Where are my Ping Plots?

[Neffneff]

Thanks for the update GoA GMs..means more than you think.

On a side note. as i said in a earlier post..i logged on last nigh about about 11p GMT..since that time..including all of today so far right up to now (6:15PM GMT) i haven't seen a SINGLE red square that isnt related to my own PC..i have had no LDs and i am thouroughly satsified. the game is once again enjoyable to play. i hope this trend continues through the night and evermore after.

P.S. playing from england..using BT adsl (i say this as obviously it could be only my route per se that is fixed..and others from other countries and other ISPs could still be experiencing problems)

THANK YOU to whoever is responsible, and to the GoA team for at least attempting to remedy a problem that isnt under their direct control.

 

[Danya]

I dont know about your 'cascade' idea, im not really an expert on how this software works, but I personaly trust it to provide information about each node. I would have also thought the the majority of traffic in the game comes from the servers to the user, only some minor UI data goes the other way. If your right about there being a cascade effect shown here, then all this pingplotting would be useless as its showing a). the wrong direction, b) corrupted 'cascaded' data.

The cascade idea is valid.

Basically the way traceroute works is that the software sends a packet to the target with the time to live (ttl) set to increasing numbers. Each time the packet passes through a router the ttl is reduced by one, if it reaches zero the router sends back an ICMP packet saying it discarded the packet. The host computer takes the time it takes for the ICMP packet to come back as the "ping" to each hop (the time displayed is actually time there and back).

So if a router in the middle is having problems any packet trying to go to a further hop will have to pass through it and you'll see lag on that hop as well. Hence one router having issues "cascades" and you see any hop past that as having problems.
Also because times are for the round-trip they are implicitly both directions at once so there isn't any wrong direction issue.

 

[Neffneff]

Just wanted to show what a difference im feeling today compared to the weekend.

This is 3 hours of data from sunday night, from about 7pm GMT onwards.

and this is 3 hours of prime time today, from about 6pm GMT onwards

anyone spot the difference..

i hope i never have to see a graph like the first one ..EVER again.

 

[Danya]

So, who wins the cloak?

 

[Belisar]

Lag continues.

From the peeps I know, a number now feel this has gone on long enough. They cannot RvR, they cannot go on ML raids or any kind of raid that has more than a FG in the same place at the same time. Thus they are leaving the game in frustration.

I am sure this is repeated all over the realms and both on excal as well as pryd.

Given the lack of advertising for this game in the UK (not sure about elsewhere in Europe) and therefore the lack of new players coming in I wonder how quickly the numbers of active players is dropping off.

Hope GOA are doing everything they can to get this sorted. Less and less players is surely not good for GOA and it is not good for us who are trying hard to stick it out.

 

[RS|Phil]

Doomsayer!

But he has a point.

Anyone with even a slight noodle for business knows how much the reputation of an online game is decided and affected by the online communities - Take me for example, a respected and known member of a community featuring almost a thousand people. We have a DAoC forum, put forth and run by me, with a hundred DAoC players, mostly inspired by the few of us who so ardently pimped the game a year and more ago. What would have happened if I'd have had this problem then, as people are having now, and someone had asked if DAoC was worth a go? Well we'd have said no it's an awful game to play!! Would we not?

And then that's a hundred paying peeps down the pan.

An extreme example but a truthful one.

 

[Darzil]

Well, it'll be interesting to see if it continues, but tonight, no lag.

That's from Blueyonder UK, Gloucestershire.

Darzil

 

[Boni]

The cascade idea is valid.

Basically the way traceroute works is that the software sends a packet to the target with the time to live (ttl) set to increasing numbers. Each time the packet passes through a router the ttl is reduced by one, if it reaches zero the router sends back an ICMP packet saying it discarded the packet. The host computer takes the time it takes for the ICMP packet to come back as the "ping" to each hop (the time displayed is actually time there and back).

So if a router in the middle is having problems any packet trying to go to a further hop will have to pass through it and you'll see lag on that hop as well. Hence one router having issues "cascades" and you see any hop past that as having problems.
Also because times are for the round-trip they are implicitly both directions at once so there isn't any wrong direction issue.

Nice explanation thanks, can you tell me how the program arrives at a ping for the lower stops? Does it send out a different packet for each hop or time them all on one pass I guess? I would have thought that if you had some form of timestamp for these lower hops, then even if they where slow you could just subtract their time to come up with an accurate ping for the higher plots. It also confuses me a bit that if the cascade idea fully works as you descrive then every hop should have an increasing average ping, which they dont, sometimes a latter hop performs well.

 

[Draylor]

Just wanted to show what a difference im feeling today compared to the weekend.

Thats been part of the problem with this all along: it varies wildly from day to day for no obvious reason.

If it was consistent it would have been alot easier to gather logs showing the problem.

Which of the two you see next time you play is just pure luck

 

[Danya]

They do each hop separately, basically you set ttl=1 for the first hop, ttl=2 for the second hop etc. Each packet is addressed to the destination IP regardless of which hop it's timing, it's purely the ttl which controls which router sends back a reply.
In general your ping will increase along the route. If it doesn't it can mean route changes are occuring or that the intermediate router is suffering problems only some of the time.
The time is accurate for each hop - it takes longer to get to a more distance point on the route than a closer one, so the times will be larger. It's not actually possible to send a packet directly to each router on the route anyway, so subtracted times would not be that useful.

