141.1]
 12  ormuco-comm.car2.montreal2.level3.net [4.59.178.74]
 13  192.34.76.10
 14  199.91.189.242
 15  199.91.189.36

Computing statistics for 375 seconds...
            Source to Here   This Node/Link
Hop  RTT    Lost/Sent = Pct  Lost/Sent = Pct  Address
  0                                           lab-hv01 [172.16.1.180]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  1    0ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  172.16.1.1
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  2   13ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  cpe-65-190-176-1.nc.res.rr.com [65.190.176.1]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  3   13ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  cpe-65-190-176-1.nc.res.rr.com [65.190.176.1]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  4   19ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  cpe-174-111-104-057.triad.res.rr.com [174.111.104.57]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  5   13ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  cpe-024-025-062-024.ec.res.rr.com [24.25.62.24]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  6   20ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  be31.chrcnctr01r.southeast.rr.com [24.93.64.186]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  7   25ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  bu-ether24.atlngamq46w-bcr00.tbone.rr.com [107.14.19.18]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  8   30ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  0.ae1.pr0.atl20.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.177]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  9   27ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  twc-telus.pr0.chi10.tbone.rr.com [66.109.9.70]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
 10  ---     100/ 100 =100%   100/ 100 =100%  ae-11-11.car2.montreal2.level3.net [4.69.141.1]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
 11  ---     100/ 100 =100%   100/ 100 =100%  ae-11-11.car2.montreal2.level3.net [4.69.141.1]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
 12   55ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  ormuco-comm.car2.montreal2.level3.net [4.59.178.74]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
 13  ---     100/ 100 =100%   100/ 100 =100%  192.34.76.10
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
 14  ---     100/ 100 =100%   100/ 100 =100%  199.91.189.242
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
 15   51ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  199.91.189.36

Trace complete.
PS C:\Users\Administrator>

Please feel free to contact me directly if you'd like to coordinate remote testing or observation.