Getting Massive Ping Spikes from SEA

[Depression.8913]

I’ve been enjoying gw2 until I got massive ping spikes yesterday. And my friends from SEA r dealing with this problem too. I dun get kicked from the game but the error code shows up frequently and my ping is now always at 800 n sometimes spikes up to 2k. M i the only one having this problem?

[azizul.8469]

i am so angry ! been getting lag spike so often now even though i was using VPN and getting stable 250ms ping.... i can't raid , i can't wvw, i can't pvp, anet fix your server....

Ping plotter image to GW2 server : https://imgur.com/a/to5lHP0

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

^Your packet loss happens way before getting near any ArenaNet/Amazon servers. You might check your router/speak to your ISP.

Good luck.

[Healix.5819]

@"azizul.8469" said:Ping plotter image to GW2 server : https://imgur.com/a/to5lHP0

I'm assuming that IP was from the map instance you were in (/ip in chat)? Was this happening during a spike? Because this shows you have a stable ping of around 230ms up to the servers. Unfortunately, they block pings, so you can't actually see what your ping truly is to the final hop. You're within Amazon's network at that point however, so it shouldn't be much different, unless the instance itself was spiking, but if that were the case, everyone there would have been affected and chat would have likely been complaining.

You do have some minor packet loss at your ISP, but since no other hop was affected, that only means it was dropping packets to itself, so it's not a problem. The other hops with a 100% loss are simply because they ignore pings.

[SlippyCheeze.5483]

@Healix.5819 said:

@"azizul.8469" said:Ping plotter image to GW2 server :

https://imgur.com/a/to5lHP0

I'm assuming that IP was from the map instance you were in (/ip in chat)? Was this happening during a spike? Because this shows you have a stable ping of around 230ms up to the servers.

That is technically true, but ... that shows that the 230ms latency happens between hops one and two, which is "between your router and your ISP". That strongly suggests that they are either filling up all their bandwidth, and buffers on the ISP end, leading to high latency, or they have some sort of issue on the link to their ISP.

@"Depression.8913", if you are not doing something to use the bandwidth (eg: downloads, streaming video, torrents, uploading big files) then you should consider talking to your ISP about this. While it isn't a clear pointer to something being terribly wrong, that "high ping" is certainly not normal.

[Dayra.7405]

In https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/499789#Comment_499789there was someone in Sydney being routed via UK to US.That's double the way than directly to US.Someone killed australia's cable to US?like last year Australia-Hongkong: http://www.news.com.au/technology/online/aussie-web-users-warned-to-expect-slow-speeds-for-at-least-six-weeks-after-undersea-cables-damaged/news-story/5ca81511fe7c51f8ee1cb5cfbac85e51Or did the owner increased the prices, such that provider route now the other way around?Or did Trump's anti-net-neutrality law start to work?http://www.news.com.au/technology/online/will-the-us-war-over-internet-access-affect-australia/news-story/af22432ed30b7f100bacf7f373629311Or ... but all this is Internet-problem and not GW2 problem.

Of course bad internet may kill online gaming as fast as it enabled it.

[Healix.5819]

@"SlippyCheeze.5483" said:That is technically true, but ... that shows that the 230ms latency happens between hops one and two, which is "between your router and your ISP". That strongly suggests that they are either filling up all their bandwidth, and buffers on the ISP end, leading to high latency, or they have some sort of issue on the link to their ISP.

Their ISP is using NAT, so the first few hops are a private network, which may be forwarding packets to the first outside hop. There's no way they're getting a 230ms ping to both the west and east coast of the US however, so it's all wrong.

@"Dayra.7405" said:In https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/499789#Comment_499789there was someone in Sydney being routed via UK to US.

ae2.0.pjr02.nyc005.flagtel.com [85.95.26.13] isn't UK, it's NYC. Geolocation services are estimations, and the real world locations of IPs can change, but in this case, the location is in the name.

[Dayra.7405]

@Healix.5819 said:ae2.0.pjr02.nyc005.flagtel.com [85.95.26.13] isn't UK, it's NYC. Geolocation services are estimations, and the real world locations of IPs can change, but in this case, the location is in the name.Anyone can name the 3rd position as he likes, but maybe your right. whois gives for both10 208 ms 218 ms 208 ms ge-3-1-0.0.pjr02.lax002.flagtel.com [85.95.27.181]11 294 ms 299 ms 279 ms ae2.0.pjr02.nyc005.flagtel.com [85.95.26.13]UK as location, so maybe they are the both end of the atlantik-cable owned by a UK company, still not the shortest path from australia to amazon

[Exatherion.3075]

I've problems from the server side very very seldom. Maybe twice a month. It was really bad before/after PoF release(as in any MMO). In my experience the server at GW2 work much better than in any other MMO I played.

