Major ping increase since about a month ago

[Celte]

Ping went from an average of 55-60 to 150-155 around a month ago. This was discussed at length in this thread: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...45-Ping-of-200

Like most people who posted on that thread, I am from Portugal and I am having the same issues. At this point I'm mostly making this thread in a desperate attempt to raise awareness because I'm almost certain that there is some shady reason such as fixing the problem costing more money than just letting a bunch of people have an immensely worsened experience.

A back-and-forth with support that lasted 2 weeks ended with the last message I received saying that they can't do anything about it, despite being the only ones that can do something about it. More details about the issue in the thread mentioned above and the general consensus appears to be that this issue is permanent unless SE does something.

[Darneltia]

Greetings fellow Eorzean,

We apologize for the inconvenience you are experiencing. Please provide the following information:

- Are you using a wired or wireless connection?
- Platform (Playstation 4 or 5, Steam/Windows, or Mac)
- Do you have any firewalls or anti-virus software installed on the machine if are using a Mac or Windows PC? If so, which ones do you have installed?
- Does any specific error message/code occur when the issue happens?
- Does the issue only happen in a specific area in the game, specific character or a certain time frame?
- Internet Service provider:
- Region/Location you are in (your actual location, not in-game):

We look forward to your reply back.

Thank you for visiting the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums!

[Celte]

Greetings fellow Eorzean,

We apologize for the inconvenience you are experiencing. Please provide the following information:

- Are you using a wired or wireless connection?
- Platform (Playstation 4 or 5, Steam/Windows, or Mac)
- Do you have any firewalls or anti-virus software installed on the machine if are using a Mac or Windows PC? If so, which ones do you have installed?
- Does any specific error message/code occur when the issue happens?
- Does the issue only happen in a specific area in the game, specific character or a certain time frame?
- Internet Service provider:
- Region/Location you are in (your actual location, not in-game):

We look forward to your reply back.

Thank you for visiting the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums!

I understand you are trying to help and I appreciate it, but please understand that this is the third time I am being asked for that particular list of details. Many users in the thread I linked in the original post have pointed out that there appears to be a routing issue that we players can do nothing about save paying for a VPN to circumvent it. As mentioned, the routing seems to be PT-UK-NY-UK-FR-GER, meaning that I am somehow being sent to New York despite being in EU, trying to connect to the EU servers. I have mentioned countless times the possibilities of a routing issue in my initial support ticket, yet was ignored every single time, to the point where I was almost certain I was speaking to a bot. Can this be addressed at all? Many users have also pointed out the need to contact TATA Telecomm (or service providers) to address the routing issue. Could this be looked into?

I just want to be able to play this game I love the same way I played it for months prior with no issues.

[Shibi]

Routing is outside of what SE can do, for that you need to talk to your internet provider, and you need to keep at them.

Your ISP will likely try to brush you off and blame others, but don't put up with that. They provide the internet to you, and it is always their responsibility to get their BGP tables sorted out.

[Celte]

Routing is outside of what SE can do, for that you need to talk to your internet provider, and you need to keep at them.

Your ISP will likely try to brush you off and blame others, but don't put up with that. They provide the internet to you, and it is always their responsibility to get their BGP tables sorted out.

I get that reasoning, since it was the one I started with when I began looking into the issue. However, I have since discovered people who share my ISP that DO NOT have any issues as well as people who have a different ISP that DO have the issue. At this point I just don't see how it can be on the side of my ISP.

[worldofneil]

At this point I just don't see how it can be on the side of my ISP.

When it comes to routing, sorry but it's always down to your ISP.

I'm simplifying this, but whenever you want to connect to any service on the Internet you tell your Internet provider where you want to go. They in turn then tell you the way on how you can get there. Unfortunately in some cases, like your example where you are being sent via New York, the route they give you is really bad, but that's still on your Internet provider to fix this, they're the ones providing the information on how you get there.

