Frequent Visitor
•
6 Messages
Bad route to gaming servers
I've had this issue on going for a couple years now. After replacing hardware and having lines checked the only solution I found was a possible bad route.
Edit: Added image of current route using GoogleMaps. https://imgur.com/1IsdZjt
My ping was roughly 50-70 averaging 55. The WinMTR report showed a spike every second on a PA node(50.208.232) upto 100. I think this spike was causing consistent jitter in gameplay.
Yesterday, at about 1pm EST, my ping ranged from 37 to 42. The gameplay felt smooth and consistent. I ran a WinMTR and noticed my route had changed and omitted the PA node. I logged on 9 hours later and the route had changed again this time I was getting packet loss.
This morning I noticed my old ping was back along with the 50.208.232 node in PA with same consistent spiking.
This is the original route that I have been having issues with for the past couple years.
|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | WinMTR statistics | | Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last | |------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------| | 192.168.1.1 - 1 | 638 | 637 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | | 96.120.108.69 - 0 | 642 | 642 | 7 | 10 | 18 | 8 | | 96.110.188.213 - 0 | 642 | 642 | 7 | 11 | 38 | 13 | | 68.85.206.26 - 0 | 642 | 642 | 8 | 14 | 59 | 12 | | 96.108.41.34 - 0 | 642 | 642 | 9 | 13 | 59 | 11 | | 96.108.41.37 - 0 | 642 | 642 | 8 | 12 | 56 | 11 | | 162.151.94.93 - 0 | 642 | 642 | 15 | 19 | 54 | 28 | |be-22909-cr02.56marietta.ga.ibone.comcast.net - 0 | 642 | 642 | 22 | 26 | 33 | 26 | |be-1102-cs01.56marietta.ga.ibone.comcast.net - 0 | 642 | 642 | 23 | 26 | 37 | 27 | |be-2101-pe01.56marietta.ga.ibone.comcast.net - 0 | 642 | 642 | 22 | 26 | 33 | 26 | | 50.208.232.134 - 0 | 642 | 642 | 23 | 29 | 112 | 24 | | ae1-br01-eqat2.as57976.net - 0 | 642 | 642 | 41 | 46 | 97 | 42 | | et-0-0-4-br02-eqch2.as57976.net - 0 | 642 | 642 | 42 | 53 | 158 | 44 |
Here is the route that felt perfect yesterday and had the lowest and steady ping.
|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | WinMTR statistics | | Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last | |------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------| | 192.168.1.1 - 0 | 377 | 377 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | | 96.120.108.69 - 0 | 377 | 377 | 6 | 9 | 17 | 11 | | 96.110.188.217 - 0 | 377 | 377 | 7 | 11 | 31 | 9 | | 96.108.41.34 - 0 | 377 | 377 | 8 | 12 | 40 | 11 | | 162.151.41.14 - 0 | 377 | 377 | 8 | 12 | 45 | 12 | | 96.108.41.57 - 0 | 377 | 377 | 8 | 12 | 45 | 13 | | 162.151.95.117 - 0 | 377 | 377 | 14 | 18 | 50 | 20 | |be-22909-cr02.350ecermak.il.ibone.comcast.net - 0 | 377 | 377 | 27 | 31 | 38 | 33 | |be-1202-cs02.350ecermak.il.ibone.comcast.net - 0 | 377 | 377 | 28 | 31 | 51 | 29 | | 96.110.37.38 - 0 | 377 | 377 | 27 | 30 | 37 | 31 | | 173.167.58.14 - 0 | 377 | 377 | 27 | 34 | 114 | 31 | | ae1-br01-eqch2.as57976.net - 0 | 377 | 377 | 28 | 38 | 188 | 34 |
This is the route last night with packet loss
|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | WinMTR statistics | | Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last | |------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------| | 192.168.1.1 - 0 | 450 | 450 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | | 96.120.108.69 - 0 | 450 | 450 | 6 | 10 | 20 | 8 | | 96.110.188.209 - 0 | 450 | 450 | 6 | 11 | 44 | 9 | | 96.108.41.34 - 0 | 450 | 450 | 8 | 12 | 39 | 12 | | 162.151.41.14 - 0 | 450 | 450 | 8 | 12 | 47 | 10 | | 96.108.41.57 - 1 | 443 | 441 | 9 | 21 | 73 | 24 | | 162.151.95.117 - 1 | 440 | 437 | 15 | 27 | 44 | 36 | |be-22909-cr02.350ecermak.il.ibone.comcast.net - 2 | 431 | 426 | 29 | 40 | 64 | 41 | |be-1102-cs01.350ecermak.il.ibone.comcast.net - 1 | 439 | 436 | 28 | 39 | 50 | 39 | | 96.110.37.2 - 2 | 429 | 423 | 28 | 38 | 52 | 28 | |173-167-56-238-static.hfc.comcastbusiness.net - 1 | 443 | 441 | 28 | 44 | 440 | 31 |
