13 replies to this topic

[GreyGhost]

Hello everyone, I'm in LA, and I get a consistant ping of 130. 130 isn't disgustingly unplayable, but it makes me unhappy, and I'd like to get it down to about 60.

I get 60-80 in Titanfall, and I just tested Team fortress 2 (which has servers everywhere apparently) and I got a ping around 30 or so.

Now, I know the MWO servers are in Canada, but I still think 130 from LA is a bit too much. I'm sure there's some arcane way to make this better. Many will just tell you bad ping is the luck of the draw, and you just have to deal with it, but I do not accept this answer. I want a good ping.

What can you guys suggest? I know a guy in Nebraska with a 55 ping. In this modern age, there is surely a solution.

I've heard a bit about VPNs. That's something I want to read up on, and if anyone can suggest a VPNs for dummies primer, I'd like a pointer.

If anyone knows another suggestion, please speak up.

[GreyGhost]

OK, Bit of an update. I'd been running speedtest.net to various servers in Vancouver, and I seem to get pings roughly half what I'm getting from the game. Weird eh?

[Lily from animove]

130? thats what most europeans get, lol

[Flapdrol]

GreyGhost, on 25 January 2015 - 09:57 PM, said:

OK, Bit of an update. I'd been running speedtest.net to various servers in Vancouver, and I seem to get pings roughly half what I'm getting from the game. Weird eh?

Not really, the servers are in montreal I think, other side of canada.

[Aceramic]

*sigh* VPNs are not some magical device that will suddenly fix anything and everything that could possibly cause latency in the entire internet. In theory, yes. A VPN MIGHT show you a lower ping in game. But in reality, it may actually be increasing your actual RTT (round trip time) to the server. Ingame will only show the ping between the game server and the "exit" of the VPN. Have you always had a high ping? If it's a recent phenomenon, there could be any number of causes. Have you done a traceroute? That may give a hint as to where the problem lies, and what (if anything) can be done about it. If you don't know how to perform a traceroute, I or somebody else would be happy to give instructions. Just not from this crappy tablet. I have the IPs of the actual game servers written down at home. Somewhere...

[GreyGhost]

Hey Ace, I'd be delighted to learn how to do a traceroute. Do tell.

[Aceramic]

I'll try to remember to update this when I get home from work with the IP of the game server, but for now you can try the website. Not sure how accurate it will be, but we'll see.

Assuming Windows 7-ish, you can just type "cmd" in the search box of the start menu. This will open the command prompt. At the command prompt, type "tracert mwomercs.com" (without the quotes) and press enter. This will show you the route your packets are currently taking to get to the destination, including the latency (ping) at each "hop" (router). If there is a hop with high latency between you and the destination, that may indicate a problem with one of the backbone providers, which is more or less out of your control. Depending on the route it takes, a VPN could help in this instance. (by bypassing the "bad" hop)

[GreyGhost]

Rgr. Here's what I got. :

2 24 ms 23 ms 24 ms 99-112-136-2.lightspeed.irvnca.sbcglobal.net [99
.112.136.2]
3 28 ms 26 ms 26 ms 75.20.0.202
4 26 ms 26 ms 27 ms 12.83.38.157
5 30 ms 30 ms 27 ms ggr2.la2ca.ip.att.net [12.122.128.97]
6 27 ms 27 ms 27 ms ix-15-0.tcore1.LVW-Los-Angeles.as6453.net [66.110.59.41]

Here's the jump. Is there a faster route from here to there?

7 106 ms 105 ms 105 ms if-3-2.tcore1.PDI-Palo-Alto.as6453.net [66.198.127.25]
8 107 ms 107 ms 107 ms if-1-2.tcore1.NYY-New-York.as6453.net [66.198.127.6]
9 108 ms 108 ms 107 ms if-3-2.thar1.NJY-Newark.as6453.net [66.198.70.21]
10 * 108 ms * 192.99.146.48
11 117 ms 119 ms 117 ms 192.99.146.86
12 117 ms 116 ms 116 ms 198.27.73.233
13 115 ms 115 ms 114 ms mwomercs.com [192.99.109.192]

[Aceramic]

The "bad" hop (which isn't really all that bad, but it is quite a bit higher than expected given the locations) is from the same provider as the hop before it (from your position, that's a good thing, there can only be one company at fault, they can't pass the blame to "the other guy") and both are located in California. Given you are also located in California, there's not going to be too many options.

You might be able to get in touch with the provider in question (AS6453, also known as Tata Communications) and politely inform them of the issue, but based on past experience knowing other people who have done that (admittedly, with different providers. Namely Cogent), it typically takes a very long time (and usually many people) to get a provider like that to acknowledge that there "might" be a problem (their words, gotta keep up the professional image, y'know) that they didn't know about until someone who is effectively a customer of a company that is a customer of a company that is their customer told them about it. (Since that was a bit confusing, your ISP appears to be SBC Global. SBC Global is what is referred to as a "last mile" provider. They provide internet services to customers (like you), but don't have any real connection to the internet backbone. They use a third party as their ISP to get to the backbone. In this case, SBC's ISP is AT&T. But AT&T doesn't have the backbone equipment either, so they're sending their traffic to Tata.)

If you are sufficiently motivated (I wouldn't be, if I was in your situation), you could try contacting your ISP, telling them what you can about the situation, and see if they are willing to get in touch with AT&T, who might be willing to get in touch with Tata.

But, if I was in your situation, assuming this issue cropped up somewhat recently, I would just live with it for the time being. Yeah, it's annoying, but I'm also lazy when it comes to calling/emailing support and trying to get them to do something about it. Typically, with minor issues like this, they'll figure it out soon enough and fix it on their own sometime in the next month or so. Now, if it's been like this long-term... Then I might be motivated enough to make a phone call/send an email.

If it's been like this long term, it might be worth it to you (depending on your individual level of motivation and/or frustration with the situation) to experiment with a VPN. If so, you might try something farther southeast, like Florida. But, I don't know enough about the exact operation of a VPN to know if that will get around a hop so close to you. I suspect it won't, but it is very possible I'm wrong.


Also, I said I was going to post the IP's of the game servers. But then I realized that the IP's I have are from before the datacenter move a while back, so I'm not sure what the current address is for the game servers. I should have been asleep 2 hours ago, so I'm not going to play through a match right now just to find out the IP. It may be conveniently listed in the system.cfg file in the MWO directory (192.99.109.129, to save you the time of looking for it), but that might not be the actual match servers, just the backend servers that keep mechlab info and such. I'll get a few matches in the next day or two, and I'll get the correct IP, if somebody else doesn't post it before then.

[GreyGhost]

Hey Ace, ever get that correct IP?

[GreyGhost]

GreyGhost, on 29 January 2015 - 06:21 PM, said:

Hey Ace, ever get that correct IP?

Oh, Actually I'm with AT&T.... Or atleast I thought I was....

[Aceramic]

Got a couple matches in, my best guess on the address is... ns7000226.ip-192-99-40.net (192.99.40.105)

[Apocryph0n]

130 is harsh, I'm in Europe and get ~115 as an absolute maximum. That's like almost the other side of the globe

[GreyGhost]

Well, I just spent two hours on the phone with AT&T. Finally got to a tech support manager, who told me right out "I'm so sorry, no one here can touch that, and we have no idea whatsoever who can touch that. That is some other department that we don't even know the name of. We'd tell you if we knew, but we don't. We're sorry."

So I'm going to have to think a bit before trying again.