GW2 Lag explained (my case study) - Testing, results and solution

[Aedil.1296]

Hello all,I finally found the cause of the lag I started experiencing recently with GW2 and looking at how many people are having this, it might be that they have the same issue I had.

let's start from the beginning.I opened a ticket with GW2 support that was very nice and really tried to help.Run all the tests they asked and sent all the report, then after an email with a possibile solution (Winsock Reset) I found out what was the issue.right after I resetted the Winsock as explained by Jarbyn from support (<3) I noticed the game became playable again, so I connected my new bluetooth earphones ( Soundpeats Truwings on bluetooth 5) to keep playing a bit.

As soon as I did that the lag came back with ping on 1k+. I thought immediately that was weird but actually possibile! I thought I had to test to be sure it was the bluetooth.Checked on Google and with my surprise I found many references online about people having bluetooth interfering and slowing down wifi connections even on phones (I am on laptop).Suggested solution was to use Channel 1,6,11 on the router (2.4ghz) as they are more stable channels.

So I decided to test that.Here in Italy was around 1 a.m. and Tequatl was about to come, so I thought it would be a perfect testing ground.

Started with Channel 11 and ping was between 200-400 (better than the 1500 ping spikes I had with bluetooth + wifi on channcel 13 - the less busy channel I have), switched to channel 6 and was around the same. Channels 1,6,11 did not make much difference, but leaving router on auto channel selection was better with ping between 50 and 130.Then I switched bluetooth off and TA-DAA! ping between 48 and 88

I believe another solution would be to pass to the second wifi at 5Ghz as bluetooth uses 2.4Ghz, there should be no interference at all like this.

I hope this might help people that have the same issue!

LoveAedil

[Jagblade.4627]

Hope this helps those using wifi connections, but for those of us on Ethernet, no dice.

[Zok.4956]

Yes, Wifi can be a very unreliable connection. Not only other applications (like bluetooth) can use the same frequencies, but also because the signal can be blocked from walls and also because there are not a lot Wifi channels and if you have a lot of neigbours that also use Wifi, this also can have a negative impact on your signal quality.

But this does not help in cases where players do not use Wifi, but only ethernet-cables and where the "last mile" is clean.

You can check this yourself.

Go load the tool "WinMTR" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTR_(software) from https://github.com/White-Tiger/WinMTR/releasesAnd when you are playing GW2 you enter /ip in the chat windows. GW2 shows you the actual IP-number of the map you are playing. This IP-number (example : 18.157.191.173) you enter in the "host" field in WinMTR and then you click start.

And then you let WinMTR run and play GW2 at the same time.

When I do this in Thunderhead Peaks, I got for the first 8 hops:

Host	%	Sent	Recv	Best	Avrg	Wrst	Last
192.168.178.1	0	1449	1449	0	0	10	1
p3e9f45432.dip0.t-ipconnect.de	0	1449	1449	6	8	32	7
d-ed5-i.D.DE.NET.DTAG.DE	0	1449	1449	8	8	30	10
xe-5-2-0-0.ldn4nqp1.uk.ip.tdc.net	0	1449	1449	8	10	37	9
150.222.4.22	0	1449	1449	8	10	32	10
150.222.4.31	0	1449	1449	8	9	38	10
Request timed out.	100	291	0	0	0	0	0
52.93.135.129	0	1449	1449	11	13	34	13

The IP-number 52.93.135.129 belongs to Amazon: https://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-52-84-0-0-1/pft?s=52.93.135.129

This means: During the whole time WinMTR was running, not one packet on the way to the amazon-network (and back) from WinMTR was lost (the 100% loss of hop 7 is probably because it is firewalled) and the ping-time was between 0 ms and 37 ms, average was 6-10 ms.

But at the exact same time the WinMTR was running and logged the above numbers, I had skill lag/delays of several seconds playing on the Thunderhead Peaks map.

Because the network connection from my PC to the amazon network is clean, this can not be the cause for the skill lag. It has to be caused somewhere in the Amazon internal network/servers, probably at Anets servers/instances. It is a problem that Anet/Amazon has to solve.

If you would have done the same when you had a bad WLAN/Wifi-connection, you would have seen packet loss and/or bad ping numbers in the first hops.

[Dakan.9463]

Just wanted to chime in. I wanted to get back to this game after around 6 months of being away but the game is at times unplayable with pings around 800. It seems to be a problem with Amazon servers (at least in Europe). Look at this hop: 13 --- 50/ 50 =100% 0/ 50 = 0% 52.93.16.185
This IP is associated with an Amazon server in Dublin. I have been trying for 2 days now to get a playable connection. I'll try again this weekend and if I'm feeling really generous next weekend. I don't expect a different outcome though. So if Anet wonders about player retention maybe take a look at the service Amazon is providing them.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Do be aware: Amazon servers often can not be pinged normally; they block normal pings.

[Teratus.2859]

Glad it worked for you, no luck for me.. cable connection and no blu tooth devices are connected in my house, I don't like them and prefer everything connected with cables.

[Dakan.9463]

@"Inculpatus cedo.9234" said:Do be aware: Amazon servers often can not be pinged normally; they block normal pings.

