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| Troubleshooting Lag; Steps in Troubleshooting Lag | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jul 14 2011, 11:43 AM (1,883 Views) | |
| kageryu00 | Jul 14 2011, 11:43 AM Post #1 |
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Newbie
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Disclaimer** *** Would like to get feedback from the DDO-Cast community before I post this to the Trolls and Flamers on the Official DDO Forums, so please give me thoughts / Opinions on this. This is FAR from perfect… and may have some Type-O’s… or some other mistakes in it… It is also far from complete… For reference if anyone wishes credentials for my post… I work in network operations for a large company. We require high availability and low latency / lag for our applications. I often have to troubleshoot latency/lag problems, find the source and try to resolve it. So take this for what it is. I have written up here some instructions for A do it Yourself Latency Troubleshooting… But we have some basics here… Terms to know: Lag = Latency: latency is how long it takes a packet or data to get from your machine to the servers and back. Hop = a jump from one router to another. A router is a device that decides where your data/packet needs to go and sends it there. ms = ms is short for milliseconds. Local Host: Local host is the local internal ip for all machines... kinda tests the TCP/IP stack on your personal machine to ensure nothing is wrong... the IP is 127.0.0.1 Gateway: This is the next hop default location data will be sent from your machine when going to the internet or elsewhere… most home users MAY have 192.168.1.1 ( could definitely be different for every user ) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Game Server info: DDO game servers are gls.ddo.com which has the IP: 74.201.102.13 Domain servers for DDO NS1.DNS.TURBINE.COM 74.201.102.8 NS2.DNS.TURBINE.COM 74.201.102.8 NS3.DNS.TURBINE.COM 74.201.102.7 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- First things first… lets make sure we don’t have any issues on our home computer… Now we need to start checking individual things on our own personal computers… we can achieve this by using CTRL-ALT-Delete and bringing up the Task manager… When we do this we can check our memory and cpu to see how much load we have on them… That would be under our performance Tab. And you can see how much memory and CPU are being used at any given time… do this before you start the game and then after you are in the game and see what the difference is… if you are running at 90% Memory used to CPU used you have found your problem. For me personally the game uses more than a Gig of Ram and quite a bit CPU but I run at high/very high res using the high res textures… Going to leave it in your hands to make the judgement on that… for me this load is about 20% or so of my machines resources… hence no problem for me there. If you run torrents, that can cause issues for you… if your antivirus is currently updating or running scans, that can cause issues. These issues can possibly give you lag type symptoms. Things on your personal computer that can cause Lag type symptoms: ( this would be the most common case of Lag, more than a network / game server related issue) Antivirus: if your antivirus is updating or currently running scans this uses a large percentage of resources and will give you lag type symptoms Torrents: if you have torrents downloading on your local machine this not only consumes a lot of resources but also can cause other problems with your internet connection. Your average home router can only handle so many simultaneous connections at a time. A lot of torrenting apps will create as many connections as they need to get that file for you as quickly as possible. Which means that it could overload your home router with connections and cause it to start dropping packets. This will give you a lag type symptom as well. This also means that if you have another computer connected to your router that is downloading torrents your computer ( which is not ) will feel the effects of this by not being able to transmit it receive packets ( intermittently ) There are of course many other things, but in my mind these would be the main issues with home computers… things such as Watching a movie on your machine, having another game opened on your machine…etc… there are literally to many things to list out that can give you lag type symptoms on your personal computer. Other things that would require some diagnostic work to fix… and I am not qualified to go into details about these… -Old cluttered Registry files -A Fragmented disk -Settings too high for your machine ( try lowering the settings maybe ) If you feel confident that the problem is not on your local machine move on to the testing of your internet connection. Testing your internet connection… -In case you don’t know… you will need to use a command prompt to issue the following commands. In