GOA: What are you doing to fight the lag?

[Manisch Depressiv]

After speaking to friends and reading various forums I realized that too many players are affected by severe network lag, mostly occuring in scenarios. I lag in PvE and open RvR too though.

It's game breaking, the game is unplayable at it's current state for some.

Third night in a row we curse on voice comms about the insane lag and break up our groups and do something else, which doesn't require the patience of watching a spell possibly go off after 5 seconds, once you spammed it 100 times! Google says that people were affected by lag around the 14th of September already.

I play with various people and some are affected and some not, I guess this depends on the different routes to the game servers and back.

Anway, my questions:

1. Do you recognize network lag as an issue and what are you doing in order to remove it?
2. Is there a reason why the traffic from Germany gets routed to London (Opentransit) and then from there to France (France Telecom)?
3. I was under the impression that the game servers would not be located in France, there was talk about a new data center in Dublin, where are the game servers?
4. Why is your help form on your website so limited in size? One can't even paste a trace route in there.

 

[MephTheLaw]

Atleast you can log in at night, I can't even get past the patcher everynight in prime time.

 

[rynnor]

3. I was under the impression that the game servers would not be located in France, there was talk about a new data center in Dublin, where are the game servers?

The support is based in Dublin but the servers are still in France I believe.

The lag is interesting - I personally put a fair bit down to my pc and that is probably a factor in my case but I recently started a char on a very low population server with some friends and it was suprisingly laggy which got me thinking.

In the old days servers were actual boxes - seperate and distinct from each other - thus heavy load on one server could take out that particular server but never affected the others.

Nowadays the fashion has moved towards 'virtual' servers all running on the same machine - on the upside of this its quicker to create new servers as required but the flipside is that heavy load on one server has an impact on the others which is why a low pop server had bad lag even in pve...

Not sure what can be done about that since its an architectural problem rather than one that new code can fix...

 

[Narzeja]

I'm sorry but... what lag?

2. Is there a reason why the traffic from Germany gets routed to London (Opentransit) and then from there to France (France Telecom)?

Routing algorithms.

 

[Brood]

What are the server ip's?

 

[Earl]

The server lag is ruining gameplay and has done so for the last few days for me. Having to spam a spell button, and have it take 5-10 seconds to cast, is simply not acceptable.

Please tell me you're aware of it and doing something goa?

 

[Iorlas]

your lucky to get in to get the lag..once again and for the 5th night running i can't log in ... unable to authorise

 

[Manisch Depressiv]

What are the server ip's?

80.12.99.* I think, use netstat to find out. Eight Peaks has 226, Orrud 114 afair.

 

[Manisch Depressiv]

I'm sorry but... what lag?

Routing algorithms.

Care to elaborate?

 

[aika]

They are eating some baguettes and then drinking their coffee with some croissants, while fetching some food for the poor hamster once in a while.

In scenarios i might just aswell unbind my morale ability - it doesnt work anyway.

Surprisingly when I exit the scenario area, everything is normal and working fine(more or less).

 

[MephTheLaw]

Lag is horrendous in prime time also so when you do actually get in you can only get away with PvE with out killing your self.

Bet they don't have this shit on the us servers.

 

[Iorlas]

Lag is horrendous in prime time also so when you do actually get in you can only get away with PvE with out killing your self.

Bet they don't have this shit on the us servers.

US servers aint French.

 

[twix112]

Care to elaborate?

There are different algorithms that's in use to decide what path the data packages will take from a client to a host and all that is decided depending on the load on the switches and so on. So the possibility that you'll have the same path every time you log in is very small. But what was said about virtual servers is probably also true since you don't buy a server for a couple of 100k just on a whim and start a new gameing server right from scratch in a couple of minutes...

 

[MephTheLaw]

There are different algorithms that's in use to decide what path the data packages will take from a client to a host and all that is decided depending on the load on the switches and so on. So the possibility that you'll have the same path every time you log in is very small. But what was said about virtual servers is probably also true since you don't buy a server for a couple of 100k just on a whim and start a new gameing server right from scratch in a couple of minutes...

That is true but it's also down to what ISP you on and what location.

 

[Litmus]

3rd night in a row i've had to leave early because of the unplayable lag.... DAoC all over again. :<

 

[ileks]

Aye I'm getting quite a lot of lag now. It's especially annoying when you are chasing someone, clearly right behind them, but keep being told you are out of range. Also, when a morale ability is up and you are mashing the button but it's not going off

 

[Manisch Depressiv]

There are different algorithms that's in use to decide what path the data packages will take from a client to a host and all that is decided depending on the load on the switches and so on. So the possibility that you'll have the same path every time you log in is very small.

I have the same routes every time (checked from different places on multiple occasions), so do my friends.

It makes little sense to me what you say, from what I understand ISPs buy traffic from each other, my DLS provider has a contract with Level 3 which then forwards the traffic to Opentransit.

From what I know, though I am not an expert on this, traffic to France from Germany usually goes via Frankfurt (or should go) and not over the sea and BACK again.