BTW if you check my plot above you can see a good example of a single broken router causing a cascade to all later hops.

 

[Neffneff]

Thats been part of the problem with this all along: it varies wildly from day to day for no obvious reason.

If it was consistent it would have been alot easier to gather logs showing the problem.

Which of the two you see next time you play is just pure luck

Well i dont know about you...but i have been getting lag pretty much non stop for a long time now..ie. i have it everyday. and then this weekend was like someone fed the lag steroids. at NO time in the last few weeks could i have gone 3 hours without a single red square. so yes..this is different else i wouldnt have bothered posting that my lag had gone. its not like they were 10 min snapshots ..they are 3 hour long ping plots (the sunday one is actually 6 hours or so, but i saw no point posting the whole thing asit was all the same..and i wanted a fair comparison for mondays one)

who knows my lag may soon be back..but atm, my connection is still going strong, as is almost everyone's in my guild (mostly UK..1 new zealander)

 

[Wert]

Well tonight, i have to say i was moderately impressed with server, i had a total of maybe 5 lag spikes during a massive raid in thid. This was probably caused by the large number of people in the 1 small area. Apart from that has been good.

Could it be after all the moaning we did we see some results? Or maybe its just weekends when no one works :touch: If GoA can post something here concerning the issue plz do, would like to know if you heard anything further from OT

Wert logging out for the night, peace all

Edit : just read previous post from GoA - thanks guys, but as always keep the info coming! (ok its 3am im tired )

 

[Ctuchik]

saw someone wrote that games usually use UDP as a comunication mathod.. njow i changed the pingplotter to trace in UDP. and then i got 100% packetloss from last hop (excal server i pressume) i dunno if thats normal or not tho... will send in what i got later...

 

[sibanac]

saw someone wrote that games usually use UDP as a comunication mathod.. njow i changed the pingplotter to trace in UDP. and then i got 100% packetloss from last hop (excal server i pressume) i dunno if thats normal or not tho... will send in what i got later...

UDP was used for games in the old days when bandwith was sparse.
UDP has no connection state making it all but useless in current games.

Most firewalls will drop incoming udp pings since there is no congestion protocol so you could easely flood servers with UDP packets

 

[Grimmen]

Well, it'll be interesting to see if it continues, but tonight, no lag.

That's from Blueyonder UK, Gloucestershire.

Darzil

Agreed, I only lagged one time the whole night and that didnt cause me to LD as it only lasted 10 seconds or so.

Stockholm, Sweden
ISP: Telia

 

[Flimgoblin]

had a spate of 10s freezes at one point but was clear the rest of the time - it's not gone but it's a bit better.

 

[Tilda]

Well, it'll be interesting to see if it continues, but tonight, no lag.

That's from Blueyonder UK, Gloucestershire.

Darzil

Ammaagaadd!
Hows gloucester?
I'm comming home soon!!

 

[farewell]

I sincerely hope that you guys understand that without those ping plots the lag will NEVER EVER EVER go away.

Hey I found a way to stop the lag spikes. /quit

 

[Boni]

They do each hop separately..

Thanks again for the explanation Danya, your a star.

 

[messias]

A plot i did just now while i went ld seems to me that 193.251.240.217 is the trouble maker

 

[Chronictank]

Agreed, I only lagged one time the whole night and that didnt cause me to LD as it only lasted 10 seconds or so.

Stockholm, Sweden
ISP: Telia

This is not proof it is meaninless to OT, so as far as they are concerned you are not getting lag

This is proof and can be used by GOA to show ot, So stop posting "i have lag...." and get proof

 

[messias]

oops attachement got lost there here it is

 

[Grimmen]

This is not proof it is meaninless to OT, so as far as they are concerned you are not getting lag
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ccaaadd/otlag.JPG
This is proof and can be used by GOA to show ot, So stop posting "i have lag...." and get proof

Dude, chill I was more telling that I noticed a heavy reduction if you read my post.

 

[sibanac]

oops attachement got lost there here it is

dude, you got over 1000ms on the first hop, either kill your ISP or kill the guy who sold you the router i would say

 

[messias]

It's just a peak average is 28 been trying to find out what the cause of it is maybe the hub or modem not sure

 

[UndyingAngel]

It's just a peak average is 28 been trying to find out what the cause of it is maybe the hub or modem not sure

Well if I was use... Adaware(www.larvasoftusa.com) scan and Virus scan(www.norton.com <<-- this is a free onine scan if you look hard enough)
other than that .. faulty equipment for the win xD

 

[glabbin]

Have no idea if this is good or bad...

 

[messias]

Nah can't be spyware i run ad-aware, Spybot - Search & Destroy and SpywareBlaster to check for spyware a few times a week. And got a-vast virusscanner and kerio personal firewall running all the time. I pretty much know what every file that is running does on my computer Maybe it's a driver problem, the hardware or the ISP hmm...

 

[sibanac]

Nah can't be spyware i run ad-aware, Spybot - Search & Destroy and SpywareBlaster to check for spyware a few times a week. And got a-vast virusscanner and kerio personal firewall running all the time. I pretty much know what every file that is running does on my computer Maybe it's a driver problem, the hardware or the ISP hmm...

could be the firewall causing, ive seen it happen before

 

[messias]

I found the reason why i did go ld after releasing go here