Raids and spell lag

As much as I dislike doing anything that even approaches agreeing with Avirodar ( ), I would have to say that aside from what Kander has stated that the Network Engineers are already doing (i.e. investigating the matter), if the problem isn't within Sony-owned hardware*, then the only action I could see SOE being able to take** to affect the issue is negotiating a contract with a different provider. I don't know about you, but I don't have access to info that shows how long it would take to successfully do so, nor do I know whether or not initiating that kind of action would be a violation of their existing contract (which, lag or not, is still connection) with their current provider. If you have access to any of this information, by all means, please enlighten the rest of us.

* Note: I'm not ruling out the possibility of the problem being within Sony-owned hardware.
** Beyond calling them up and saying, essentially, "Hey, dude, some of our players are getting lag from your node!"

While in raid:

Code:

ping -n 250 66.209.64.65
 
Ping statistics for 66.209.64.65:
    Packets: Sent = 250, Received = 227, Lost = 23 (9% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 85ms, Maximum = 262ms, Average = 115ms

Code:

ping -l 2000 -n 25 66.209.64.65
 
Ping statistics for 66.209.64.65:
    Packets: Sent = 25, Received = 19, Lost = 6 (24% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 92ms, Maximum = 167ms, Average = 115ms

I repeated these a few times. Seems like the larger the packet, the more likely it gets lost.

Additionally, in raid I'm seeing packets in the 20k-40k range a lot of the time.

We had to call our raid early because half the raid was getting huge packet loss anytime we were fighting. Makes me /sadface

So when you're having bad internet problems you don't call your isp and troubleshoot? That's basically what this is, except SoE with Switch.

Hour and a half trying to kill Drels in STx4 due to lag. We killed him in the end but not sure if the zone will still be open on Friday so we can go get some pants.

Well we don't know the details of SOE's agreement with switchnap.
The hardware may be SOE's and is being co-located there, not likely but possible.
SOE could possibly be pushing the limits of the service they have, def a possibility that SOE has oversubscribed that pipe they clearly have a dedicated piece of that pipe allocated direct to their data center these types of dedicated connections are not cheap and easy to undershoot especially if they are using old figures in the amount of bandwidth needed/number of individual accounts without considering the FTP impact.
An individual switch could be faulty, or even a port or a cable.
A fiber optic cable connection might need attention very sensitive to any imperfections, in all reality those are all or nothing, but polishing them can be necessary.

Perhaps you noticed the last line of the comment you quoted. It was this:

The implication of that being that, once the network engineers determined it wasn't due to SOE-owned hardware (if, in fact, it isn't due to SOE-owned hardware), they would, of course, contact the provider. In the meantime, while Switch is going through however many of the 7000 cabinets happen to be at the offending location trying to narrow down precisely where the problem lies, there isn't much else that SOE can do - except change to a different provider. I've already admitted that I don't know what effect (if any) that would have upon the player base.

But to answer your question, before I even think of calling my ISP, I make dang sure it isn't any piece of equipment within my home causing the problem. Once I've determined that no problem exists within the cables, connections, and equipment, I will call the ISP. Even with a network as small as the one I have, that takes a bit of time to check. I can only imagine how many orders of magnitude greater the difficulty must be for SOE to check all of their equipment (unless they literally have an army of network engineers on hand), especially given that the problems aren't isolated to one game.

Like I said, I'm not ruling out it being SOE-owned equipment (I suppose SOE-leased equipment could sorta fall under that heading as well, if it is dedicated). And if it is something directly within SOE's power to control, then they should do what they can to fix it. All I was really saying is that, if it is truly beyond their direct control, then beyond saying something to the people that do control it, there isn't much they can do to affect the situation.

I understand that it is frustrating. Even if you aren't a raider, lag isn't a good thing. But at this point, we really have three choices (none of which will change the outcome):

1) We can try to be patient and let the network engineers do their jobs (i.e. investigating the cause of this issue and doing something about it once the cause has been identified).
2) We can leave the game.
3) We can complain incessantly on the forums.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm choosing #1.

The fact that the problem isn't isolated to one game actually narrows down the possible faults tbh.

Cross posting this because relevant.

It seems to be related in some way to the login server (which makes sense since likely all soe games). It isn't so much restarting the client that fixes it, but zoning. Within a client I'll be fine (in Sirens), zone and not be fine (call to home to reforge in freeport), then be fine (cov back to Sirens), then not be fine (zone out, reset, zone in).

We made this same observation last night. We had about 5-6 people with unplayable conditions to start the night. They camped in and out a variable number of times between encounters until they got a connection that worked. At the end of the night, we called back to the guild hall and 3 of those same people instantly reverted to experiencing the packet loss, 10s chat lag, etc that marked the condition.

We had to leave HE and then PoW because of the lag... And called raid early. We are all subscribing customers and pay you for a polished and maintained game. Not this lag fiasco we've been dealing with.

This thread was originally posted in January. How much more patient do you expect us to be? We're now almost 6 months past the original start date of this thread. I'm not even counting other threads buried on this forum and the support forum, and I'm not even taking into account the fact that this problem is more than a 6 month old problem. If the network engineers haven't been investigating this problem this entire time, then there's a serious flaw in communication going on.