Here is the new route this morning with the PA node back in the picture
|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | WinMTR statistics | | Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last | |------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------| | 192.168.1.1 - 0 | 58 | 58 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | | 96.120.108.69 - 0 | 58 | 58 | 6 | 8 | 14 | 7 | | 96.110.188.209 - 0 | 58 | 58 | 8 | 11 | 43 | 8 | | 96.108.41.34 - 0 | 58 | 58 | 8 | 13 | 42 | 10 | | 96.108.41.37 - 0 | 58 | 58 | 8 | 10 | 18 | 10 | | 162.151.94.93 - 0 | 58 | 58 | 15 | 19 | 36 | 19 | |be-22909-cr02.56marietta.ga.ibone.comcast.net - 0 | 58 | 58 | 23 | 27 | 31 | 30 | |be-1302-cs03.56marietta.ga.ibone.comcast.net - 0 | 58 | 58 | 23 | 25 | 31 | 26 | |be-2301-pe01.56marietta.ga.ibone.comcast.net - 0 | 58 | 58 | 23 | 25 | 29 | 27 | | 50.208.232.138 - 0 | 58 | 58 | 23 | 29 | 83 | 27 | | ae1-br01-eqat2.as57976.net - 0 | 58 | 58 | 41 | 47 | 103 | 43 | | et-0-0-4-br02-eqch2.as57976.net - 0 | 58 | 58 | 43 | 51 | 98 | 98 |
Can I get a re-route please? The game is currently unplayable.
dkain76
Frequent Visitor
•
6 Messages
5 years ago
My last post had plenty of views yet no response. I may not have been to clear on the issue.
I live in East Tennessee and play Overwatch on the US Central Servers(located in Chicago). I am currently on a bad route to those servers. It looks like my connection goes to GA and PA then to Chicago.
I ran a 10 minute WinMTR test. The results show packet loss on one of the comcast backbone hubs plus HUGE spikes in Latency.
The 50.208.232.138 hub also has high spikes in Latency too. This is also a comcast hub in Lancaster, PA.
This has been an ongoing issue since I've had Comcast. I have updated all my equipment and had technicians out to tell me that everything "looks great".
Is there anyway to get a more optimized route to the US Central Overwatch server please?
0
0
jweaver0312
Expert
•
2.1K Messages
5 years ago
0
0
dkain76
Frequent Visitor
•
6 Messages
5 years ago
Did not realize this was inaccurate. But that still answers nothing about packet loss and high latency.
0
0
cxrider
Contributor
•
89 Messages
5 years ago
Just curious, do you understand what it would take to get a custom route? Do you have a static IP address and if not, are you asking that everyone on the same subnet also get custom routes to the central US?
For what it's worth, you're using a tool that is less than ideal to make statements about the quality of a connection. Both ping and traceroute, and by extention winMRT, use ICMP packets to measure times. ICMP packets have the lowest priority on the network. This means that routers can hold them allowing higher priority packets to route first. This may skew your test results especially on busy routes. Don't get me wrong, it's a useful tool. If you see orders of magnitude, i.e. a hop that is say 50ms and the next hop is suddenly 1000ms, there's something going on worth understanding. Your data shows the worst hop increases the round trip time (rtt) of less than 20ms:
Your worst case vs. best case is a difference of 8 ms and your best case actually has as *worse* max time (188 ms vs 97 ms)
The fastest human response time is around 100ms. The average human is over 200ms.
Good luck with this; I'll be interested in seeing if it happens because if it does, I'm going to ask for a whole bunch of stuff. 🙂
0
0
dkain76
Frequent Visitor
•
6 Messages
5 years ago
cxrider,
No, I do not understand what it takes to get a custom route. I do know if you look at the winMTR I posted about the route that felt perfect, you will see my connection did take a different route that day for whatever reason. Also, if you look at the official xfinity subreddit you can find other people having a similar issue and being rerouted. I doubt its a "custom route" but possibly a different one.
