World of Warcraft and Micro Freezes / Disconnecting during Raids.

[SpaceMonkey]

Hey! The last 2 days ive suddenly been getting unplayable lag during raiding (i think it happens all the time but its just more noticable when im actually pushing the connection a bit with data). This causes lots of mini freezes, like the connection just stops for like 1-2 seconds then restarts again. Sometimes this causes a long freeze which results in a disconnection. Its happening all day even off-peak. I dont DC when idling in game or just soloing when theres not much data been sent to/from the game to the server, although i do notice the micro-freezing still. Its only when theres alot of action going on that the lag becomes more noticable and the dcing begins.

It could possible be a problem with the game or my equipment so i thought id post on here and ask if any other WOW + Idnet users had suffered similar problems over the last 2-3 days?

I've done a number of Tracerts today and most come through fine, although on a number there seems to be lag spikes on hop 3. Where the MS goes up from 15-20 to 300-500.

The hop where the sudden rise in ping is: telehouse-gw3-g0-1-400.idnet.net [212.69.63.243]

That doesnt look good but seems to be happening less frequently than the constant lag im getting in games, so maybe they arent related.

Heres a full Tracert which seems normal. Although maybe more hops than i would have expected:-

Code Select Expand



Tracing route to 80-239-149-46.customer.teliacarrier.com [80.239.149.46]
over a maximum of 13 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.0.1
  2    18 ms    18 ms    17 ms  telehouse-gw4-lo2.idnet.net [212.69.63.99]
  3   119 ms    21 ms    17 ms  telehouse-gw3-g0-1-400.idnet.net [212.69.63.243]
  4    17 ms    18 ms    19 ms  gi8-27.mpd01.lon02.atlas.cogentco.com [149.6.148.205]
  5    17 ms    19 ms    19 ms  te1-2.ccr01.lon02.atlas.cogentco.com [130.117.50.138]
  6    19 ms    17 ms    19 ms  te4-3.ccr01.lon01.atlas.cogentco.com [130.117.1.217]
  7    18 ms    19 ms    18 ms  te3-1.mpd01.lon01.atlas.cogentco.com [130.117.3.225]
  8    18 ms    18 ms    18 ms  ldn-b4-link.telia.net [213.248.70.237]
  9    19 ms    18 ms    18 ms  ldn-bb1-link.telia.net [80.91.251.18]
10    27 ms    28 ms    25 ms  prs-bb2-link.telia.net [80.91.247.240]
11    34 ms    35 ms    35 ms  ffm-bb1-link.telia.net [80.91.249.44]
12    33 ms    34 ms    33 ms  ffm-b10-link.telia.net [80.91.251.124]
13     *        *        *     Request timed out.

Trace complete.



Thanks for reading and any help would be appriciated.

[Technical Ben]

Someone will be along to help shortly.
However, I have heard a few elsewhere mention that WOW has been trouble some this week. It was the WOW servers. You have probably already checked this, but have a look at the WOW help forums as well. 

[zappaDPJ]

The only ping stat that really counts is the last hop i.e. destination, and at 33ms your ping is at least 2/3 lower than I get to the same destination. The hops on the way may not be set up to give priority to ping requests, hence the spikes.

There has been a major patch deployed as you know and those often go hand in hand with latency issues. The other thing worth mentioning is that problems with latency are often worse while raiding because there's a lot more happening like multiple spell effects.

If your game is fast forwarding after a lag spike I'd make sure you have the latest network card drivers installed for your card and ensure that it's set up correctly. This Blizzard Guide will help with that: http://eu.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_GB&articleId=19465&parentCategoryId=2088&pageNumber=1

A Blizzard turn ping requests off it's really hard to monitor the on-going health of your connection to their servers. You might want to run a continual ping test to the last hop (80.91.251.124) to see if there's any packet loss; ping 80.91.251.124 -n 100 should do it. I'd also do the same to a local server e.g. ping bbc.co.uk -n 100

After a lag spike do you see the in-game latency monitor rise at all? That might be an indication of packet loss. If possible I'd also try playing a character in a different battle group to see if that makes any difference.

