The Lag Poll (as of Tuesday, 10 July)

For those interested, or in doubt, you can find out details about your connection by doing a trace route:

1. Start Guild Wars and write down the IP-address of the server that you are currently playing on (hover the mouse arrow over the small green/orange/red dot that shows your connection stats)

2. Windows Start Menu -> Run... -> enter "cmd" (without quotaton marks)

3. In the window that opens now enter "tracert xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" (again, without quotation marks and with the IP-address you just noted instead of all the Xs).

Example:

Note that I am using a German version of Windows. I also anonymized the first three hops since they're of no importance here. Now the interesting part at that route are the hops 6 and 7, which are obviously where the route crosses the Atlantic Ocean. Note the server names of hops 6 and 7: I would bet good money that "frf" stands for Frankfurt and that "lax" has something to do with Los Angeles.

If the trace seems to trail off into nothingness at some point (after hop 7 all the requests time out) this doesn't neccessarily mean anything. Some servers are configured to not respond to trace requests.

To be quite specific, I live near Birmingham in the centre of England, and my lag problems occur every day ever since the problem started (july 1st news item), but are limited to certain times of the day.

From 5pm up to around 10-11pm I have severe lag with average pings anywhere from 1,500ms to 12,000ms.

From 10-11pm up to 5am or so I have absolutely no lag, and average ping from 120-220.

I just checked the IP address that my GW client is currently using, 216.107.241.36, and a traceroute shows that my packets are being routed to Russia! Since I'm in the US, this hardly seems like it is going to be good for performance. I also did a whois on the IP address and, sure enough, it is assigned to:

descr: Public Joint Stock Company Electrosvayz
descr: 22, Antikainena st.
descr: Petrozavodsk City
country: RU

So that probably explains why the packets are going to Russia. So what's going on here? I am in Austin, TX and my GW connections used to be to NCSoft here in Austin (I last checked this quite some time ago, but at that time that did seem to be the case) with very low latency.

Here's my traceroute output:

traceroute to 217.107.241.36 (217.107.241.36), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 maul (10.1.132.1) 0.174 ms 0.194 ms 0.147 ms
2 adsl-66-136-206-6.dsl.austtx.swbell.net (66.136.206.6) 8.139 ms 7.672 ms 7.673 ms
3 dist2-vlan60.austtx.sbcglobal.net (151.164.20.163) 7.828 ms 7.984 ms 7.985 ms
4 bb2-g8-3-0.austtx.sbcglobal.net (151.164.94.22) 7.985 ms 7.986 ms 8.140 ms
5 ex1-p11-0.eqabva.sbcglobal.net (151.164.40.49) 51.197 ms 54.095 ms 220.302 ms
6 equinix.ash.cw.net (206.223.115.73) 38.874 ms 39.029 ms 38.872 ms
7 so-7-0-0-dcr2.amd.cw.net (195.2.10.250) 131.089 ms
so-5-0-0-dcr1.was.cw.net (195.2.0.217) 39.808 ms
so-7-0-0-dcr2.amd.cw.net (195.2.10.250) 131.649 ms
8 as0-dcr1.amd.cw.net (195.2.10.153) 131.070 ms
so-0-0-0-dcr1.par.cw.net (195.2.10.118) 119.732 ms
as0-dcr1.amd.cw.net (195.2.10.153) 130.602 ms
9 so-0-0-0-dcr1.fra.cw.net (195.2.10.141) 128.265 ms
so-0-0-0-dcr2.fra.cw.net (195.2.10.150) 146.385 ms
so-0-0-0-dcr1.fra.cw.net (195.2.10.141) 127.951 ms
10 so-6-0-0-zar1.fri.cw.net (195.2.10.226) 137.117 ms
so-4-0-0-zar1.fri.cw.net (195.2.2.118) 128.579 ms 128.574 ms
11 romteleco-gw.fri.cw.net (166.63.204.170) 153.001 ms 144.488 ms 152.558 ms
12 spb-car0-ge0-2.rt-comm.ru (217.106.6.21) 305.884 ms 326.951 ms 311.805 ms
13 petrozavodsk-car0-ml1.rt-comm.ru (217.106.7.154) 326.537 ms 325.858 ms 318.954 ms
14 195.161.158.174 (195.161.158.174) 336.465 ms 320.913 ms 339.963 ms
15 lens.spb.ptn.ru (212.48.195.18) 330.283 ms 323.283 ms 320.101 ms
16 petus.onego.ru (195.161.136.121) 335.738 ms 323.037 ms 326.917 ms
17 km-81.dialup.onego.ru (195.161.137.81) 343.947 ms 430.585 ms 373.960 ms
18 * * *
19 * * *
[no further responses]

I have not played so far today, but there were definite signs of improvement last night.