[Healix.5819]

@"Dayra.7405" said:Anyone can name the 3rd position as he likes, but maybe your right. whois gives for both10 208 ms 218 ms 208 ms ge-3-1-0.0.pjr02.lax002.flagtel.com [85.95.27.181]11 294 ms 299 ms 279 ms ae2.0.pjr02.nyc005.flagtel.com [85.95.26.13]UK as location, so maybe they are the both end of the atlantik-cable owned by a UK company, still not the shortest path from australia to amazon

It's showing up as UK because the location is unknown, so they're defaulting to the location of the owner, which is in the UK. GW2 had the same problem, with people believing the original EU servers were in Texas, since they're registered to NCSoft West. Always double check these services, such as pinging/tracing and looking up the surrounding hops to estimate just how far it could realistically be. Here's a quick google for example, allowing you to ping from Amazon in Virginia (same as GW2 NA), showing a <10ms ping to 85.95.26.13, whereas an IP in London is around 80ms or 90ms to Amazon in Frankfurt. FLAG's own network also offers a utility, with a list of all the locations.

[Dayra.7405]

Difference between those 2 nodes is 86ms, distance London New York is 6000km, cable likely a bit longer say 8600km, so that’s a third of vacuum lighspeed, light in cable is half that of vacuum

So it fits.

London Frankfurt is so slow as packets sit mostly in queues of network nodes. And there aren’t many nodes in the Atlantik.

[Zaxares.5419]

I've been having this problem ever since PoF launch, or when the majority of GW2 servers switched over to Amazon. I've found that using a VPN ameliorates the worst symptom (which manifests itself as one-sided lag; I can see everybody else's actions in normal time, but the game just doesn't respond to any of my own actions), but in recent days it's been especially bad. The lag tends to be most common around afternoon to early evening (+8 GMT), but the last 3 days it's been almost constant, forcing me to keep the VPN on all the time.

[SlippyCheeze.5483]

@"Zaxares.5419" said:I've been having this problem ever since PoF launch, or when the majority of GW2 servers switched over to Amazon. I've found that using a VPN ameliorates the worst symptom (which manifests itself as one-sided lag; I can see everybody else's actions in normal time, but the game just doesn't respond to any of my own actions), but in recent days it's been especially bad. The lag tends to be most common around afternoon to early evening (+8 GMT), but the last 3 days it's been almost constant, forcing me to keep the VPN on all the time.

The sadly misnamed guide by PingPlotter covers how to diagnose where the issue is occurring; it would be very useful to see that so we can potentially better advise you on what is going on. The same information will also help provide the data ANet require to complain to their service provider, should the problem lie on their side.

[Zaxares.5419]

@"SlippyCheeze.5483" said:

The sadly misnamed guide by PingPlotter covers how to diagnose where the issue is occurring; it would be very useful to see that so we can potentially better advise you on what is going on. The same information will also help provide the data ANet require to complain to their service provider, should the problem lie on their side.

I've taken two pictures using Pingplotter. The first one is without my VPN turned on, the second one is with it active. What's especially bizarre is that even though both connections seem equally bad, the 2-4k ping spikes and one-way lag is completely absent if I'm connecting to GW2 via my VPN.

https://imgur.com/8YK1lqe - Without VPN

https://imgur.com/kPTqIQP - With VPN

[SlippyCheeze.5483]

Looks like the first one, without VPN, shows an issue with an AWS router. The second one does not pass through the same router - in an "Internet Exchange Point", if I guess correctly from their hostname - and does not show the same issue. So, yeah, using the VPN routes around what looks to be the problem.

This is an ANet issue; hit up their tech support, providing the links to those, and ask them to look into the issues with paix02-sfo4.amazon.com -- they can't directly do that, but they can talk to the Amazon folks in AWS who can.

