Is SE Going to Fix Server Lag?

[Zosimo]

I have been noticing these server lag issues a lot more recently over the past week on Behemoth. I have a fast Internet connection and a good system setup that allows me to run the game on max settings at 45 fps without overclocking as well. The lag is most notable when trying to load new zones after teleporting that takes 5 minutes. There have even been a couple C++ runtime errors that have happened as a result of it.

[Raist]

Just curious if any of you guys have tested you latency to your servers.

I'm consistently sitting at no worse than 80-90 ms response times, peak times on weekends it can sometimes hit around 110... but it's consistently very low for me. It's still often pegging no worse than around 230-280 or so to the JP servers, but the ones to Canada are consistenly low.

This can be a MAJOR factor in contributing to your lag.... and SE may have little to no control over latency across the internet.

Just saying, SE may be very limited in what they can do for people in some regions or with some ISP's.

[Edit:]
Just to provide an example, here are some quick ping results, taken at about 11:40 AM on a Sunday, Eastern time:

Midgard server:

Ping statistics for 199.91.189.74:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 50ms, Maximum = 77ms, Average = 57ms

One of the JP servers I stay connected to when online (also in the subnet used for XI, mind you):

Ping statistics for 124.150.157.158:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 183ms, Maximum = 217ms, Average = 194ms

If you run tracerts, you may see that the response times sometimes swing really high at one of the hops in between--SE has no control over that. Someone would need to go to the admins for that segment to address issues with their systems... not really SE's responsibility, maybe not even your ISP (unless it's their segment or one of their affiliates I guess).

Your best bet may be to find such hiccups in routing and forward it to your ISP. I did this once a few years back when having stability issues with XI, only to find it was a segment in Virginia that was failing, and RR was able to come up with a workaround for it. It happened again later that year and it was in Nova Scotia--BOTH times it was a problem with a VERIZON segment we were hopping on---and both times RR was able to provide a solution to the problem---NOT SE.

[Replica9]

Just curious if any of you guys have tested you latency to your servers.

I'm consistently sitting at 80-90 ms response times, peak times on weekends it can sometimes hit around 110... but it's consistently very low for me. It's still pegging around 230-280 or so to the JP servers, but the ones to Canada are consistenly low.

This can be a MAJOR factor in contributing to your lag.... and SE may have little to no control over latency across the internet.

Just saying, SE may be very limited in what they can do for people in some regions or with some ISP's.

It has nothing to do with the ISP's , the problem is from SE side

[Raist]

It has nothing to do with the ISP's , the problem is from SE side

Are you absolutely sure it is ONLY latency from the server?

I have not experienced the atrocious lag you guys are subscribing, and I've been on CNJ most all of this week--and I have very fast response times.

Just saying, have you guys taken the time to rule out this as a contributing factor?

Have to remember just how dependent this game is on your connection to the servers--things aren't cached client side and then synched as heavily as with other games, it runs almost entirely based on a direct response from the servers. You don't score a hit unless the server says you did, you don't cast a spell unless the server says you did, a monster doesn't hit you unless the server says it did. If you have poor up/down response time across the internet, it WILL delay things on your screen.

Edit:
Review this thread about lag issues:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...aintenance-%29

Notice how many are overseas... might be something in there.

There are links to a few other threads discussing the issues, one really long one that has lots of god info about IP's that are showing heavy packet loss and such--and it seems to be region specific. Some players have tunneled to different regions so they get a different route and the lag had improved. Others have managed to get in touch with the "middleman" to get some action taken.

One such post is in that very thread:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post1252020

Lag/Network Update for people tracking the network issues
I just spent 30 minutes on the phone with a tinet.net NOC technician.

The short answer:

5-10% packet loss @ ormuco-gw.ip4.tinet.net [216.221.156.110]

This IP is being advertised to multiple circuits (3 maybe?). The tinet.net is running fine. The NOC tech has confidence one of the others was fine too, and pointed me to the NOC for Cogent Communications, cogentco.com.

I just sent them an email, hoping to get the same outstanding service Tinet.net provided.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...network-issues

This player was able to identify a networking issue with someone outside of SE's scope of responsibility/influence, contacted someone who could actually look into the problem at hand.

There's a lot of info branching out from this thread. May be worth the time for some of you to visit the threads linked in there. It may ultimately help you track down the source of a large part of your problem and get the proper people working towards a solution if it is indeed something in between you and Ormuco and/or SE.