The game was for the most part playable with reasonable green/orange pings rather than the orange/mostly red that has been the norm for the last week.

There were still more lag spikes than usual and changing districts/loading maps was still slower than normal.

It was still the best it has been for the last week or so though!

BTW, given that the GW server that I was connected to is in Russia I don't see how my response times could ever be sufficiently good to effectively play the game. There will inevitably be network lags that make playing a game such as GW problematic. Many of my skills (all of the interrupting ones at least) need to be timed more accurately than the kind of lag that I'm experiencing permits. If I was to guess, I'd say that this was a change by Anet designed to reduce the cost of operating their servers. For me anyway, it really makes me have second thoughts about purchasing GW:EN. My enjoyment playing the game has been significantly impacted from what it was before.

Eh, I'd check your PC carefully because that IP adress does NOT resolve to Russia but to PlayNC:

OrgName: NC INTERACTIVE, INC.
OrgID: NCINT
Address: 6801 North Capital of Texas Hwy 5b. Org Address:Building
Address: 1
City: Austin
StateProv: TX
PostalCode: 78731
Country: US

NetRange: 216.107.240.0 - 216.107.255.255
CIDR: 216.107.240.0/20
NetName: NCINT1
NetHandle: NET-216-107-240-0-1
Parent: NET-216-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Assignment
NameServer: NCDNS01.NCAUSTIN.COM
NameServer: NCDNS02.NCAUSTIN.COM
Comment:
RegDate: 2005-09-20
Updated: 2005-09-20

Lag has been terrible for over a week. Ping button has been like a set of traffic lights going green, amber then red in rotation every 2 minutes or so. I ran the diagnostic test last weekend which indicated my server route from SE England went straight into Frankfurt. Some nights GW was unplayable and I reached an all time personal best on Sunday afternoon at the Dragon Festival with 86,006 ping.

Delighted to say that when I logged in on Monday evening, everything was back to normal i.e. ping mostly green, a little amber and only red in places like kamadan dist1.

Usually when I play AB I play international and usually that means I'm routed through Frankfurt. The last couple of weeks were almost unplayable because of lag but I played last night and it was mostly smooth sailing.

I have to disagree with you. This is not a PC issue, as the whois data base has nothing to do with my PC. Actually, I am using one of my FreeBSD systems to run whois and below is complete output from it. Also, when I run traceroute I get confirming results (the packets are routed to Russia). Again, this has nothing to do with my PC since the packets are all destination [not source] routed once they leave my network. I have no control over where they go.

[email protected]2> whois 217.107.241.36

OrgName: RIPE Network Coordination Centre
OrgID: RIPE
Address: P.O. Box 10096
City: Amsterdam
StateProv:
PostalCode: 1001EB
Country: NL

ReferralServer: whois://whois.ripe.net:43

NetRange: 217.0.0.0 - 217.255.255.255
CIDR: 217.0.0.0/8
NetName: 217-RIPE
NetHandle: NET-217-0-0-0-1
Parent:
NetType: Allocated to RIPE NCC
NameServer: NS-PRI.RIPE.NET
NameServer: NS3.NIC.FR
NameServer: SUNIC.SUNET.SE
NameServer: NS-EXT.ISC.ORG
NameServer: SEC1.APNIC.NET
NameServer: SEC3.APNIC.NET
NameServer: TINNIE.ARIN.NET
Comment: These addresses have been further assigned to users in
Comment: the RIPE NCC region. Contact information can be found in
Comment: the RIPE database at http://www.ripe.net/whois
RegDate: 2000-06-05
Updated: 2005-07-27

# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2007-07-10 19:10
# Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN's WHOIS database.
% This is the RIPE Whois query server #1.
% The objects are in RPSL format.
%
% Rights restricted by copyright.
% See http://www.ripe.net/db/copyright.html

% Note: This output has been filtered.
% To receive output for a database update, use the "-B" flag.