WinMTR is one of the primary tools used by Blizzard Officials. It gives more accurate results to a given ip address over time.
If you look at the most recent WinMTR
There is packet loss and large spikes in latency. This is consistent after 10 minutes.
And here. The 112? That spikes from 20-30 to 80-120 consistently. BTW this WinMTR was only to show the route taken. It was under 10 minutes of gameplay.
The ae1-br01.... is "designed to ignore some ping traffic as a defense mechanism against DDoS attacks. You will often see their response times as over 1k-2k because of this."
That is a qoute from Nicole, Blizzard Tech Support.
Considering Xfinity sponsors/ has sponsored OWL (Overwatch League) and I'm paying $73
a month for internet only. Then I absolutely will be hoping for a fix. 🙂
0
0
cxrider
Contributor
•
89 Messages
5 years ago
I think you are missing the point.
WinMRT is better than ping or traceroute by themselves (on Windoze), however, it still uses packets that can be dropped/ignored if a router gets busy; it's like adding racing tires to a Yugo; it's still a Yugo.
For sake of discussion, assume that the network manager of a router only allows 10 ICMP packets/sec to be responded to by the router and your packet was #11. It's ignored; end of story. This is not how it gets implemented, it would be through something called Qualty of Service (QoS) which allows network admins to prioritize traffic. ICMP packets are generally placed in the lowest QoS category. You should therefore expect some variation in rtt for ICMP packets going through busy routers. What would be far more useful here to see is the standard deviation of the data. The standard deviation will give you a better idea of the amount of jitter there is in the network. The peak value by itself is worthless. Consider this:
With this distribution of times:
1 packet @ 22 ms
1 packet @ 25 ms
1 packet @ 973 ms
1 packet lost
1021 packets @ 26 ms
How is that *any* kind of issue? It's not and it fits your data within rounding error.
"Dropping" one packet in 1025 is *not* a problem. That is less than 0.1% packet loss. If you had 103 packets of 1025 lost you'd have something to consider. No network admin is going to address a less than 0.1% packet loss for ICMP packets. At best you might be able to say that the router was sooooo busy for that one second in ten minutes or so that it took forty times longer than expected to respond to the lowest priority packet on the network. It's just not reasonable and it is not an indication of any type of a problem.
Looking at your two routes and working backwards it seems you are routing through Nashville. The deviation in path seems to be a few routers hops below Nashville so I would guess that while you're not asking to have the routing tables of about 2 million people changed, you could be asking for a few thousand and if your network is sub-netted like my area, it is at least 510 households; probably more like a few thousand.
It could happen but I'll be pretty surprised if it does.
0
0
dkain76
Frequent Visitor
•
6 Messages
5 years ago
I get what your saying. The one 50.208 node spikes every few seconds which is what I think is causing jitter.
I don't understand then, how I was sent this route the other day ,all day. I had lower ping 42 average instead of 58 ingame.
Next day back to the old route. So does that mean everyone in my area had a reroute to the Overwatch US central server?
I think I'm just giving up on the issue altogether and will probably try to downgrade or cancel service since its just to expensive and a hassle to mess with any further.
0
0
cxrider
Contributor
•
89 Messages
5 years ago
To provide really reliable networks providers will have connections to multiple routers on the internet, that way if one router goes down due to say a power bump in one location or has a failed piece of hardware, the network can detect the outage and route around it. There are routing protocols that dynamically manage this. The re-route you noticed could be due to a scheduled maintenance for the link between say Nashville and Georgia or it may have been someone contractor cutting a fiber bundle by mistake forcing the re-route of traffic. It's hard to say.
To be clear, you were not sent the routing changing. Those changes were handled deep within the internet and that's where you want those things to happen. It's where the changes are most efficient, and yes, that routing change probably affected a large number of people for *everything* not just that particular game, but honestly, without seeing the routing tables it's hard to say just how many.
Before you give up you may want to check with the game developers or game support and find out if 58 ms of latency is a problem. Honestly, that does not sound bad though 42 ms is better. 😉
0
0
dkain76
Frequent Visitor
•
6 Messages
5 years ago
The gameplay is floaty.
I have been getting placed on the West Coast server in LA occasionally. My ping avgs 88 with very minor variance and although the latency is higher, the gameplay is smoother due to a more stable latency.
The Overwatch support has also said the reason for being placed on a different server means that the connection had less latency to that server at the time.
The problem is not latency its the variance of it and how often.
0
0