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lag issue identified, I believe

B

Beastmaster

Guest
I've been doing a number of traces and looking at others' and believe I have isolated EA's issue. I have sent my real contact phone to Regine since she is online at the moment and hope she will have someone contact me. They have a configuration issue which can easily be corrected. Someone obviously made a configuration change a week or so ago that started this mess and hopefully I can straighten them out.

Folks this isn't the ranting of just another internet armchair quarterback. I do this stuff for a living.
 

Maplestone

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
*realizes how many wild armchair analysis posts I've made on the subject in the last day*

*steps back to let the professionals work*
 
N

Nenime

Guest
I'm not analysing. I'm just angry *snarl*. I wanna play!

But these are good news, Beastmaster. Thank you for looking at this. I really hope this will solve the problem. :)
 
B

Beastmaster

Guest
*sigh*

Regine has moved on without comment, but I see Joanne is on now. Maybe she will see this and contact me.
 

Bob_the_fart_guy

Certifiable
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
The lack of response by EA or even the "DEVS" or moderators on the issue of the extreme lag now present in Ultima Online is disappointing to say the least.

I have encountered many, many players that have the same issue as me, that being the now apparent and extreme lag that virtually prevents any intense game-play. Take more than 6 steps and your frozen for up to 8 seconds in the game. Its sad that no one representing Ultima Online has stepped forth to at the very least comment that this issue has been acknowledged.

There are many people who pay their hard earned cash to play this game. It would be considerate to at the very least make some kind of statement that the issue is being looked into.

On behalf of many of my fellow Ultima Online players...I would like to thank any Dev team or representative for kindly holding onto my credit card number. It must be nice to suck in all of our cash and completely ignore any complaint.

*awaits a reply*
 
B

Beastmaster

Guest
Anyone have email addresses for Joanne or any of the current Dev team?
 
5

5% Luck

Guest
Well when this lag started i wasnt having any troubles but today UUUGGGHHH! its worse than i have ever seen it even on dial up
 

Rotgut Willy

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Sounds like not everyone has the lag. I'm wondering if it could be a routing issue. If that's the case there is nothing EA can do about it... it's up to the ISP's to reroute.

Is there anything in common with the people experiencing the lag? I play Napa, I live on the west coast, and I run the 2d client. Same with a friend of mine. Neither of has any lag at all. Smooth as a babies bum.
 

Viper09

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Never experienced the lag. Maybe it has to do with me playing a shard that is closest to where I live?
 
C

Clarifier

Guest
I've been doing a number of traces and looking at others' and believe I have isolated EA's issue. I have sent my real contact phone to Regine since she is online at the moment and hope she will have someone contact me. They have a configuration issue which can easily be corrected. Someone obviously made a configuration change a week or so ago that started this mess and hopefully I can straighten them out.

Folks this isn't the ranting of just another internet armchair quarterback. I do this stuff for a living.
So what's the problem? Tell the rest of us. Inquiring minds want to know! :)
 
B

Beastmaster

Guest
Joanne, the rest of the info is coming. The silly private message thing here is screwed up and says I have to wait 15 seconds between messages so please wait 1413 seconds before sending another. (Yes folks it says seconds in both spots). Hopefully I'll get it to you in the next 20 minutes.

EDIT: LOL looks like Stratics is fixing the time stamp now and it placed this post before my previous one. Either that or the Doctor is in the house!
 
B

Beastmaster

Guest
I've swapped messages with Joanne in the last half hour or so. Hopefully she will be able to get the info to someone that can make the necessary corrections. I don't want to get into a technical discussion on these open forums where half the people are looking for someone to flame. If my suspicion pans out I'll be happy to share it afterwards.

edit: I just swapped messages with Regine/Sak also and she has forwarded my contact info to Draconi. So they are trying guys. Hang in there.
 
B

Beastmaster

Guest
Joanne assures me she understands the networking lingo and I have provided the details to her. She is going to forward it to the correct person and hopefully get this resolved. This may not be the cause, but it definitely looks like a good candidate so let's keep our fingers crossed.

For any of you techies out there that want to discover the issue for yourself try tracing to Atlantic then trace to either Chesapeake or Catskills to compare against Atlantic and see if you notice any glaring issue.
 
Z

Ziane

Guest
Zero lag and zero difference between the traceroutes of Atl, Chessy or Cats, and I'm playing from the UK.

Unless it's already fixed?

