So about our network issues here

[Lunalepsy]

I've been having some issues lately with my network and this game.

[Wijnand]

So a entire week and still everyday an DDOS attack.. lets hope today it stops but seeing the track record I guess we can accept this will continue. I am not entirely sure if the game is getting ddosed or the german infrastructure. Needless to say Square has been incredibly quiet and low key about giving information. It has sadly only been very generic. I made this thread in the hopes we could get more transparency but it just seems like we will have to content with what lodestone says.

[Valenth]

So a entire week and still everyday an DDOS attack.. lets hope today it stops but seeing the track record I guess we can accept this will continue. I am not entirely sure if the game is getting ddosed or the german infrastructure. Needless to say Square has been incredibly quiet and low key about giving information. It has sadly only been very generic. I made this thread in the hopes we could get more transparency but it just seems like we will have to content with what lodestone says.

To me it seems like it's part of the infrastructure meant to maintain connectivity to the FFXIV servers that is being DDOS'd. OUt of curiosity, what more transparency would you like to have? Could you give some examples of things that would be satisfying you? because I don't think they can give out more information that would. Heck, if they are more transparant, it could even be the ones responsible are better able to adapt and keep your connection DDOS'd better? However, I would think if we are to get more transparency it's very likely after things have been dealt with properly.

On a sidenotes for those who don't know how our internet connection works. Imagine our internet connection as a railroad network and one or more of the major trainstation stops RIGHT before the destination that is our server is/are being bombed and put out of commission. You can complain to SE, who doesn't own the network, to fix things. But besides them speaking very angry to the owners of the nodes that are being DDOS'd there is nothing they can conceivably do that would instantly fix things. Even if SE could to somehow get data traffic fixed themselves, the result could very likely be increased latency as it would be like redirecting all the normally spread traffic through the other few remaining 'trainstations' left before the server. It could even result in much of the same problems we have now because concentrating traffic through these nodes could prove too much, resulting in lags and DC's as well (and definitely latency).

Edit, this also explains why not everyone is being DC'd, as not everyone is connected to the servers through the same nodes. Consider yourself lucky if you have an ISP that makes your connection travel through the unaffected nodes.

[Wijnand]

To me it seems like it's part of the infrastructure meant to

On a sidenotes for those who don't know how our internet connection works. Imagine our internet connection as a railroad network and one or more of the major trainstation

I have a degree in IT and have written an entire healthcare system in code that has also passed stringent audits and security stress tests. including Doss attacks. Recall that Microsoft had a possible DDOS attack and they handled it very well 10 years back. However at this point all I am seeing or I should say am feeling is that we are getting the same copy and paste response everyday. Only yesterday did we hear anything from Yoshi-P. I initially wrote this post because the network has been sluggish/poor since 4.4 I have written posts about that. It is obvious that something is wrong with the server before the DDOS became an issue. Unless this has been an ongoing thing for months. I read posts on reddit where apparently the German infrastructure is being DDosed. Again the question then becomes what is really going on here. Is it the overall network being a problem. Or is it square being targeted directly.

The only real reason anyone would directly attack square is cause they want to try to hack the server or are pissed off over being banned for whatever reason it is. However right now I am trying to or asking for there to be an audit on the system itself. This problem as many posts have shown has been going on for months. I have a stable 12 MS ping to the server yet during instances I lag. Packet loss and servers just not responding suzako EX is a prime example of the incident happening. I originally was on the Ultros server and when I was in San Francisco my latency and internet became incredibly bad the second the servers were moved to the new location in California. The nodes there are just not the same quality as they were in Canada. There are miriads threads of people complaining about the servers having a lot more problems ever since the move. The EU servers never have moved since they were moved over to Germany.

the only solution square has is either find a datacenter that has a more robust backbone (they do exist you know). Or stay where they are now where apparently they had:

- A power outage that deepfried network routers and switches (how?).

- Has a horrendous track record of being stable you only need to look at the lodestone to see how often our hamster kicks the bucket.

- had latency issues before the DDOS attack.