[BillC.4521]

from SEA too here, already 1 week like this, after moving to AWS ping increase to 300 but still playable, after 1 2 months starting to have spike from time to time. recently this lag/spike getting worse almost unplayable now. sometimes only in wvw but no lag in pve map, sometimes everything lag. i run winmtr from anet for 30minfrom what i see there's a lot of loss in hops with amazon ip. theres loss on my isp side too but its only 1% i doubt that can make me lag everyday.

i dont take the 1st 4 hops in this picture but they have my isp side and have 1% loss with worst ping around 50ms max and average ping 6mswinmtr column based on this |Host | % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last|

here's the winmtr loghttps://i.imgur.com/2s0Eb9E.jpg

i doubt 1% loss on my isp side can make me lag for whole 30min when i run winmtr. you can see every hops with amazon server ip have loss around 30%-50%

[SlippyCheeze.5483]

@BillC.4521 said:from SEA too here, already 1 week like this, after moving to AWS ping increase to 300 but still playable, after 1 2 months starting to have spike from time to time. recently this lag/spike getting worse almost unplayable now. sometimes only in wvw but no lag in pve map, sometimes everything lag. i run winmtr from anet for 30minfrom what i see there's a lot of loss in hops with amazon ip. theres loss on my isp side too but its only 1% i doubt that can make me lag everyday.

i doubt 1% loss on my isp side can make me lag for whole 30min when i run winmtr. you can see every hops with amazon server ip have loss around 30%-50%

One percent packet loss on your local network is bad, as are the latencies it shows; if you are on a wireless network, I'd definitely suggest moving to a wired connection, or at least closer to the AP, to see if that helps. (For some people restarting the router also helps, too...)

Beyond that, between hops five and six - the gtt.net one, and 89.149, show huge loss and a huge latency increase. That'd be worth following up with your ISP, if that is gtt.net.

Anyway, PingPlotter might be useful here. The time-oriented graphical display can help make clearer what is going on. Right now, though, it looks like there are several candidates -- all outside the AWS area ANet use for hosting -- for problems.

[Despond.2174]

320ms+ DC a lot today. Oceanic. :/

[SlippyCheeze.5483]

@"Despond.2174" said:320ms+ DC a lot today. Oceanic. :/

In todays repeated message, can you please follow the steps in the (badly named) guide to finding where, if anywhere, on the Internet the problem originates and post the results? That'll tell both us, and ANet, where the problem originates, making it much more possible to get resolved.

[BillC.4521]

@"SlippyCheeze.5483" said:One percent packet loss on your local network is bad, as are the latencies it shows; if you are on a wireless network, I'd definitely suggest moving to a wired connection, or at least closer to the AP, to see if that helps. (For some people restarting the router also helps, too...)

Beyond that, between hops five and six - the gtt.net one, and 89.149, show huge loss and a huge latency increase. That'd be worth following up with your ISP, if that is gtt.net.

Anyway, PingPlotter might be useful here. The time-oriented graphical display can help make clearer what is going on. Right now, though, it looks like there are several candidates -- all outside the AWS area ANet use for hosting -- for problems.

Hi thanks for the reply. I already using wired connection. About "all outside the AWS area ANet use for hosting" you mean theres probably a problem on amazon server(the one on the picture) but thats not on the area that anet use to hosting their game or its not amazon server problem at all?

As for gtt.net my isp said that one is from hongkong and my isp and i not from hongkong . I dont know if that latency is okay for hongkong or not. Because even when im not lag latency for every hops after hops with ip 180 will always above 100. As you can see before hkg2.ip4.gtt.net is ip 180.

I have another question since on that picture my 1st hops not included. I have 1% packet loss on 1st hops after running winmtr for while. From what i read 1st hops is my router right? I still have my old winmtr log from 2017 and i saw no loss on 1st hops so i dont know why theres packet loss now. Is my cable going bad or something? Is there a way to figure out what causing packet loss on my router?So far the only difference from 2017 and 2018 is, im upgrading my internet from 10mbps to 20mbps. So the older log using 10mbps internet and 2018 log using 20mbps internet. I dont know if that the cause or not tho.Later im gonna ping my router for a while to see if theres a packet loss or not.

Today i run winmtr too. No lag today probably only 1 or 2 spikes in 2hours gameplay. Winmtr running for 30min. 1% loss on myside like before. The highest loss only on amazon ip again about 4%. So whether im lag or not theres always 1%losss on my side. The difference is on amazon ip the loss is small when im not lag but when im lag you can see the loss is huge like in my screenshot 30-60%

[SlippyCheeze.5483]

@BillC.4521 said:

@"SlippyCheeze.5483" said:One percent packet loss on your local network is bad, as are the latencies it shows; if you are on a wireless network, I'd definitely suggest moving to a wired connection, or at least closer to the AP, to see if that helps. (For some people restarting the router also helps, too...)

Beyond that, between hops five and six - the gtt.net one, and 89.149, show huge loss and a huge latency increase. That'd be worth following up with your ISP, if that is gtt.net.