Saying that, I have had absolutely no problems with lag at all, and my ISP's routing is ridiculous (and no, I don't have a choice, there is only one in this area)...

Zi
 

Tina Small

Stratics Legend
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
For any of you techies out there that want to discover the issue for yourself try tracing to Atlantic then trace to either Chesapeake or Catskills to compare against Atlantic and see if you notice any glaring issue.
Beastmaster, I'm definitely not a techie. All I notice when running traceroutes for the east coast shards is that some of them use a different server at the second-to-last hop (i.e., fert07 or fert08) and some have one more hop (with Level3) than others. But in the end, ALL of the trace routes I do for east coast shards have approximately the same ping on the last two hops (averaging between 160 and 170). Either routing still seems to have about the same packet loss on the last two hops if I poll repeatedly (about 10%).
 
M

Mr X

Guest
I did some testing. I live in chicago and all centrl/east coast servers are lagged for me horribly with high ping times and packet loss. All west coast servers are lag free for me. Unfortunately for me I play siege and only siege.

Fert 07 has been the culprit every time.

All my hops until fert07 are under 50, I get to fert07 and it goes to 140+.

I did a trace to napa and no problems since there was no fert07 hop.

So this might explain why some people have lag and some don't. I think it sort of depends on where you live and what server you are playing. But rest assured it is EA's problem and not isp's, or not in my case anyway.
 

Nystul

Lore Master
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Joanne assures me she understands the networking lingo and I have provided the details to her. She is going to forward it to the correct person and hopefully get this resolved. This may not be the cause, but it definitely looks like a good candidate so let's keep our fingers crossed.

For any of you techies out there that want to discover the issue for yourself try tracing to Atlantic then trace to either Chesapeake or Catskills to compare against Atlantic and see if you notice any glaring issue.
Code:
[b]Catskills[/b]
Host Name                                           IP Address         Hop     Ping Time        Ping Avg     % Loss      Pkts r/s              Ping best/worst
er-1-fe00.gsv.md.atlanticbb.net                     207.255.176.1      4       9ms              19ms         0%          3825 / 3844           7ms / 325ms
ge-5-2-126.hsa2.Baltimore1.Level3.net               4.78.142.25        5       13ms             16ms         0%          3838 / 3844           10ms / 163ms
so-6-1-0.mp2.Baltimore1.Level3.net                  4.68.112.73        6       12ms             22ms         0%          3837 / 3843           10ms / 5413ms
ae-0-0.bbr2.Washington1.Level3.net                  4.68.128.210       7       16ms             21ms         0%          3835 / 3843           12ms / 4959ms
ae-13-69.car3.Washington1.Level3.net                4.68.17.5          8       24ms             26ms         0%          3825 / 3843           12ms / 345ms
ELECTRONIC.car3.Washington1.Level3.net              4.79.169.74        9       18ms             19ms         0%          3831 / 3843           12ms / 374ms
fert07-eqx-iad.ea.com                               159.153.224.230    10      113ms            122ms        11%         3392 / 3843           110ms / 317ms
* Unknown Host *                                    159.153.233.35     11      114ms            117ms        11%         3408 / 3843           110ms / 270ms




[b]Atlantic[/b]
Host Name                                           IP Address         Hop     Ping Time        Ping Avg     % Loss      Pkts r/s              Ping best/worst
er-1-fe00.gsv.md.atlanticbb.net                     207.255.176.1      4       10ms             19ms         0%          453 / 456             8ms / 263ms
ge-5-2-126.hsa2.Baltimore1.Level3.net               4.78.142.25        5       22ms             17ms         0%          456 / 456             10ms / 40ms
so-6-1-0.mp2.Baltimore1.Level3.net                  4.68.112.73        6       13ms             22ms         0%          456 / 456             11ms / 89ms
ae-2-0.bbr1.Washington1.Level3.net                  4.68.128.201       7       22ms             20ms         0%          455 / 456             12ms / 84ms
ae-13-69.car3.Washington1.Level3.net                4.68.17.5          8       18ms             27ms         0%          456 / 456             13ms / 227ms
ELECTRONIC.car3.Washington1.Level3.net              4.79.169.74        9       20ms             19ms         0%          456 / 456             13ms / 69ms
fert07-eqx-iad.ea.com                               159.153.224.230    10      127ms            121ms        10%         407 / 456             111ms / 321ms
* Unknown Host *                                    159.153.233.23     11      120ms            118ms        12%         399 / 455             110ms / 165ms