% Information related to '217.107.241.0 - 217.107.241.255'

inetnum: 217.107.241.0 - 217.107.241.255
netname: RT-CLNT-ELECTROCOM
descr: Public Joint Stock Company Electrosvayz
descr: 22, Antikainena st.
descr: Petrozavodsk City
country: RU
admin-c: ICO2-RIPE
tech-c: ICO2-RIPE
status: ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by: AS8342-MNT
source: RIPE # Filtered

role: Internet Center ONEGO.RU
address: "Kareliaelektrosvyaz" Branch
address: JSC "North-West Telecom"
address: 5, Dzerzhinsky st.
address: 185035, Petrozavodsk,
address: Karelia, Russia
phone: +7 8142 79-44-44
phone: +7 8142 79-45-30
fax-no: +7 8142 76-45-73
remarks: trouble: --------------------------------------------------------------
remarks: trouble: Points of Contact for Internet Center ONEGO.RU
remarks: trouble: --------------------------------------------------------------
remarks: trouble: SPAM and Network Security issues: [email protected]
remarks: trouble: Routing and peering issues: [email protected]
remarks: trouble: Mail & news issues: [email protected]
remarks: trouble: --------------------------------------------------------------
admin-c: DGL3-RIPE
admin-c: BV466-RIPE
tech-c: DGL3-RIPE
tech-c: BV466-RIPE
nic-hdl: ICO2-RIPE
source: RIPE # Filtered
abuse-mailbox: [email protected]

% Information related to '217.106.0.0/15AS8342'

route: 217.106.0.0/15
descr: RTCOMM-RU
origin: AS8342
mnt-by: AS8342-MNT
source: RIPE # Filtered

Just thought I'd point out your little mistake there... 216.107.241.36 whois is registered to NC Interactive

If so, then why does my whois command say different, and why is traceroute showing that my packets are being routed to Russia? I am using the whois command that comes with FreeBSD. What are you using to get your differing results? Please provide some info. Simply telling me I'm wrong w/o supporting documentation isn't very convincing. I'd be happy to admit that I'm wrong, but so far no one has provided any proof of that. What do traceroutes to 217.107.241.36 from your location show?

Read the numbers again bwillcox, carefully, especially the first byte. You may notice a slight difference between what you posted as your server's adress and the adress you posted as the one you diagnosed with.

Ah! My apologies for wasting all this bandwidth and thank you for straightening me out. Yes, now my packets are being routed to Los Angeles (still not as good as when it used to be right here in Austin, though).

Well since yesterday evening Guild wars has become unplayable, while standing in town i get 4000 ms pings and in a mission or explorable area it goes up to 8000 and sometimes 14000, a bummer as i want so much done before Gwen is here.

Hope you guys fix it

No lag yesterday

Absolute horrific lag today. And I mean really bad, not a case of just some


Last Ping : 3.600ms
Average Ping: 9.260ms
Ser ip: 206.127.146.66

Talked with a few people in kamadan int, and they were all having 6 to 10k lag today :/.

*edit let me re phrase that: Got 6K lag on euro kamadan, even in guildhall :/. In int i have 600ms or so (still playable for pve questing) All the people in Int had lag on euro so came to int ^^*

yup, just logged on to Guild Wars and I'm averaging 10,000ms+ lag. Good luck getting it fixed, because as is GW is unplayable for me

[Edit] Server ip: 206.127.146.92

Totally and utterly unplayble in any town etc today in the EU regions. Average ping 8000ms

the lag 2day is ridiculous. takes a minute to load towns and when i get there i cant do anything. if i try and go somewhere else i err 7. getting a ping of 10-60k

Same here too. If I go international districts I can play with a 300-400ms ping but if I connect normally to the EU districts my ping is anywhere between 4000-11000ms, which is obviously unplayable.

Even just moving around in town is a challenge right now. This is really starting to erode my desire to play this game at all.

Unplayable atm.

Whent from better to worse yesterday I was experiencing less lag around 300 ms and the occasional spike of 5 6 seconds now its back to 12,000 ping complete and utterly useless to launch the game at all.

Can i change my vote?

I spoke too soon about the improvement.