That may be so. That was just what the "GW2.exe -diag" put out. I'm on a stable ethernet cable connection without any bluetooth devices. PS4 internet and other games on the pc work just fine so...

[GW Noob.6038]

My lag, and all the problems I had with the TP, started with the 'Four Winds' patch and ended when it expired.

[Infusion.7149]

https://ec2-reachability.amazonaws.com/Check your EC2 Amazon web connections

[TristisOris.2165]

wifi only for watching videos, not for games.

[Hesione.9412]

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:Do be aware: Amazon servers often can not be pinged normally; they block normal pings.

Given this, how do we assess our ping?I'm now curious about how ArcDPS measures it.Also, given that there is the in-game ping measure under Settings (oh how I wish I could make it display permanently on the minimap), is this information incorrect?

Not assuming you know the answers to these questions, but am curious as to any light you could provide.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Here you go: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=how+to+ping+aws+servers

[Ashantara.8731]

@Jagblade.4627 said:Hope this helps those using wifi connections, but for those of us on Ethernet, no dice.

Exactly. WiFi and Bluetooth are disabled on my system and router and have nothing to do with the latency issue that EU players are experiencing in PoF and some LW content (gaming with a WiFi connection is always unreliable, as someone else on here already mentioned).

[Dante.1508]

Its funny my issues only effect Guildwars 2 nothing else in the world is having issues..

[Ooops.8694]

I guess you will have issues with every mmo running on badly configured amazon cloud servers.You just need to find someone other than anet who thought this to be a good idea... ;-D

[Ayrilana.1396]

It's not a GW2 thing nor is it an AWS thing.

WoWESOFF14BDO

I can keep going on and will likely find the same results for just about every single game online which doesn't have a dedicated network connection for its players. All of them will have the same complaints as the ones being made against GW2. I guess the servers for every online game are failing...

I also found an article about how terrible Germany's infrastructure is; this is where the servers are located. In Europe, several ISPs were hit by DDoS attacks. Obviously this would affect those there. Another online gaming company has reported that the COVID pandemic has affected their players' pings. NY Times did an article about how COVID is affected the internet.

So it's kind of weird for people to dismiss and just go "oh it's the servers". Sure, it could be; there's always a possibility. Unfortunately, there's more evidence pointing elsewhere. I actually got some lag spikes for the first time last night and it turned out to be originating in Colorado when I traced it.

[Zok.4956]

I do not play and care about those other games. However, it is not unusual that similar (aka online) games / game services have similar problems.

Skill lag can have a lot of reasons. Delayed data packets, lost data packets or buggy/overloaded servers (hardware+software) or buggy/overloaded game client software (i.e. some skill lag from a recent, new online game world, which name I will not write here, has skill lag because the developers handle the keyboard input buffer wrong).

Some players have a bad local connection (bad cable or bad wifi), or a overloaded ISP, sometimes the data packets travel through overloaded lines or overloaded provider exchange points, sometimes the servers (hardware+software) of the game-company are overloaded, faulty or have buggy software. Sometimes those issues can happen at the same time (i.e. only the skill lag from a bad WLAN itself would be ok, but with the added skill lag from the servers it becomes worse).

This is all common for all online games. Even the buggy software.

However, if the "servers" from Anet are causing skill lag (and from my findings, they do at least during my tests) it is the responsibility of Anet so solve this.

It does not make the skill lag caused be Anets servers/service more tolerable just because other game companies have buggy software or overloaded servers or just because some other players have a bad WLAN.

[Deepcuts.9740]

I was actually curious to see what was the solution in OP's case.....then got to the part about playing on WiFi.And just stop reading.Play a fast reaction game on WiFi, you deserve all the lag.Maybe do us all a favor and add this bit of information on the subject or 1st line.

[Saniyah.1984]

I have lag too since this month, before i never had lag like really almost never( i have wired internet not wireless) we also have profesional internet so it's reliable but since this month i had lots of ping spike thingy's last week it even reached 500-1200 avg ping plus 2K spikes) 100-120 is normal for me. We tested our internet in my country servers and it was stable 7ms so It's probably GW2 isue hopefully they will fixed it soon

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

@"Ayrilana.1396" said:It's not a GW2 thing nor is it an AWS thing.

WoWESOFF14BDO

I can keep going on and will likely find the same results for just about every single game online which doesn't have a dedicated network connection for its players. All of them will have the same complaints as the ones being made against GW2. I guess the servers for every online game are failing...

I also found an article about how terrible Germany's infrastructure is; this is where the servers are located. In Europe, several ISPs were hit by DDoS attacks. Obviously this would affect those there. Another online gaming company has reported that the COVID pandemic has affected their players' pings. NY Times did an article about how COVID is affected the internet.

So it's kind of weird for people to dismiss and just go "oh it's the servers". Sure, it could be; there's always a possibility. Unfortunately, there's more evidence pointing elsewhere. I actually got some lag spikes for the first time last night and it turned out to be originating in Colorado when I traced it.

well some of the infrastructure in Germany is dreadful. If you are a private citizen. But the exchange in Frankfurt is extremely powerful - and AWS is directly peered there.

That said, I play Warthunder a lot - and if you think some lag here and there is bad - today I had two games with sporadic 30% packet loss and one complete loss of connectivity to the server.