[b]Chessy[/b]
Host Name                                           IP Address         Hop     Ping Time        Ping Avg     % Loss      Pkts r/s              Ping best/worst
er-1-fe00.gsv.md.atlanticbb.net                     207.255.176.1      4       12ms             19ms         0%          1679 / 1690           8ms / 289ms
ge-5-2-126.hsa2.Baltimore1.Level3.net               4.78.142.25        5       20ms             16ms         0%          1688 / 1690           10ms / 62ms
so-6-0-0.mp2.Baltimore1.Level3.net                  4.68.114.49        6       16ms             21ms         0%          1690 / 1690           10ms / 100ms
ae-0-0.bbr2.Washington1.Level3.net                  4.68.128.210       7       32ms             20ms         0%          1687 / 1690           12ms / 88ms
ae-23-79.car3.Washington1.Level3.net                4.68.17.69         8       18ms             26ms         0%          1681 / 1689           12ms / 221ms
ELECTRONIC.car3.Washington1.Level3.net              4.79.169.74        9       19ms             18ms         0%          1689 / 1689           12ms / 50ms
fert08-eqx-iad.ea.com                               159.153.224.238    10      113ms            121ms        11%         1490 / 1689           111ms / 321ms
* Unknown Host *                                    159.153.233.11     11      114ms            120ms        10%         1505 / 1689           111ms / 5643ms
I notice no difference as far as performance :X
 
B

Beastmaster

Guest
Thanks for posting that Nystul. It shows different routes than where I found the suspected issue. Take a look at these.

Code:
ATLANTIC Host Name                          IP Address          Hop    Ping Time   Ping Avg   % Loss    Pkts r/s               Ping best/worst
ae-23-79.car3.Washington1.Level3.net        4.68.17.69          9      22ms        27ms       0%        55 / 55                20ms / 123ms
ELECTRONIC.car3.Washington1.Level3.net      4.79.169.74         10     22ms        26ms       0%        55 / 55                21ms / 54ms
fert08-eqx-iad.ea.com                       159.153.224.238     11     120ms       125ms      1%        54 / 55                117ms / 241ms
* Unknown Host *                            159.153.233.23      12     124ms       125ms      0%        55 / 55                118ms / 153ms


CHESAPEAKE Host Name                        IP Address          Hop    Ping Time   Ping Avg   % Loss    Pkts r/s               Ping best/worst
gar2.ascva.ip.att.net                       12.122.113.73       10     23ms                   100%      0 / 5
* Unknown Host *                            12.116.77.34        11     122ms       124ms      0%        5 / 5                  121ms / 128ms
fert08-eqx-iad.ea.com                       159.153.224.234     12     123ms       125ms      0%        5 / 5                  121ms / 137ms
* Unknown Host *                            159.153.233.11      13     123ms       127ms      0%        5 / 5                  122ms / 133ms


CATSKILLS Host Name                         IP Address          Hop    Ping Time   Ping Avg   % Loss    Pkts r/s               Ping best/worst
gar2.ascva.ip.att.net                       12.122.113.9        10     33ms                   100%      0 / 4
* Unknown Host *                            12.116.77.34        11     127ms       132ms      0%        4 / 4                  117ms / 147ms
fert08-eqx-iad.ea.com                       159.153.224.234     12     366ms       184ms      0%        4 / 4                  116ms / 366ms
* Unknown Host *                            159.153.233.35      13     153ms       134ms      0%        4 / 4                  121ms / 153ms


SIEGE Host Name                             IP Address          Hop    Ping Time   Ping Avg   % Loss    Pkts r/s               Ping best/worst
ae-23-79.car3.Washington1.Level3.net        4.68.17.69          9      28ms        36ms       0%        16 / 16                21ms / 130ms
ELECTRONIC.car3.Washington1.Level3.net      4.79.169.74         10     23ms        27ms       0%        16 / 16                21ms / 44ms
fert07-eqx-iad.ea.com                       159.153.224.230     11     122ms       124ms      13%       13 / 15                120ms / 139ms
* Unknown Host *                            159.153.233.47      12     129ms       127ms      0%        15 / 15                119ms / 140ms
 
P

Pom Pom

Guest
Since I know nothing at all about this, except that I am lagging SO bad, what does all this mean? Does this mean we are back to square one with no hope of a fix anytime soon?
 
B

Beastmaster

Guest
Joanne just acknowledged receipt of the info and she is passing it on. No idea when they will be able to act on it.
 
