Any Updates Regarding Latency Issues w/ Endgame Content?

[TrystWildkey]

Ok, no one is going to believe me, but I HAVE to say something.

At my home, we have a DSL connection. My husband works from home, and wanted to make sure that we had redundancy in case anything happened. Also, he loves me and wanted to make sure I could not only play ffxiv while he's working, but that I could also watch Netflix. Yeah, I'm spoiled. But that's beside the point.

We recently added a second internet connection, this one is cable.

So, we have one DSL connection and one cable connection.

We live in the US and play on a Japanese server.

We have both noticed lag spikes and weird latency issues when we are playing via the cable connection.

We have also both noticed that we do NOT have these problems when we play using the DSL connection.

I notice lag spikes while CRAFTING. I'll hit an action, and it takes 4-5 seconds for it to actually happen. And/or the action happens, and it takes 4-5 seconds for it to stop 'thinking' and allow me to select the next action.

Also, while watching mythbusters recently, they timed the speed of a bullet. I can't remember the exact number anymore, but I had to stop the show, go back and listen to it again. The ping time most of the people here are expecting to have, is faster than the speed of a bullet from a sniper rifle.

Just saying. ^^

[InVizO]

Also, while watching mythbusters recently, they timed the speed of a bullet. I can't remember the exact number anymore, but I had to stop the show, go back and listen to it again. The ping time most of the people here are expecting to have, is faster than the speed of a bullet from a sniper rifle.
Just saying. ^^

I'm on fiber optics, and while I understand some ISPs can provide within 100ms of a difference from either ISPS we are looking at a 300ms-400ms problem here. And if i'm not mistaken this is also the reason our GCD abilities are slow to apply.

[Ryios]

We have also both noticed that we do NOT have these problems when we play using the DSL connection.

Because when it comes to gaming, DSL is the better option. Cable and Fiber share their bandwith from people houses to the ISP before they get routed onto the internet backbackbone. Therefore cable and fiber perform differently in different residential areas/cities etc etc.

DSL However does not share it's bandwith from your house to the ISP with anyone else. If you go DSL you have the whole 1-10mbps (depending on the service you have) all to yourself and limited or no hops from your house to the ISP resulting in better pings.

E.g. DSL With Nagles algorithm turned off I can ping Montreal with a 35ms response. Cable is over 120ms with nagles algorithm off. I know guys on Fios with a ping over 400.

Short Story,

Higher Bandwidth != better latency

Furthermore, compared to countries like Japan (tokyo etc), South Korea, etc, the United States internet is pretty far behind when it comes to internet access. In other countries people are pipping 250mbps connections as the norm and there are still many square miles in the US with nothing more than 128kbps dsl or Dial Up. And in just a small in the middle of nowhere town like I live in you can be on one side of the street and have DSL/Cable/Fiber available and on the other side of the street with nothing but dial up available because the companies won't run a line across the street for one house.

We also have right of way conflicts with wire runs and poles etc. E.g. in Shenandoah County virginia all you can get is Shentel DSL, they own all the rights. I called comcast and they basically told me "We'll run it out there, and you'll have to pay install fees, but when shentel services the area and sees are stuff they'll rip it out and you'll have to pay us to come rerun it."

What did I do to solve this problem? Something drastic, I started looking for a new house. My number 1 criteria to my realtor was (access to comcast cable/internet and verizon dsl), I turned down 900 of 1000 homes due to no internet access. Then went through those 100 till we found us the right house and we moved.

[TrystWildkey]

Stuff!

Holy crap, someone not only believed me, but gave reasoning for why my experience was the way it was.

Thanks!

You get a happy Lala dance

[InVizO]

Stuff!

I appreciate the amount of information you have provided here but you missed a few points.

1.DSL/Cable, at least where I live, relies on copper cables built into the infrastructure of my neighborhood, copper cables suck bawls when you surpass 1Megabyte/sec and makes your connection unstable (I never get disconnected, period).
2.Latency on Fiber Optics has the capability of being far better than any other type of ISP because information travels down Light the fastest; the datacenters that connect me to the East Coast are slow though.

I'm not saying the game is unplayable, but if I can get 20ms on a FPS, I want to see 100ms in an MMO, 300ms is not acceptable for a premium MMO with a subscription fee.

[skillface]

We have both noticed lag spikes and weird latency issues when we are playing via the cable connection.

We have also both noticed that we do NOT have these problems when we play using the DSL connection.

That's to be expected. As mentioned earlier, the problem with cable is that while it has higher theoretical bandwidth, you are also sharing it with everyone in the area, rather than having your own dedicated connection. Plus I believe cable hardware is optimized for pure speed (at the expense of latency), exacerbating the issue. As such, 90% of the time DSL is the preferred choice for gaming (especially if you can disable interleaving with your ISP).

FTTP is obviously preferable but the difference between copper and fiber latency is minimal anyway, unless you live more than a few miles from the exchange or something perhaps (as backbones are usually fiber anyway). Though the copper in a lot of areas has degraded over the years (it's especially bad here in Australia for instance thanks to Telstra's ineptitude), so that can cause packet loss and such, making fiber a significant upgrade to reliability and latency in some circumstances (ignoring the obvious throughput increase).

There was an update today in the dev tracking on the top of the forum. There have been many other posts regarding issues they are having and detailed explainations as to what has been done and what they are going to do. If this is insufficient then I am sorry but I don't know what else to tell you. These things don't get fixed overnight.

For your reference and convenience:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...29#post1204429

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/88643

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...28#post1286828

Those have nothing to do with this issue.

[ZakarnRosewood]

Those have nothing to do with this issue.

Fair enough. I wish I could find that post they made about the latency issues but it is now long buried in the forums. Thing is, its not happening for everyone so I don't think its necessarily a server issue thing. I used to have the problem but after a few patches, its all but gone. While there may still be something with the servers in part I think there are other factors in play.

Regardless I think its rather rude and ignorant of some people and the posts they make about it. (This post seems to be quite reasonable though, Kudos OP.) The way they berate SE and say they are stupid and lazy and arent doing anything etc etc. Yes you have a legitimate concern but do you really need to be so rude about it? Personally if you are going to throw a temper tantrum to try and get what you want then I would be more inclined to do the exact opposite until a more civil tone was taken. Maybe thats just me, the internet generation sounds like a spoiled child screaming for a candy in a supermarket.

As an example of what I mean.