That's about all I can suggest right now, I'm not having any issues myself although my general latency to Blizzard's servers is in the range of 125-250ms which is quite high but it's always been that way on this connection.

[Niall]

When I used to play it, my pings were always around 150. That's more to do with the game rather than your connection. It was the same when I was with Nildram too. Any WoW server had high ping times, unless it was a new/just opened realm with a low population.

[Technical Ben]

Thanks peeps. Great job at explaining it. I really was not awake this morning, was I? 

[zappaDPJ]

 

When I used to play it, my pings were always around 150. That's more to do with the game rather than your connection. It was the same when I was with Nildram too. Any WoW server had high ping times, unless it was a new/just opened realm with a low population.

Some ISPs seem to be able to get better routing to the Telia network than others. When I was with Pipex my latency in-game was 35-60ms rising to around 120ms at peek times. I agree though, the amount of players in any given zone makes a lot of difference.

[Niall]

Actually, I've just remembered that there was one server/realm they had on the Horde side that I always got low pings on, and that was a highly populated server too, so it must have been outside of the normal French routing nightmare that is Telia data centres

[dujas]

WoWWiki has full details on where all the various EU realms are based, along with some history.

[SpaceMonkey]

Thanks for the replys. Basically ive tried everything recommended both here and by blizzard with no luck so far. Blizzard are hinting its an isp problem but i dunno all the tracerts / pings i do seem fine, and the Speedtest/Pingtest site shows both pretty decent too. I dunno what else could cause the game to lag so badly though out of the blue, it has to be something to do with the new battle.net integration they recently did but i seem to be the only one suffering the problem.

[zappaDPJ]

Oh dear, perhaps make sure you have the latest graphics card drivers and try knocking your in-game settings down (particularly shadows).

The only other thing I can suggest (which may not be practical) is to try and eliminate every possibility e.g. try your PC on another connection.

[pctech]

Ideally you need an ISP with a direct connection to Telia to minimise the number of hops and the only one I know of off the top of my head is BT Plusnet, having bought myself out of a contract with them because the service was so naff (but supposedly good for gaming as traffic is suppoedly and I should point out they no longer tie you into 12 months) I cant really recommend them.

[SpaceMonkey]

Well its normally perfect connection wise. Just the last 4 days its gone completely to pot. Totally unplayable. I dont understand why tho cos the tracert and ping tests come out fine and show no problem. I'm out of ideas

[SpaceMonkey]

The last 2 days my Speedtest has been down though.



Im only on 1mb but thats not even getting to half way right now. Any chance they could be related? surely even 0.5mb would be enough to handle the load WOW puts on it?

[dujas]

My guess is the problem is local to either your PC or connection, a routing issue to one of Blizzard's data centres would be known about from the sheer number of complaints.

WoW's bandwidth requirements seem to peak at 10kbps, so a 1Mbps ADSL connection should easily be able to cope.

[pctech]

What router are you using?

[esh]

A few times a year the routing from the UK to NCSoft's servers go completely up the spout. An entirely different game I know, but these things do happen. Have you considered running a background ping to something every 5-10 seconds or so (to a site you know is good) and then if/when you get disconnected, you could check to see if there's anything up with the ping. If there is, it's obviously your line, if not, it's more likely the routing or their server (ie. out of your control).

[SpaceMonkey]

Thanks again for the replies. Basically i doubt its a ISP problem, as i seem to be the only one moaning, last time the Idnet > Wow routing got fubar'd there was loads of posts on here. Also again im reluctant to think its anything to do with the latest wow patch as no one on their tech support forums is complaining of problems anywhere close to mine.