Although the Internet is digital, it is still made up of physical objects in real locations (such as the XIV EU game servers are physically located in Germany). There's also a lot of cabling connecting the Internet together. Much like travelling from one city to another there are many different roads (cables) on how you can get from one place to another, but you don't have a choice in how you get there because your ISP does this for you and I don't know of any ISP that will let you pick your own routing, at least not from a home user connection.

However that being said, the reason VPNs work is that when you connect to their services they in turn try to give you a better route to the destination. To do this thought VPN providers usually have to have multiple servers set up in many different countries. Internet providers (generally) only deal with Internet connectivity in their own state/country so when you want to go to parts of the Internet they don't control, they have agreements with other providers to handle your traffic. Unfortunately it simply comes down to cost and it might not be the best solution for you if it's slowed down, but as long as your traffic gets there then they're happy to send it a way that saves them money.

Square Enix provide the servers for the game, but they have absolutely no control over how your Internet provider routes your traffic. Sorry this answer isn't what you want to hear, but I hope that it's been some help at least.

[Shibi]

I get that reasoning, since it was the one I started with when I began looking into the issue. However, I have since discovered people who share my ISP that DO NOT have any issues as well as people who have a different ISP that DO have the issue. At this point I just don't see how it can be on the side of my ISP.

Do you have a tracert we can look at? It will give a bit of evidence and a direction for you to chase!

for Omega/Chaos the command is:

tracert 195.82.50.9

Networking issues can be frustrating!

[Samuraieira]

Heres one of mine, also from Portugal, like many people here have the same issue since the patch hit.

Tracing route to 195.82.50.10 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 3 ms 3 ms 3 ms a109-49-80-2.cpe.netcabo.pt [109.49.80.2]
3 3 ms 3 ms 2 ms 10.137.240.206
4 3 ms 3 ms 2 ms 10.255.48.74
5 4 ms 3 ms 2 ms ix-ae-9-0.tcore2.pv9-lisbon.as6453.net [195.219.214.17]
6 103 ms 105 ms 102 ms if-ae-2-2.tcore1.pv9-lisbon.as6453.net [80.231.158.5]
7 104 ms 103 ms 103 ms if-ae-1-3.tcore1.sv8-highbridge.as6453.net [80.231.158.30]
8 * * * Request timed out.
9 * * * Request timed out.
10 127 ms 102 ms 102 ms if-ae-66-2.tcore3.nto-newyork.as6453.net [80.231.130.106]
11 102 ms 102 ms 102 ms 63.243.186.19
12 103 ms 103 ms 103 ms nyk-bb2-link.ip.twelve99.net [62.115.135.132]
13 174 ms 174 ms 174 ms ldn-bb1-link.ip.twelve99.net [62.115.113.21]
14 208 ms 208 ms 208 ms prs-bb1-link.ip.twelve99.net [62.115.135.25]
15 208 ms * 208 ms ffm-bb1-link.ip.twelve99.net [62.115.123.12]
16 208 ms 210 ms 208 ms ffm-b10-link.ip.twelve99.net [62.115.137.227]
17 207 ms 205 ms 205 ms kddi-ic301630-ffm-b10.ip.twelve99-cust.net [62.115.32.110]
18 206 ms 207 ms 206 ms 195.82.60.29
19 205 ms 205 ms 205 ms 195.82.61.14
20 1214 ms * 1402 ms 195.82.50.230
21 205 ms 205 ms 205 ms 195.82.50.10

[Shibi]

100% not the patch. It's a problem inside Tata Communications network.

Looks like their most direct route is too busy so they send your packet via NY instead as it's less congested.

You can talk to your ISP about changing their routing to bypass Tata and use someone else without congestion, or sadly, it's going to mean using a gaming VPN to bypass the congestion until the root cause behind that is fixed by Tata.

But it's not the 6.1 patch, just something that happened in the world around the same time (End of February/Start of April) to mess up Europe's internet a bit.

[Yukari_Ciel]

Im also from Portugal and have the same issue, got around 200-250 ping. But on NA server, i have less ping. Only have this issue on Final Fantasy EU servers.