And it's not getting better. It's getting a lot worse. The frequency of this problem is increasing. I'm probably not the only one who has been using /feedback (when it works) or /petition to address the issue. The forums are just another avenue to drive the point home, but then you dismiss as "complaining incessantly?" Give me a break.

Problems like this are the reason why I am nervous about EQN. Seriously, SoE can't seem to get their ducks in a row for the small population of this game, or their even smaller populations on other games. How are they going to handle the massive influx of people in a new game?

If my city's power fails, I would call my city's utility and power company because they are responsible for those services, similar to how Sony is responsible for providing Everquest 2 to its paying customers. Are you confused or something? These are goods and services created and controlled by people and corporations. You refer to the routers on the path external to Sony as if they were gifts granted by a higher power and should be uninfluenced by man's concerns.

Guess what.... if a remote node beyond the local vicinity of Sony's servers is malfunctioning to the point of trivializing data being sent/received by the multibillion dollar corporation known as Sony , it is in the very least a good business decision to look into the problem and contact the people who are responsible for that node. SONY should be the entity concerned with investigating what the problem is and finding a solution, because they have millions at steak, but you seem to think they would get better results by collecting data posted on a public forum from people who have dagger wielding rats and platinum on the line.

The most important technical point here is it's obviously in the local vicinity of their server ( if that's even the issue) because if it wasn't, it wouldn't be effecting people from all regions, unless it was traveling through a node that bottle necked an entire region to that IP and would also be interfering other data traveling through that node. As it stands, this problem is not exclusive to users in specific locations. The only common factor here is that the problem is widespread exclusively with SoE users.. Why do you seem to think it's unreasonable for the issue to to be within the company's servers?

Here is another analogy to put how ridiculous you sound in perspective: If your spouse accidentally took the keys for your car causing you to miss work, would you say that contacting them did not become YOUR responsibility once it interfered with your job? or would you just stay at home, lay down, get fired and say, "Welp, I guess the problem is out of my hands. Maybe my boss and customers should have not blamed me for loosing my keys, nor should they fault my lack of initiative to find an alternate way to get to work. It was my wife's fault, she took my keys so she should get fired from her job, not me! If they wanted me to come in to work so bad, they should have called me and told me where my keys were."

The well being of a company floundering financially, such as SoE, really can't afford too many blows on this scale and expect to retain a large enough customer basis for their parent company, Sony, to continue to justify funding improvements, solutions, and new server hardware. This is why aggressively looking for a solution to restoring the game's functionality should be paramount, and certainly take precedence over funding development teams and their salaries for months of work designing the trees in Darklight Woods. The lag problem has been relevant for years in EQ2, and has deteriorated as the company's server hardware becomes increasingly out of date, over stressed, and lacking proper maintenance. Just based on my interaction with people who use Sony products, I would estimate around 15-20% of players are currently unable to effectively play Everquest 2 at this time because of lag that makes the encounters in the game impossible to execute,and indisputably less enjoyable for everyone trying to participate with them. This problem crossed the line of not enjoyable to completely unplayable and not functioning more recently and I hope a serious solution is in order rather than another band-aid and pat on the back assuring us everything will be okay.

This lag was at its worse for me last night in both HEx4 and DCx4. At one point we had the raid zone out of HE ...wait a few sec and zone back in and all the sudden I was not experiencing the same lag I was. Then onto DCx4 and bam......lag central....especially what I call "button lag" ...press button....2sec later it actually activates, etc.

In 6+ years of playing EQ2 I have always been fortunate in being one of those almost never experienced lag issues others claimed but all the sudden I am seeing it. Something has changed.....I am pretty confident its not something on my end.

Part of the problem is likely one that you've experienced with your own ISP. First you have to PROVE to them than the problem isn't on your end before they'll even consider investigating anything on theirs. For SOE that is going to be a lot harder than it is for you.

That is the really sad part about this. I have had issues proving things to my ISP in the past...and while they have been annoying and often stubborn to deal with.........its not been anywhere near as bad as it has been with SOE. =P

Yes, the thread began in January. Within that time, they have tried several solutions - some of which have worked temporarily and some that really haven't affected the situation. It isn't like they have been sitting on their hands the entire time.

You'll perhaps notice that there were no posts in the thread between May 29th and July 7th. While that doesn't mean that nobody was experiencing the problems, it does mean that they weren't complaining about it here for over a month.

Kander posted that they have network engineers investigating it 7 days ago. This was two days after somebody stated, in this thread, that the issues have started occurring again.

Like I said, you can choose any of those three options listed previously - I'm going with the first one. Whichever one you choose is up to you. Regardless of the option any of us choose, though, it isn't going to get the problem located any faster.

To be clear, the ones posting tracert results aren't the ones I'm talking about when I say incessant complaining. They are actually adding relevant info. Even ones that can identify common elements among those experiencing the lag (say, for example, if it was all the players of a certain archetype, or all the players from a certain region, etc.) aren't included in the incessant complaining category. Just the ones that say, essentially, I don't care whose fault it is, SOE needs to fix it.

Quick question: If it was server lag, do you think it is unreasonable that it would affect everyone on that server instead of, say, 1/3 or 2/3 of a raid?

I just wanted to chime in here with a quick update.

We are working on these issues. There were some DDoS issues last night (unrelated to SOE but affected our service provider). We have our network engineering guys working with our service providers to find answers and solutions. This is a top priority for us.