C

Cynth

Guest
With all due respect, your info. is nothing new to EA's networking guys. This is kinda the first thing they'd look at.

This is no revelation, folks.
 
B

Beastmaster

Guest
I take it you see nothing but packetloss and high pings like everyone else?
 

Pink Dragoness

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I live on east coast and my lag problem to the game started on the 11th after the servers were brought back up from publish. I had been on that morning and before server went down, I had no problem lagging and freezing at that time, and the invasions were happening in Brit, Skara and Minoc that morning on Atlantic shard. I still have lag.
 

Nystul

Lore Master
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I live on east coast and my lag problem to the game started on the 11th after the servers were brought back up from publish. I had been on that morning and before server went down, I had no problem lagging and freezing at that time, and the invasions were happening in Brit, Skara and Minoc that morning on Atlantic shard. I still have lag.
I've been lagging for well OVER a month. I run traceuo daily to ping my connection so I'm one to notice when my ping isnt in the teens & twenties. I think a lot of players are saying that thier lag just really started when it's been going on for longer as a ping issue, but over the last week went further to increased packetloss.

I'm not sure what would cause a high ping, and what would cause packetloss. But the high ping has been going on for a while for me and as my traceroute shows, it's specifically an EA issue as ALL my other hops are in the 20's easy on average.

The packetloss though recently started sometimes this week. It's been getting nothing but worse and worse. Now I know they said they took down the shards because of an issue with the sherry the mouse thing crashing Origin shard I believe, so I'm wondering if thier change is to blame for things getting worse. BUT then again, after they took the shards down when they came up my ping dropped down to the twenties for a good day or two.

The only thing I know for sure is that I'm paying for a "broken" game. If anyone wants to argue that they're obviously not near as bright as they think they are. That would be like competing in race with two of your cylinders not firing :x. I mean yeah it's still working, but it's obviously not working as it should.
 
B

Beastmaster

Guest
No, it still isn't fixed. Xenobia where's the trace where Fert07 had 226 assigned? That one I didn't see. Fert08 is the one I caught.

Edit: I found the 226 traces that Walter Mitty and Mystikal posted. So yeah there's a problem there too.
 

Xenobia

Lore Keeper
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
No, it still isn't fixed. Xenobia where's the trace where Fert07 had 226 assigned? That one I didn't see. Fert08 is the one I caught.

Edit: I found the 226 traces that Walter Mitty and Mystikal posted. So yeah there's a problem there too.
Gah! Well it was a good find on your part anyway! Kooooodohhhh's! and High Fives :)
Oh and I was running the trace route's myself last night...didn't save any of them...let me see if I can find it.
 

Xenobia

Lore Keeper
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
No, it still isn't fixed. Xenobia where's the trace where Fert07 had 226 assigned? That one I didn't see. Fert08 is the one I caught.

Edit: I found the 226 traces that Walter Mitty and Mystikal posted. So yeah there's a problem there too.
LoL would ya believe my own server...Lake Superior...Great Lakes as well
 

Xenobia

Lore Keeper
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I was running trace route after trace route last night till I could't see straight so I had to go to bed but I gotta tell ya I was not seeing the .238 after awhile last night. (on any of them) So it looked like someone was at least working the issues???? Could have been my eyes getting ready to fall out of my head from being tired lol who knows
 

Tina Small

Stratics Legend
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Try a west coast server trace if you're looking for the 159.153.192.238 IP. It shows up as the second to last hop going to Sonoma, so I imagine it's the same for the other west coast servers.
 

Xenobia

Lore Keeper
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Try a west coast server trace if you're looking for the 159.153.192.238 IP. It shows up as the second to last hop going to Sonoma, so I imagine it's the same for the other west coast servers.
Actually they are showing up as mostly .234 ...Someone stop touching the DNS server lol No touchie!!! (unless you are actually FIXING IT!)
 