Anyway, PingPlotter might be useful here. The time-oriented graphical display can help make clearer what is going on. Right now, though, it looks like there are several candidates -- all outside the AWS area ANet use for hosting -- for problems.

Hi thanks for the reply. I already using wired connection. About "all outside the AWS area ANet use for hosting" you mean theres probably a problem on amazon server(the one on the picture) but thats not on the area that anet use to hosting their game or its not amazon server problem at all?

The problem is not in AWS. Sorry for the unclear language. The issue happens before your packets get to the Amazon network.

I have another question since on that picture my 1st hops not included. I have 1% packet loss on 1st hops after running winmtr for while. From what i read 1st hops is my router right? I still have my old winmtr log from 2017 and i saw no loss on 1st hops so i dont know why theres packet loss now. Is my cable going bad or something? Is there a way to figure out what causing packet loss on my router?

That is almost certainly a problem with either the cable, or the router. Because, yes, you should have zero packet loss inside your own network if you are on a wired connection. (If you are using wireless that can see some packet loss without it being a huge thing.)

Beyond that, you might find that the time-oriented graphs in PingPlotter make it easier to spot patterns in what is going on, but I have no further concrete suggestions. Hopefully fixing that packet loss on your own network will help clear things up, but if you don't experience it as lag all the time, it suggests it won't.

[BillC.4521]

The problem is not in AWS. Sorry for the unclear language. The issue happens before your packets get to the Amazon network.where do you think the problem is tho? based on the picture, so its possible because 1% loss on my side then the packet loss on amazon can reach 58% loss? ip 54.239.43.60

That is almost certainly a problem with either the cable, or the router. Because, yes, you should have zero packet loss inside your own network if you are on a wired connection. (If you are using wireless that can see some packet loss without it being a huge thing.)

so i tried to ping my router using cmd and didnt see any packet loss, so the packet loss only showed up on winmtr, already tried to change my cable still the same 1% loss on winmtr. when run it this time i try to watch it and see, from what i see in 3min of running suddenly hops 2 have 1% loss, then after 8min running 1% loss on hop 1 and 2% loss on hop 2 ( probably because its adding up?) but after a while hop 2 packet loss become 1% again. then stay like that till i stop winmtr.so assuming internet speed from 10Mbps to 20Mbps shouldnt affecting winmtr, then i dont know why ping on cmd have no packet loss while winmtr have 1%. and its playable on gw2 without any spike

from what i see on winmtr when hop 1 have 1% loss then every hop after that will have 1% loss or get additional 1% loss if they already have packet loss before hop 1 get packet loss. thats why im asking above if 1% loss on my side can cause 58% loss on amazon or not? i only explain what i see tho, so please correct me if im wrong, im newbie at this. :)

ping to router using cmd no packet loss : https://i.imgur.com/mHgdSNG.jpgwinmtr no lag avg ping in game 300-310winmtr running for 3-5min : https://i.imgur.com/qqMYRb5.jpg can see 1st hop 0% loss and 2nd hops 1% loss a few hops have 0% loss too

winmtr running for 8-10min : https://i.imgur.com/USqA8i8.jpg after 1% loss on hop 1 then every hops after that get 1% loss too.

shouldnt this cause amazon server to reach 30-50% loss like before tho https://i.imgur.com/nDFghJr.jpg

both have 1% loss on my side. but on no lag winmtr amazon packet loss only 2% max and become 1% after long run

but this result i can still play the game well without lag or spike. and the difference of packet loss on ping to router and winmtr makes me wonder which one at wrong here. is it possible its winmtr packet loss but not my router? i think i read somewhere tho that if cmd ping no packet loss but winmtr/pingplotter have packet loss on hops 1 then its the software packet loss not the router or cable.

Beyond that, you might find that the time-oriented graphs in PingPlotter make it easier to spot patterns in what is going on, but I have no further concrete suggestions. Hopefully fixing that packet loss on your own network will help clear things up, but if you don't experience it as lag all the time, it suggests it won't.

i will try winmtr at my laptop 1st then try pingplotter see if the 1% loss still happened or not

[SlippyCheeze.5483]

@BillC.4521 said:

The problem is not in AWS. Sorry for the unclear language. The issue happens before your packets get to the Amazon network.where do you think the problem is tho? based on the picture, so its possible because 1% loss on my side then the packet loss on amazon can reach 58% loss? ip 54.239.43.60

That is almost certainly a problem with either the cable, or the router. Because, yes, you should have zero packet loss inside your own network if you are on a wired connection. (If you are using wireless that can see some packet loss without it being a huge thing.)