Yes 12 days of lag misery ended on Monday but has come back again with a vengeance tonight. Logged in to my (empty) guildhall to be greeted with average ping of 10k plus. Did lots of rubber banding trying to reach storage. Looks like i won't be relaxing after a day at work by playing GW tonight after all.

Cannot play at all. 20,000ms average ping.

The shop works as normal, though!

Uber lag has just returned. Again int districts are free of it but european are completely unplayable - 10k+++ ping, freezes, disconnects, various errors.

Seriously what the hell is wrong today. Int district is fine. Eng district is insane. Its going on 10 minutes now, 2 Err7s and 1 never ending 'loading' on an attempt to get out of Eng1 into Int. Zoning to the GH brings with it massive lag.

Id like to change my vote too....to totally unplayable.
My guildies have been suffering with this farce since it began and i wasnt getting any lag whatsoever....now after a hard days work, and wanting to relax by killing stuff, i get a totally unplayable game...


For gods sake ANET, please reroute this via anywhere but germany (im in UK). I do a Visualroute test and it just stalls at Deutche Telecom somewhere..

I hope this gets fixed before the weekend i really do, some of my guildies have been playing WoW trial because they can....I mean jeeez if thats what they have to resort to, then GW:EN is looking a bit shaky for me to buy

Totally unplayable and unacceptable.

RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO this... Int district is lag free.... but i can't even get into the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing game to TRY and change district, been trying for almost 30 minutes.

I'm going to play Counterstrike... at least that works.

completly utterly pointless to play anything right now.. i'm getting 5k+ ping.
even chatting is weird with 5 seconds of delay!

Gaile,

Thanx alot for the attention paid on lagging problem. I am convinced you do your best. I live 25km from Frankfurt and since 14 days GW is horribly lagging.

But this is a true and sad story over vent:
Guildie: Can you interrupt the res sig, please?
Me: What res sig? Who is ressing, can you call the target?
Guildie obviously ping target?
Guildie: You are a PD mes, right? Why didn't you interrupt res sig?
Me: I can't. You didn't ping.
Looking at my ping: 523k ping
^^

My ping is much better now, it used to be over 10k average, now it is 800-1000.
At least I can do PvE a little bit now ^^, so thanx for the improvement.

averaging 6,000ms with spikes of 30,000+ in English districts.

Disgusting.

The lag recently has been awful but this evening it's been alot worse. I usually log in then switch to int district to get better pings, tried this just now and my toon just sat there for over 2 mins not doing anything. OK I thought and tried a different toon, same result.

Trace routes take me to Frankfurt.

Here's a quick pic of some of the pings Ive been getting over the past couple of weeks. The top 2 were this evening.

Jeeeese I thought 6k ping spikes were high now I feel somewhat spoiled. That really sucks...

2 hours ago:



1 hour ago:



A few minutes ago:



Strangely enough, I have no trouble logging in. It takes ages, but it never fails. I can stay logged on as long as I want and watch the world go by in stop-motion. When I try to travel to any other place, I get an immediate error 7 though. This is the first day I can't even travel to the international districts and it's bloody annoying.

I think today marks the second full week of unplayable lag for me.

More questions, to help us research this further:

• Can you tell me if everyone in the outpost is experiencing the lag, or only some players in your outpost?
• Can those of you in a guild hall tell me if everyone is lagging at about the same level, of if some guildies have zero lag and some are lagged a lot?

Thank you for your help with both questions.

A) Just me lagging when I was in Kodash Bazaar English 1. I asked around and nobody else replied that they were lagging. Nobody replied that they weren't lagging either

B) In our hall I had bad lag whereas a guidly didn't.

International districts are fine. It only seems to be the European districts that have problems.

1) No, not everybody experience it at the same rate in a given outpost
2) Everybody has lag problems, but those with the best broadband ressent it a lot less. The others have their time wasted.
3)No. You obviously fail as a company.

I thought the lag was from my machine, because it has never been this bad... I went and reinstalled my OS yesterday. I havn't played GW since though. Hope its better.

I believe I can answer the first question with some certainty. I have been trying to login and play from the Chantry of Secrets (Nightfall) for about 2 hours tonight. Every time I do actually manage to load (mostly theres just no connection), there are people in the Chantry in European D1 asking for players to join groups for FoW. I would assume people grouping would not be experiencing severe lag like myself.


Tracert to the server that Guildwars keeps trying to load me into over the past few tries :