Massive tell, channel, and zoning lag on AB server

Discussion in 'Player Support' started by Adroxia, Feb 19, 2017.

  1. Miauler New Member

    Hmm.. It does make sense if you know networking.. There's a big problem in the internet at the moment with buffer bloat (https://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/bloat/wiki/Introduction/ is a good intro to the concept; it's a way of buffering network connections so that you don't get high packet loss, which causes retransmission, increasing the amount of traffic traversing a section of network). Buffering was supposed to be a way of decreasing overall traffic, at the tradeoff of increasing latency. However, it has huge problems that seem exactly like the problems we're seeing on AB (clumps of information arriving in a batch). It could be problems in the network of the co-location provider of the server space, or somewhere along the route taken to get to the US servers. Without info from DB, I'm just guessing wildly.
    But yes, location can be extremely important.
    I've mentioned it on other posts, but I'll throw it in again; it would be great if DB would do a voluntary ops program, where the technically skilled can lend a hand and be extra skill sets to draw on, or when things go wrong, a distributed group of people who can act as information providers in the 'community' as they have a decent grasp on what's going on at the moment, and the issues they can talk about.
    It would save the Devs/Ops going over things time and again on forums, and could save the devs/ops time by getting useful tips from the volunteers (if appropriate).
    I've always come from the slant of "If you see a problem, see if you can fix it"; I'd rather lend a hand than sit and complain, but at the moment, there's no avenue to do that. Can understand if it doesn't happen, but the offer's there.. :)
  2. JolineSZ Augur

    Today connection seems a lot better... hmmmmmm, jsut a tiny little bit chat lag in between. Zoning is ok etc.
  3. Zhaunil_AB Augur

    Yes - thought it was time for some good news here:
    Today was the first good raid-day in weeks (if not months).
    Zoning was fast, no noticeable chat-lag either.
    I hope this persists!
  4. Vaako_SK Lorekeeper

    Seemed alot better tonight
  5. JolineSZ Augur

    Muhahahaha yesterday I said it seems to be better, today ma complete house interior is gone. 441 items missing....my Haiti Plushie omg my caaaaats.. they are trapped somewhere in the matrix....grmpghh
  6. smash Augur

    Yesterday it was ok the performance,

    HOWEVER we are now back to NORMAL, with big lag, while zoning, tells and such.


    So what have you turned off today that was turned on yesterday, or the other way around ?
  7. Asmadeus Journeyman

    Well even that normal was awesome compared to last week, so I'll take that for now :p
  8. Zhaunil_AB Augur

    Ok, sitrep:
    Currently back to 3-4seconds delay from click to door/stone to actually start zoning.
    chat-lag yesterday during the day and raid: several seconds.
    Several people went LD / got disconnected(?) during the raid; some multiple time.
    Not sure if it was their ISP or the "EQ-problem".

    SUN was an all too brief respite - that day seemed "perfect", especially in comparison.
    I had no noticeable chat-lag nor delay on zoning whatsover, no disconnects were reported that day either.

    Last week WED after patch to SAT evenings/early SUN: was really unbearable;
    we never thought that it would have been possible to become worse, but it did for that period.

    The 8months before that:
    Were somewhere "in the middle" between what we had yesterday and today on one side
    and what we suffered from last WED patch to SAT/SUN.
    Chat coming through in bursts was noticeable, short stretches of time with no delay, followed by longer stretches of time with up to 30second delay.


    As others said above:
    Whatever it was that was different on SUN, compared to MON and especially the 4 days before SUN...
    Find it and make that your standard :)
  9. JolineSZ Augur

    Yes what the hell was different on Sunday?? Did you lend a hamster from someone and had to give it back on Monday?
  10. tanith Augur

    So we manage one night's "normal" raiding (Sunday). At the end of last night the lag was back. Tonight worse than ever. Huge zoning times, blocks of people (10 at a time) LD on zoning, people finding themselves out of raid when they do zone; huge channel, raid tool and tell lag.

    in other words, after an hour we had to abandon *another* night's raiding.

    Simply. Not. Good. Enough.
  11. Zortex Journeyman

    Sunday was working better then it has in 8 months, but Monday and Tuesday was back to a very bad experience. Fix the AB Server or Merge us with The Rathe we are lose more people day by day.
  12. Zhaunil_AB Augur

    And first time of it happening to me, but well...
    Fellowship got "disbanded".
    Was ok when i had logged off, is gone now after logging in.
    Charater select empty on one account, one character gone missing on that account.
    Looks like the lost fellowships are simply yet another side-effect of the bad chat-lag issue.

    Pretty darn inconvenient when you have several characters at "capped" vitality...
  13. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    Laggy channels and raidtool again tonight.:(
  14. Thancra Loladin

    That's quite funny all those people thinking they changed anything when lag is gone for a day when it's actually totally random.
    usernamealreadyexist likes this.
  15. usernamealreadyexist Journeyman

    Exactly! Don't panic. Lag will be back to "normal" soon.
  16. Kyzvs Augur

    Whilst I do agree with the sentiment - there's no such thing as 'totally random' in multi-national systems. There is 'under-funded', 'badly thought through', 'hardware faults', 'bad app coding' etc, but there is always a reason. I've designed, built, implemented and fixed other peoples bodges of sytems for a number of years.

    I don't meant to personally attack you in any way Thancra, I just don't like people thinking DBG is just suffering at the hands of some poor RNG in the sky - they absolutely can and should root-cause and fix this issue. Communicating about it to the users / customers is an important part of what should happen too, but hey-ho... ;)
    Vaako_SK likes this.
  17. Thancra Loladin

    Yes they can and should but they don't.
    And yes, the lag is totally happening randomly (or if you prefer, we don't know what causes it but yes, there's a reason for everything). It's very funny to think they fixed something when the lag ends for a day and that they broke it the next day when it comes back. It's not a sentiment, it's a fact.
  18. Zhaunil_AB Augur

    I'd rather have people NOT speak about "facts" when all we can do is guess and observe.

    One "fact" is that they made changes to the chat-system in the background, without having to restart servers.
    (one of the benefits of having a dedicated chat-server perhaps)
    This is evidenced by this post for example.

    So it isn't too far-fetched imo and CERTAINLY not "funny" to assume that they're experimenting with settings, adjusting this then adjusting that and monitoring the results.
    At least it would be an explanation on why SUN was the very BEST day in months, followed by "meh" ones again.
    JolineSZ likes this.
  19. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    Another "fact" I have seen in this thread, is that EVERYONE on AB would prefer a merger now, rather than a proper fix later.

    Its not a "fact", its just an opinion...:rolleyes:
    Yinla and tanith like this.
  20. JolineSZ Augur

    Sure they can do things without bringing the server down. Many people think it isn't the server really it is something about packages sent back and forth. So yes it can be something that has nothing to do with AB itself.