I completely understand people wanting to defend and explain why square cannot do anything. But right now I am paying a 6 monthly sub and all I am asking for is a sincere attempt to look at the different issues instead of using a DDOS attack now as an excuse to swipe the other problems under the rug. Again this is meant to help people I am not here wanting to make peoples life miserable. I do however wish we could get a bit more adequate response than the current "sorry"

[Bahati]

I'm not EU and I may be incorrect but I don't think any region has had their game be literally unplayable for this long in the past? Is it common for a DDOS attack to remain unresolved for this long?

I understand that compensating days lost would be pocket change but they might at least consider gil compensation or something. I'm not suggesting it's SE's fault but it's surely not the fault of the players either and it's SE's job to make right not the consumers' job to just sit down and get over it.

[Vahlnir]

I'm not EU and I may be incorrect but I don't think any region has had their game be literally unplayable for this long in the past? Is it common for a DDOS attack to remain unresolved for this long?

I understand that compensating days lost would be pocket change but they might at least consider gil compensation or something. I'm not suggesting it's SE's fault but it's surely not the fault of the players either and it's SE's job to make right not the consumers' job to just sit down and get over it.

I'm beginning to think it's not entirely the DDoS, though I suspected as much from the start. They'll try and sweep it under the rug regardless. If there's any connection issues it's never their fault and we are basically told to suck it up.

[Kurando]

I'm beginning to think it's not entirely the DDoS, though I suspected as much from the start.

Well of course it's not entirely a fault with DDOS attacks, the EU datacentre has a big history of constant issues though, there is always a problem with it at some point or another. It seems that the underlying issues with the EU centre could cause it to be more vulnerable to things like DDOS hence why it seems to suffer the most compared to all the other datacentres. I don't think the Chaos centre is suited in their current location (Germany) because of the ongoing tech issues but EU definitely benefits from having one locally, so SE probably need to work something out moving forward otherwise compensation to effected customers may not be a choice at all.

[Wijnand]

Well of course it's not entirely a fault with DDOS attacks, the EU datacentre has a big history of constant issues though, there is always a problem with it at some point or another. It seems that the underlying issues with the EU centre could cause it to be more vulnerable to things like DDOS hence why it seems to suffer the most compared to all the other datacentres. I don't think the Chaos centre is suited in their current location (Germany) because of the ongoing tech issues but EU definitely benefits from having one locally, so SE probably need to work something out moving forward otherwise compensation to effected customers may not be a choice at all.

Its all about how much square is willing to pay people... I always assumed that the German location was picked because of the SE office being nearby and it being cheaper than say example Amsterdam where basically a very large network hub exists. DDOS are preventable to a degree. Load balancing (multiple servers), more bandwidth than what we currently have and software measures. In the end you cannot prevent anything. but the DDOS just given people a flag to rally around the perceived idea that the chaos Datacenter is of poor quality.

There are threads about suzako ex and there being obvious server tick lag and there comes a point in time that we need to ask if the servers that are currently employed are up to the task. I am sure we can all agree that we just want this game to succeed and one important key to this success is satisfactory customer experience.

[Valenth]

Its all about how much square is willing to pay people... I always assumed that the German location was picked because of the SE office being nearby and it being cheaper than say example Amsterdam where basically a very large network hub exists...

From what I know the servers are located in Frankfurt specifically, which is a known city for housing more MMO servers. SE's European HQ is located in London last time I checked. I suppose Frankfurt is a bit more nicely located in the middle of the entirety of Europe as well? Who knows, though through the years of playing MMO's I would always hear people complain about the German infrastructure not being exactly top-notch, so perhaps having them in Amsterdam would have been better (for my ping as well lol).

Edit: As I see you advocating the Amsterdam placement of the servers in other threads as well, I would like to remind you that things there aren't exactly so much better either. The amount of times Ziggo (main ISP in the Amsterdam region) has major outage By DDoS, courtesy of Anonymous last year, easily rivals the amount of times we've had problems with the FFXIV servers.