From what we see here, you definitely have some issue on your internal network: that steady one percent packet loss.

I also suspect you have two problems. One there, and maybe a second problem somewhere else. So, if we fix the first problem, then we can see if the second one really exists, or was just caused by the first. Until then, we can't be sure.

The machines with 100 percent packet loss? Disregard those. They are just not bothering to respond to the debug packets, but they work fine. They would only show a problem if every machine after them was failing. (...or you couldn't connect at all. :)

[BillC.4521]

@SlippyCheeze.5483 said:

@"BillC.4521" said:

The problem is not in AWS. Sorry for the unclear language. The issue happens before your packets get to the Amazon network.where do you think the problem is tho? based on the picture, so its possible because 1% loss on my side then the packet loss on amazon can reach 58% loss? ip 54.239.43.60

That is almost certainly a problem with either the cable, or the router. Because, yes, you should have zero packet loss inside your own network if you are on a wired connection. (If you are using wireless that can see some packet loss without it being a huge thing.)

From what we see here, you definitely have some issue on your internal network: that steady one percent packet loss.

I also suspect you have

two

problems. One there, and maybe a second problem somewhere else. So, if we fix the first problem, then we can see if the second one really exists, or was just caused by the first. Until then, we can't be sure.

The machines with 100 percent packet loss? Disregard those. They are just not bothering to respond to the debug packets, but they work fine. They would only show a problem if every machine after them was failing. (...or you couldn't connect at all. :)

I know that machine with 100% packet loss is either refuse ping or broken lol.Well what makes me confused tho that in recent winmtr even with that 1% loss on my side. The game play fine tho, no lag on browsing too.

And if you see my long post before, i put some picture from what i test recently included ping to my router. No packet loss when i ping it. I dont know how often that 1% packet loss happened but that 1% packet loss happened too anyway even when im not lag.So i doubt that 1% packet loss on my side is the one causing the lag. Well this is based on comparing both lag and no lag version tho probably im wrong.

I noticed the routing different too when im not lag so if 1% packet loss happened either way. Then i guess the problem is on the server outside of my isp/network. Can see that the gtt.net is different from before even the amazon i think. If i use ping plotter is it possible to know how often that 1% packet loss on my router happen?

https://i.imgur.com/mHgdSNG.jpg ping to router

https://i.imgur.com/USqA8i8.jpg no lag when play

https://i.imgur.com/nDFghJr.jpg lag when play

[SlippyCheeze.5483]

@BillC.4521 said:

@SlippyCheeze.5483 said:

@BillC.4521 said:

The problem is not in AWS. Sorry for the unclear language. The issue happens before your packets get to the Amazon network.where do you think the problem is tho? based on the picture, so its possible because 1% loss on my side then the packet loss on amazon can reach 58% loss? ip 54.239.43.60

That is almost certainly a problem with either the cable, or the router. Because, yes, you should have zero packet loss inside your own network if you are on a wired connection. (If you are using wireless that can see some packet loss without it being a huge thing.)

From what we see here, you definitely have some issue on your internal network: that steady one percent packet loss.

I also suspect you have

two

problems. One there, and maybe a second problem somewhere else. So, if we fix the first problem, then we can see if the second one really exists, or was just caused by the first. Until then, we can't be sure.

The machines with 100 percent packet loss? Disregard those. They are just not bothering to respond to the debug packets, but they work fine. They would only show a problem if every machine after them was failing. (...or you couldn't connect at all. :)

I know that machine with 100% packet loss is either refuse ping or broken lol.

Cool! Lots of people don't, so I'm sorry if I explained the obvious to you. :)

Well what makes me confused tho that in recent winmtr even with that 1% loss on my side. The game play fine tho, no lag on browsing too.

Yeah, this whole thing is pretty puzzling to me. If it wasn't for that persistent packet loss, which normally correlates to a network problem, I'd be saying you should email ANet support about server-side issues. (...or install ArcDPS and confirm if it is server load by watching the "server tick rate" indicator it has.)

If i use ping plotter is it possible to know how often that 1% packet loss on my router happen?

Yeah, PingPlotter has a nice graphical display of "pings over time", which means you can see if it is a big cluster in time, or spread out, or whatever. I definitely like it for that feature alone compared to WinMTR: it can make it super-obvious that, say, your cable provider is dropping the connection every 60 seconds, on the dot, and it takes 10 seconds for the modem to resync. Not that I had that happen to me or anything. ;)