I've already done what you suggested. I did ping -n 100 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx to the last hop before i hit blizzards firewall. That took about 5-6 mins? while doing ythat i logged in and got server lag / dc'd twice. When i looked back at the 100 pings they were ALL perfect and showed no high ping or lost packet. So i have to say its beaten me. I've also spent the night playing Left4Dead and Counter Strike with flawless pings and no lag in the games. But the moment i go back to wow its back again. So its got to be the game or my pc right? if it was my PC surely it would have similar problems in the other games, but if it was wow then surely more people than myself would be having this problem.

Im in the process of putting wow on an old pc i have, which should just about run wow and hopefully i can test it out and see if i get the same weird lag or not, if i dont then i can assume its my PC thats knackard if i do then it at least rules out my PC. Im not sure if i want it to be my PC or not. I dont, as i dont fancy forking out for new componants, but i do as i just want this thing fixed rather than it just hanging there with no ETA on a fix or any idea of what the fix even is!

[zappaDPJ]

I'm not really sure what to suggest but the speed test you've posted shows that you haven't much bandwidth to play around with. Anything running in the background on your PC while connected to WoW would almost certainly cause issues. Why is it that your connection speed is so low, is that all your line will stand? Two further things you could do are 1) post your router stats here and 2) make sure your PC is completely virus free.

[SpaceMonkey]

Netgear DGN2000 is my router. Its wireless but i use a wired connection to it for gaming. I only have 1mb internet because i live pretty far from my exchange. Use to be 2mb years ago but the connection kept dropping, downgraded to 1mb and its run perfectly now for year. But definitely now it seems i can only download at a maximum of 60k/s where as before this week i could get the max 120k/s regularly. Could this be another symptom of a dodgy connection? Surfing seems to be a little slower too, youtube vids download really slowly (im guessing thats more to do with youtube though).

Other games dont seem to have a problem at all, although maybe they dont use as much bandwidth as WOW does.

The wow support forums told me to change the MTU size in the router to 1400 (it was 1458 previously) that doesnt seemed to have done anything to my wow connection, could that have an effect on download rates (as much as it has ie halfed them?).

[mrapoc]

I get this problem whilst playing heroes of newerth too..

I have tried different routers and different setups but it seems its my idnet connection (friends are on different isps, same server and have no problem)

basically everything will freeze up for 2 seconds or so, then it wont fast forward, it will merely jump straight to where i/other players are

[SpaceMonkey]

I just ran a test on http://test.speedtester.bt.com:50301/

Now i know its coming upto peak time but it came out as a pretty slow 215kilo bits per second (Kbps). Which is about 1/4 of my supposed max (i think!).

Should i contact IDnet about this? im reluctant to waste there time if its a problem my end but i really am out of ideas.

[Steve]

If its congestion I would contact IDNet as only they can tell you otherwise, Are you getting full throughput at non peak times? Send them a few BT speedtest results for their comments.

[SpaceMonkey]

If its congestion I would contact IDNet as only they can tell you otherwise, Are you getting full throughput at non peak times? Send them a few BT speedtest results for their comments.

I'll do another test tonight and tomorrow morning off-peak and then give Idnet a call. thanks for the reply.

[zappaDPJ]

I think you really should contact IDNet support as your throughput seems terribly low to me even for a long line.

[SpaceMonkey]

I think you really should contact IDNet support as your throughput seems terribly low to me even for a long line.

Yes i'll get onto them tomorrow. Just did another BT speedtest and got: 57kilo bits per second (Kbps)

Which is just cra\y low for 1.30am surely? i cant even stream bbc iplayer without it stopping every 10 secs, never had problems before.
Just a question. But next door to me just basically had their entire house rebuilt, and part of that was to attach a new phone line and also a fancy alarm system (which i assume is connected to the phone line). I'm not sure when they had this done but it was recently, could that in anyway effect my line? my router says im connected at 1mb as usual but the downloading speeds are less than 1/4 that.