Xenobia

Lore Keeper
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
And get the mice out of your switches! Use the money we pay you every month and buy a new one???? Sounds reasonable to me, but then who am I? Just a lowly customer :sad4:
 
E

Exantius

Guest
Code:
Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\Timothy>tracert greatlakes.owo.com

Tracing route to central-ae6.owo.com [159.153.233.71]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  164.111.207.254
  2     1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  138.26.220.193
  3     4 ms    <1 ms     1 ms  nucleon.dpo.uab.edu [138.26.1.211]
  4     4 ms     4 ms     4 ms  atx-edge-02.inet.qwest.net [65.101.202.41]
  5     4 ms     5 ms     4 ms  atl-core-01.inet.qwest.net [205.171.21.5]
  6     4 ms     4 ms     4 ms  atl-brdr-03.inet.qwest.net [205.171.21.98]
  7     4 ms     4 ms     5 ms  63.146.26.234
  8    25 ms    26 ms    24 ms  tbr1.attga.ip.att.net [12.123.20.202]
  9    24 ms    25 ms    24 ms  cr1.attga.ip.att.net [12.122.17.9]
 10    24 ms    24 ms    24 ms  cr2.wswdc.ip.att.net [12.122.1.174]
 11    24 ms    24 ms    24 ms  tbr2.wswdc.ip.att.net [12.122.16.94]
 12    23 ms    23 ms    23 ms  gar2.ascva.ip.att.net [12.122.113.73]
 13   121 ms   121 ms   121 ms  12.116.77.34
 14   122 ms   121 ms   122 ms  fert07-eqx-iad.ea.com [159.153.224.226]
 15   121 ms   121 ms   121 ms  159.153.233.71

Trace complete.
 

Maplestone

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Actually they are showing up as mostly .234 ...Someone stop touching the DNS server lol No touchie!!! (unless you are actually FIXING IT!)
Weird ... I can resolve the IPs to a fert07/08 hostname, but not the fert07/08 hostnames to an IP.

*wonders if that's normal or not for these devices*
 

Xenobia

Lore Keeper
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Weird ... I can resolve the IPs to a fert07/08 hostname, but not the fert07/08 hostnames to an IP.

*wonders if that's normal or not for these devices*
Not if reverse lookup is not setup or DNS is hosed
 

Maplestone

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
*nods* I just can't help throwing every idea I have at the wall to see if anything sticks :)

(I doubt a DNS issue would cause lag ... well unless a routing table somewhere was configured with a hostname rather than an IP and was getting caught in some perpetual lookup loop)
 

Xenobia

Lore Keeper
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
*nods* I just can't help throwing every idea I have at the wall to see if anything sticks :)

(I doubt a DNS issue would cause lag ... well unless a routing table somewhere was configured with a hostname rather than an IP and was getting caught in some perpetual lookup loop)
Bingo!... I have seen DNS/active directory so incredibly screwed that the entire server needed to be reloaded. However I think Beastmaster is the guru here and has pinpointed the problem to a hardware failure. I work on computers for the Air Force Base but I am by no means a networking goddess. They only let us learn what they want us to learn :eyes: heh so I try and peak in on every little thing I can to get the training.
 
B

Beastmaster

Guest
Problem is we can't tell if it's a DNS issue or a router configuration issue. If 2 routers have been configured with the same hostname then the cache or perhaps the routing tables of all nearby routers will be hosed. Some routers map hostnames to system ids. At any rate this will at least cause a degradation of performance as they constantly try to route traffic or update tables.
 

Xenobia

Lore Keeper
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Problem is we can't tell if it's a DNS issue or a router configuration issue. If 2 routers have been configured with the same hostname then the cache or perhaps the routing tables of all nearby routers will be hosed. Some routers map hostnames to system ids. At any rate this will at least cause a degradation of performance as they constantly try to route traffic or update tables.
Well at least they finally have something to look at (no thanks to one of their customers lol) *high fives Beastmaster*
 

Hobo Sapien

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Well as long as we are on the Topic. Yes I ping about 3X my normal ping. I am not able to run a trace route tho. I was hopin someone here cud tell me why. It times out. I can ping greatlakes.owo.com. But if I try and do a tracert greatlakes.owo.com I get request timed out. Any Idea's?
 
B

Beastmaster

Guest
Hobo, let the trace run until you get to at least 30 request timed outs. If it gets that high then you have some other significant issue.

Edit: What OS do you run?
 

GalenKnighthawke

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Why not just post in generic terms what you think the issue is? If someone contacts you personally there'll be accusations of favoritism.

Also they can't tell a real network guy from some noob who says he is something he is not.

So why not just post, in generic terms, what you think the issue is? And if they like it then maybe they'll contact you>?

Either way remember that Mythic does have network people.....They may have already thought of whatever it is you thought of?

-Galen's player
 
B

Beastmaster

Guest
Galen, the issue has been brought to their attention with all the details. It has also been discussed at length in this thread. Nothing hidden.
 
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