LAG - connection issues.

[bishbash]

Well whatever it is its pretty horrible lag. Logged on tonight after a weekend break and lag was getting terrible again. My UI shows 75ms on all toons, and midway through Dreadspire kept getting random packet loss as per the usual recently in any zone.

Failed to the bridge keeper as lag too bad to heal. Not been enjoying the last couple of weeks since this random lag started. Hard to progress with random crashing while zoning, random packet loss etc etc.

[Wrinkly]

Well whatever it is its pretty horrible lag. Logged on tonight after a weekend break and lag was getting terrible again. My UI shows 75ms on all toons, and midway through Dreadspire kept getting random packet loss as per the usual recently in any zone.

Failed to the bridge keeper as lag too bad to heal. Not been enjoying the last couple of weeks since this random lag started. Hard to progress with random crashing while zoning, random packet loss etc etc.

I did see the odd bit of packet loss but I don't know for sure that it was the server, and i definitely didn't see it to the degree you did.

Based on your low ping time I'd guess you're in Europe, if this is true ping the IP provided as shown below:

Go to Start>Run>Type "cmd"> click OK

In the resulting window type without the quotes "ping 193.0.6.139 -t"

Watch for packet loss or changes in ping times. Assuming you're on a decent ISP and you aren't using your internet for other things (big assumption given I know nothing about your connection). If you see packet loss on that IP, you're going to see it in EQ, which means you're going to experience lag - and its not the server. I've been running tests for a while now and there's a bit of lag based on my tests but its pretty insignificant given the environment we have (free server, free updates, free bandwidth, etc - its not like there's tens of thousands to spend all the time on test servers and bandwidth so we have to expect some forms of lag while the programmers are hard at work applying upgrades to our live environment).

Let that run all the time in your command line window and get to know what ping times you can expect from it. That IP belongs to arin.net, which is not a mickey mouse network in Europe so you should get reliable latency data from it. PM me if you have a question I'll try to help.

[Taladome]

Ping is open and udp packets are accepted on hops all the way to login.thehiddenforest.net
Tal

This is incorrect. See - http://www.exit109.com/~jeremy/news/providers/traceroute.html#timeouts Specifically the first line

If your trace to a system ends in timeouts, and never completes, there could be a problem. (The other explanation is that a system is blocking traceroute attempts, either by filtering all ICMP messages or by other means.)

Another example of this can be found with IOS' default ICMP rate limiting.

I could operate a backbone router, and forward packets between routing peers while still refusing ping requests to any IP/subnet I wish and not have a "poisoned" route. How an individual router is configured to accept ping requests is entirely up to that routers admin.

When I said to run a ping test to a known reliable node its because you can often compare the results of a nearby node's packet loss or ping times with the results you see in ping times in the EQ client (F11). If you see a relationship between the known reliable node and your results in EQ, its likely your internet connection is the issue. For example, cranking the downloads while you game can create the effect of having lag on the server even though your local internet connection is just overloaded. This test will help reveal that.

Because there's so much network equipment out there and so many admins with differing levels of experience setting them up, we get inconclusive results a lot of the time from traceroute. This is why most multiplayer games including EQ include some method of displaying your ping time to the game server and no sign of a traceroute tool.

/sigh ok ill educate you a little. If you can individually ping every node up to your destination that means that ping requests(icmp or udp if you know the difference) are not being blocked.

Secondly, this is not a few random people talking about lag here which would validate teaching people how to use ping/traceroute or to open the ping meter in game. When this lag occurs its the whole server. Only two possibilities, the server, or a node very close to the server. As I stated and showed, the route has changed and this happens often. Most MMORPG's do not like routes changing after a connection has been established. The reason? Again see my post above. This is something the server admins will have to work out with the data center and its backbone provider. I can't explain it any simpler than that.

Tal