But I guess it's cheaper for to route it indirectly through an own network infrastructure for France Telecom than to provide fast low latency network access and buy direct route traffic. This is not ideal for a game though that needs low latency!

Blizzard has detailed information about it in their knowledge base (Blizzard Support - German text though!).

My traffic for Warhammer gets routed from Versatel to Level 3 and then to Opentransit (in London!) and then back to France Telecom, 17 hops.

My traffic for DAoC gets routed from Versatel to Telia and then to France Telecom, 11 hops.

I never had any lag issues with DAoC.

 

[TheBinarySurfer]

I seem to be having similar issues tonight. Huge lag spikes traceable to the last few steps to the server.

Grr.

 

[aika]

taken from the war alliance forum:

"If you use "clean unit frames" it basically wrecks you in scenarios. The UI is improved over the default UI but it introduces massive stutter in heavy PvP and large groups. I strongly suggest avoiding it like the plague as the performance difference is night and day."

apparently that custom ui is bugged and is causing major lag

 

[Manisch Depressiv]

Is everyone here with lag problems using that mod?

 

[Narzion]

I'm horribly lagged, especialyl in scenarios and I don't use any custom UI at all currently so no, that is not the source of the problem.

 

[Stazbumpa]

Dunno whats up with you lot tbh, I have had little or no lag and only get slowdown in large scale stuff like keep seiges. I'm guessing most of you are playing on one of the maxed out servers like Eight Peaks, which will be half the problem, then theres other stuff like how good your ISP is and how good your hardware is vis-a-vie what you're forcing it to draw.

I remember proper lag in Warcraft (2 years after it was released mind you), where it took you 10 minutes to loot a corpse. Oh what fun that was.

 

[Gahn]

During week end it starts to be unbarable, sadly it's the same old refrain of OT shitomatic -.-
This time around tho they making money, give out some effort and buy some QUALITY GUARANTEED international bandwidth pretty please before it starts to get ridicolous.

 

[Manisch Depressiv]

Deinstalled it (had to get a fresh user folder from friend as it installs itself in a very invasive way) and testing.

 

[Manisch Depressiv]

Dunno whats up with you lot tbh, I have had little or no lag and only get slowdown in large scale stuff like keep seiges. I'm guessing most of you are playing on one of the maxed out servers like Eight Peaks, which will be half the problem, then theres other stuff like how good your ISP is and how good your hardware is vis-a-vie what you're forcing it to draw.

It's the same on lower population servers for me, I play on different servers.

 

[Stazbumpa]

It's the same on lower population servers for me, I play on different servers.

No idea then mate, unless your IP/router/ethernet card/combination thereof is shit and/or you're pushing your hardware too much. I've had about 4 CTD's and virtually zero lag since I started the open beta, and I'm running it vanilla with everything on max.

Edit: I notice a few of you who are having problems are on Eight Peaks, which isn't noted for its capacity these days.

 

[TheBinarySurfer]

Is everyone here with lag problems using that mod?

It's not a client-side graphics stutter, it's clearly a server issue. Mine resolved itself after about 30 minutes this time, other night it didnt and i logged in boredom

Seems to be totally intermittent - my lag isn't just in scenarios (and before anyone asks the machine is very, very high spec).

 

[rynnor]

No idea then mate, unless your IP/router/ethernet card/combination thereof is shit and/or you're pushing your hardware too much. I've had about 4 CTD's and virtually zero lag since I started the open beta, and I'm running it vanilla with everything on max.

Edit: I notice a few of you who are having problems are on Eight Peaks, which isn't noted for its capacity these days.

I get it on the lowest population server - I would suspect my pc but I didnt get it in beta nor in the early days of early start - it could be caused by the route from my isp or my isp may be shaping/throttling traffic - I will test it on my other ISP connection and see if it makes a difference.

 

[Stazbumpa]

For the record I'm using Nildram, who are expensive but about as far from crap as you are going to get. I hear Force 9 are also very good and cheaper.

 

[MephTheLaw]

I have the same routes every time (checked from different places on multiple occasions), so do my friends.

It makes little sense to me what you say, from what I understand ISPs buy traffic from each other, my DLS provider has a contract with Level 3 which then forwards the traffic to Opentransit.

From what I know, though I am not an expert on this, traffic to France from Germany usually goes via Frankfurt (or should go) and not over the sea and BACK again.

But I guess it's cheaper for to route it indirectly through an own network infrastructure for France Telecom than to provide fast low latency network access and buy direct route traffic. This is not ideal for a game though that needs low latency!

Blizzard has detailed information about it in their knowledge base (Blizzard Support - German text though!).

My traffic for Warhammer gets routed from Versatel to Level 3 and then to Opentransit (in London!) and then back to France Telecom, 17 hops.

My traffic for DAoC gets routed from Versatel to Telia and then to France Telecom, 11 hops.

I never had any lag issues with DAoC.

Yes you be routed the quickest with the least amount of hops possible. But this is GoA and err well