order to open up the command problem, you will need to ( in windows ) click on start then run, the little box will open up. In that box input * cmd * and then press enter. You should get a black and white screen to pop up… that will have the following or something similar in it: Microsoft Windows [Version 5.2.3790] (C) Copyright 1985-2003 Microsoft Corp. C:\> Testing step 1: First ping yourself: ( do this to test that your machine is processing IP correction ) Ping 127.0.0.1 C:\>ping 127.0.0.1 Pinging 127.0.0.1 with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128 Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128 Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128 Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128 Ping statistics for 127.0.0.1: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms Traceroute to yourself ( not required at all but just for the fun of it ) C:\Documents and Settings\wp86244>tracert 127.0.0.1 Tracing route to jpncxoskpr301.jpn.nsroot.net [127.0.0.1] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms [127.0.0.1] Trace complete. All is fine here for the TCP/IP stack Testing step 2: Next we will test our Gateway. ( as noted above, the gateway is the next device that your data will go to after leaving your computer ) To get the gateway info we need to use the dos command * ipconfig /all * you may have multiple interfaces on your machine, ensure that you are looking at the right one. Now input the following to continue the testing… C:\>ipconfig /all Windows IP Configuration Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : Your Machine host name Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . : your DNS Suffix ( will be different for everyone ) Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : You may or may not have this... don’t worry about it. Ethernet adapter Team: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Description . . . . . . . . . . . : HP Network Team #1 ( description of your nic) Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx ( your nics MAC address don’t worry about this ) DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : Your IP Address Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0 Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1 ( Your Default Gateway primary ) 192.168.1.2 ( your secondary Default Gateway if you have one) DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1 ( your DNS Servers ) Primary WINS Server . . . . . . . : 169.168.1.2 ( your wins server don’t worry about this either ) Secondary WINS Server . . . . . . : 192.168.1.2 ( your secondary wins server again don’t worry about this. Now we have all our IP information.. We can ping and traceroute to our Default Gateway... C:\ >ping 192.168.1.1 Pinging 161.75.140.1 with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=255 Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=255 Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=255 Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=255 Ping statistics for 192.168.1.1: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms C:\ >tracert 192.168.1.1 Tracing route to 192.168.1.1over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1 Trace complete. Okay we now know that our connection to our Default Gateway is good... we can proceed with going a bit deeper into this latency issue... Again Latency is the correct term for Lag… ------------------------------------------- * note: these traces are from in the US to the game servers... First we will ping to: 74.201.102.13 Ping 74.201.102.13 Round trip time to 74.201.102.13: 45 ms Round trip time to 74.201.102.13: 45 ms Round trip time to 74.201.102.13: 45 ms Round trip time to 74.201.102.13: 46 ms Round trip time to 74.201.102.13: 45 ms Round trip time to 74.201.102.13: 45 ms Round trip time to 74.201.102.13: 45 ms Round trip time to 74.201.102.13: 45 ms Round trip time to 74.201.102.13: 45 ms Round trip time to 74.201.102.13: 45 ms Average time over 10 pings: 45.1 ms And then a traceroute: TraceRoute to 74.201.102.13 Hop (ms) (ms) (ms) IP Address Host name 1 0 0 0 8.9.232.73 xe-5-3-0.edge3.dallas1.level3.net 2 2 1 1 4.69.145.140 ae-3-80.edge2.dallas3.level3.net 3 1 1 1 4.68.63.50 qwest-level3-xe.dallas3.level3.net 4 Timed out Timed out Timed out - 5 45 45 45 65.120.117.250 - 6 45 45 44 63.251.128.107 border1.te8-1-bbnet2.bsn003.pnap.net 7 45 45 45 74.201.102.105 - 8 45 45 45 74.201.102.154 - 9 45 45 45 74.201.102.13 - Trace complete Here we see that there is only a 45 Milliseconds delay in my packet getting from my machine to the game servers would would indicate that there are no issues with me connecting to the game... This also tells us that any Lag/Latency I am seeing is not due to the servers or the network infrastructure with Turbine. For me I am connecting from Japan so my trace is a bit different... Here is my trace from Japan... traceroute: 1 [AS4685] hirnia2.asahi-net.or.jp (211.120.67.9) 12.661 ms 12.852 ms 11.671 ms 2 [AS4685] hirnip-ge0.asahi-net.or.jp (211.120.67.30) 13.560 ms 12.059 ms 11.631 ms 3 [AS4685] tkybi3-v7.asahi-net.or.jp (202.224.38.1) 27.463 ms 27.157 ms 26.291 ms 4 [AS4685] kddni2.asahi-net.or.jp (202.224.32.51) 30.478 ms 28.693 ms 27.594 ms 5 [AS3549] ASN-0003.gw2.nrt2.asianetcom.net (203.192.149.205) 28.560 ms 28.836 ms 27.674 ms 6 [AS10026] gi12-0-0.cr1.nrt1.asianetcom.net (202.147.0.213) 29.723 ms 28.373 ms 29.608 ms 7 [AS10026] po7-0-0.gw1.sjc1.asianetcom.net (202.147.0.34) 133.550 ms 132.223 ms 132.432 ms 8 [AS10026] ip-202-147-50-250.asianetcom.net (202.147.50.250) 134.460 ms 134.313 ms 134.328 ms 9 [AS209] bst-edge-05.inet.qwest.net (67.14.30.66) 314.018 ms 313.881 ms 313.801 ms 10 [AS209] 65.120.117.250 (65.120.117.250) 209.849 ms 210.879 ms 210.908 ms 11 [AS14742] border1.te7-1-bbnet1.bsn003.pnap.net (63.251.128.43) 212.725 ms 210.594 ms 211.859 ms 12 [AS14742] 74.201.102.105 (74.201.102.105) 210.933 ms 211.088 ms 210.793 ms 13 [AS14742] 74.201.102.154 (74.201.102.154) 210.672 ms 210.750 ms 210.877 ms 14 [AS14742] 74.201.102.13 (74.201.102.13) 211.885 ms 210.132 ms 209.888 ms Completed. You can see here comparing the two traces.. from the US and from Japan there are some huge differences in the ms's required for the packet from my machine to get to the game servers... from 45ms to 209ms... and I myself have not experienced any noticeable lag.. ms's are as I said before Milliseconds... What you are actually looking for is a large jump in the time it takes to get from one Hop to another… Example… in my traceroute from japan to the DDO servers… we have the following… 6 [AS10026] gi12-0-0.cr1.nrt1.asianetcom.net (202.147.0.213) 29.723 ms 28.373 ms 29.608 ms (1 province in china) 7 [AS10026] po7-0-0.gw1.sjc1.asianetcom.net (202.147.0.34) 133.550 ms 132.223 ms 132.432 ms (another province in china ) You can see here that there is 100 ms between hops… This could be caused by quite a few things… and is in my path to the DDO servers but is not in the Turbine network and Turbine has nothing to do with this latency issue. This is probably caused ( not promising ) by a lower speed link/connection between the two sites. The next big Latency issue in my connection is: 8 [AS10026] ip-202-147-50-250.asianetcom.net (202.147.50.250) 134.460 ms 134.313 ms 134.328 ms (again in china) 9 [AS209] bst-edge-05.inet.qwest.net (67.14.30.66) 314.018 ms 313.881 ms 313.801 ms ( now home in the US of A) This is because of the undersea cabling… usually these cables are shared bandwidth with multiple entities leasing out certain amounts of Bandwidth… There could also be other issues that cause slowing connections… however there are many, the overall thing here is that it shows that it is not due to the turbine networks that the connection has high latency. Again, I want it clear that there could be many many many things that cause Lag or Latency. And some are less obvious than others… sometimes finding one source for latency will lead into finding multiple things that all combined cause the problems… This is far from a perfect post, there may be flaws… there may be errors… In my experience this should be a good way to find the source of your lag… Edited by kageryu00, Jul 14 2011, 12:37 PM.
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| Jerry | Jul 14 2011, 12:28 PM Post #2 |
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The Host Of DDOcast.
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One typo: Here we see that there is only a 45 second delay in my packet getting from my machine to the game servers would would indicate that there are no issues with me connecting to the game... Should be millisecond delay. Second: I would not say, "and if the forum trolls wish to troll this post, more power to them…" Generally, people engaging in this kind of behavior are more likely to be baited rather than steered away when they read something like that. ![]() I have no idea on the tech stuff, looks smart to me! One thing that might be interesting is a bit of what to do if you do find bad latency, how to improve it. |
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I now work for Turbine! | |
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| kageryu00 | Jul 14 2011, 12:34 PM Post #3 |
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Newbie
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Jerry, Thanks for your feedback... now that I read it.. you are right... might be baiting people by saying that... this is why i wanted to post it here at a more constructive forums before going to the mail forums... Your are indeed correct in your statment that I should add in * milliseconds delay * vice just saying milliseconds.. will fix that... regretfully, if the source of your delay is the same as mine, in china... there is not much to be done about that... but if your problem did happen to be with torrents or active AV scans or what-not there are ways you can correct that... again, thank you so very much for your feedback/comments. |
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