[SionDurant]

I am also having the same issue, I opened a Support ticket over it, I suggest you all do the same thing and include the information there. It will not be fixed if everyone keeps being quiet about it, so please be as noisy as possible. It's VERY frustrating considering people blame you in game when you hit a lag spike and a newly spawned add kills the healer.

It's really killing a lot of players gaming experience.

[SionDurant]

So, I just want to let you all know, I have a very nice ISP or rather I'm lucky and have nice support people and one of them plays FFXIV. He too uses the same service and has no issues. But just to give a little education

When you run a Traceroute, the First 6-7 results are your ISP's network that you're using (in this phase I have perfect stats)

The next set of results (after the first IP address change) are documentation of the changeover between your ISP and the outbound service it's trying to reach. When I see " 11 104 ms 101 ms 101 ms te0-4-0-17.ccr21.dfw03.atlas.cogentco.com" this is where my test gets depressing. So on the next set, it's the service you're dealing with IE Final Fantasy XIV

Anything between 50-200 is playable MS. But the thing you should be looking for are Timeouts, and if your ISP or the travel route both have 0 time outs and are within reasonable scores, it's the service (FFXIV).

On EVERY tracert I run, FFXIV has major time outs (see below)

18 * * * Request timed out.

Don't let SE fool you, it most certainly IS their service that's the issue. This person who's been helping me is Tier 2, and says Brighthouse and Road Runner have no throttling issues with SE, and would be happy to help me, but all of the tracerts (30 we ran) returned results stating the service and enroute to FFXIV was fine. SE is deceiving you.

[Sneakaboo]

Raist I will bite.

- 160 MB/s cable connection from the Netherlands
- Pre maintenance no problems like this and a ping going from 110 to 150.
- After last maintenance constant delays, freezes for 2-3 seconds and what not.
- Pre ARR launch clean format ect and applied the network fix for windows 7.
- ms in Tera/WOW/LOL/SC2 80 tops and no lag spikes or delays, I can play an action MMO on a US server and have no problem.
- ms with in Europe 8 to 18 ms.
- My ISP doesn't throttle downloads or on line gaming.

When you see this many posts after a maintenance it's pretty save to say SE screwed up.


Of course the fact that the games latency masking is poorly done makes it worse.
But that's another story how ever compare this to casting in ARR.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24nypzuW2bw

I think it has more something to do with SE their coding and servers being over loaded.


Edit:

Trace seems to be fine from my side but that is nothing new, no loss no time out nothing.
But this is just typical , they blame your ISP so you go bug them for a week.

[SionDurant]

I was also fine before they opened up the new servers and did that 8 min maintenance.

[Vektrat]

Hello,

I made a post about this a few days (weeks?) ago, it was classified as an ACCEPTED BUG. I find it serious enough to get a dedicated reply from a SE representative, yet no information was given so far.

Here's the thread:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...s-everybody%29

[Anthreas]

Hello,

I made a post about this a few days (weeks?) ago, it was classified as an ACCEPTED BUG. I find it serious enough to get a dedicated reply from a SE representative, yet no information was given so far.

Here's the thread:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...s-everybody%29

This thread above (which for some reason i cannot post in) is exactly what I'm experiencing. For instance, when I press mount i can run for about .5-1 sec before i actually mount up. I'm on the NA Excalibur Server, have a 25 mbs cable internet connection (haven't had any problems of the sort in any other video game I've ever played). My brother was like yeah I've just gotten used to it, you just have to be on point and react quickly (which I guess is fine if that is the way it was intended, but it's not). Honestly I originally thought of it as part of the game and it was on my end, and I would would just have to deal with it, but I'm glad to find out that I am not the only one. Hopefully they work on this and fix it soon. Great game, but I hope they fix this soon, otherwise I fear it might be game-breaking for me.

On another note, anybody who keeps saying that it is not from SE's side, you're wrong. You might have a fantastic connection to their server, that's great I'm sure there are select regions or ISPs or whatever that happen to mesh well with whatever they are doing with their servers. You are experiencing the game the way it's supposed to be played and I'm happy for you, but pretty much everyone that I play with; my Free Company, my brother (we live in different states), my neighbor (different server, different type of internet (DSL vs cable)), all have the same issues. I'm sorry but there is just no possible way that every single one of our internet connections / ISP's / type of internet / region / etc... are the issue here, the only logical thought is that it is SE's over-populated, under-prepared servers.

I apologize in advance for the rant, but seeing people constantly saying that it is somehow the player's internet and not SE is frustrating, because they seem to be ignoring that fact that a lot of people are experiencing this, no matter where they are, what server they are on, or what internet they are using.