8 replies to this topic

[Wildstreak]

Last night I patched the game and played after a short break. Everything was fine and for a couple of games today.

Then about noon I get dropped on Frozen City and have serious rubberbanding, I check Ping and it was near 600. I have never seen Ping that high. Later rubberbanding continues in a game on Casutic. Best Ping I get is in the 80s and that is still high for me.

So I quit and check both 3D Traceroute and PingPlotter, results speak for themselves to me:

Spoiler

To me it appears there are 2 problems.

1 - In Steps 17 & 18 in PingPlotter, 100% packet loss means something is going on near PGI servers.

2 - Steps 12 - 16 are trunk lines between New York City and Chicago then Chicago and Toronto. I do not know what telecom company carries these but something is seriously wrong on those lines. I may not be the only one on those trunk lines.

Support ticket sent.

[Ensaine]

Been showing them, emailing them, screaming at them, with traceroutes, screen captures and print screens, all showing the LARGE mess in Toronto. Not even a thanks, or, we got it, nothing, and the problem is still here.

Been months.

[Wildstreak]

I just got a reply.

Basically:
1 - Hops 17 & 18 show that way supposedly due to their firewall.
2 - The rest I am supposed to contact my ISP for and see about getting them to try a different path. Never did this before, not sure how it works. There are other things I do that do not suffer this problem on those trunk lines. Who knows, I will see if they staff their Level 2 Tech Support on the weekend.

Not like I am the only one, tried another game and as you can see, it happened again (4th slot Alpha Lance) along with someone else (1st slot Bravo Lance).

[Corvus Antaka]

Ensaine, on 26 July 2013 - 02:24 PM, said:

Been showing them, emailing them, screaming at them, with traceroutes, screen captures and print screens, all showing the LARGE mess in Toronto. Not even a thanks, or, we got it, nothing, and the problem is still here.

Been months.

Bell Canada is upgrading heavily across Ontario.

PGI can't be held responsible for what is happening at Bell Canada.

This is very likely a big part of the problem.

[Sarsaparilla Kid]

Merchant...I got a similar reply from tech support to have me tell my ISP to try a different path. My ISP laughed...it's totally out of their control. In your case and in mine, we are both routed thru AS6453.net, which is Tata Communications, an India-based company that doesn't give a crap how well the internet over here runs, as long as they are getting paid for their bandwidth. In my case, they peer with Comcast to send Comcast's traffic from San Jose to Chicago and then to Toronto. There have also been numerous complaints in technical blogs and forums that Comcast skimps on how much bandwidth they purchase from their peers, especially those that lead to non-peered networks (their competition), so Tata ends up being a bottleneck as a result, They probably drop or deprioritize UDP packets from games like MWO when traffic congestion occurs. I tried emailing Tata, but they would not talk to me, saying that Comcast needs to communicate with them directly.

I get enough lost packets between me and MWO that the game disconnects me. I'm still trying to figure out what that tolerance level is, but my connection has obviously gone over it numerous times. I usually get disconnected every 2nd or 3rd match. For me, this problem surfaced around the start of summer, so I also think the kids out of school are sucking up bandwidth. If it improves in the fall, then that will confirm it. Also, PGI could help out by locating their servers at a larger data center in the US to maximize peered networks. Unfortunately, the privatization of the internet here in the US also means us consumers dealing with competing companies that are having to work together while at the same time trying to maximize their own profits. We're not even in the top ten worldwide when it comes to average bandwidth per person, in 13th place, last I saw.

[Wildstreak]

Well, I am going to do a few more tests to other sites so I can see who I am routed through to back this up.

What company would end their web address with atlas.cogentco.com, IP addresses starting with 154.54.XX.XXX?

[Sarsaparilla Kid]

That's Cogent Communications.

[Fragger56]

a patch or two ago, I posted a thread on a similar network situation.
from my research and that of my clanmates, the router issues are in toronto and occur no matter how our data is routed, as I've had people test this from europe, various places in the USA, places in asia and from australia as well.

I've also noticed that whenever my hitreg is worse than normal, the two final routers before PGI/IGPs servers produce more pingspikes.
Hitreg seems to ebb and wane depending on playercount, over the weekend tourney, hitreg was HORRIBAD, then it got better during the week and went to hell over the weekend.

PGI thinks that better netcode will fix hitreg issues and while it may help, I believe that if the connection is flakey, there is no way to ensure good data transmission VIA UDP as it does not implement any kind of delivery guarantee.

On a note unrelated to ping jitter, I've also noticed better hitreg when my FPS is limited to 30 fps via recording ingame video. When I don't run Dxtory and get 60 fps about 80% of the shots that visually impact do damage, when I do record, 95% of my shots do damage.

I cant wait till my external capture card comes in next month so I can better show how bad this hitreg is, unless PGI manages to magically fix it in a week.

Edited by Fragger56, 29 July 2013 - 03:54 PM.

[StandingCow]

haha, yea... you aren't going to get your ISP to change your path... especially when it crosses into other carrier's networks. If you were a huge business class type customer, then yea... but not a home user.

Hell, maybe their firewall is getting backed up. I know sometimes when customers complain of slow internet just restarting their firewall often fixed it.

Edited by StandingCow, 29 July 2013 - 06:46 PM.