Wow Lag Spikes?

[Celt]

Ever since the famous upgrade, i've been getting major lag spikes on WoW. The realm i'm on is Wildhammer and it seems to hit me about 11pm to 12 pm. I've got no d/l in the background and clean on virus check and spyware.

 

Ts breaks up as well but all i get from MT is that it's the server.

 

Strange when the other people i talk to on TS say they don't have a problem, only me and Ts breaks up as well.

 

Any ideas ?

[Alexander91]

same here (agamaggan realm ). Its almost unplayable sometimes. Phoned manx telecom and they say they have no idea when it will be fixed but they are aware of the problem (something about ripping out the new hardware, sending it back to manufacturer and then replacing it)

[immortalpuppet]

I play on different servers each night and have never had an issue, Many people i know play each night and dont have a problem. It looks like the people who dont have problems far outweigh the people with problems so what would that suggest? ISP or something else? people are very quick to blame the ISP without doing anything about it or thinking about other parts of the equasion.

 

 

 

 

Posted on one of the other broaband themed threads:

 

It means that the connection speed is ok and you should think about other factors, ping test to local/uk sites or to the game servers to see which hop has the increase. If you are on dynanmic ip you could log into the router and change the ip address and see if this improves, or just blame the isp and do nothing about it.

 

Edit to add a classic quote from the wow support forums

 

 

QUOTE

Seems like telia is causing huge problems for wow players... shame really, tried to put up with it but can no longer handle it anymore!

 

UK player, BT broadband, but to be honest, it aint a router or my ISP, it's telia

!

 

wow forums

[Manx_Boydy]

I'm getting stupid lag spikes when playing WOW. It used to be fine before the upgrade but it's really getting on my tits.

 

I've tried the following:

 

- Allocating a static IP

- Upgrading the routers firmware

- Tested any bottlenecks on my system.

 

All to no avail so i'm guessng it's the ISP.

[Furry Mongoose]

I've been having huge lag spikes too for over a week - reported to MT but they're pretty meh really. They were supposed to call on Monday and have still not bothered. Not too pleased really!

[Celt]

I've changed my dynamic ip,

 

tried alot of different servers, pissed off making new chars

 

upgraded any firmware, router is able to take up to 8mg.

 

changed all wired router cables for new

 

checked for anything that could do it my end,

 

everything i can think of i've done but it still spikes.

 

If there is an ISP prob, i they would say so, then i'd not be pulling my hair out thinking it's my end. Seems the told Alexander there is .

 

Thanx for replies anyway

[ans]

I wonder, given the lack of FPS players complaining about huge lag, whether it's as ISP related as you think it is. FPS games absolutely rely on very low latency to be playable and I'm pretty sure the CoD/ET/TF2/Quake players would be bleating even louder on here. WoW isn't really that dependant on a low latency, especially for PVE, it's perfectly playable with a 3-400 ping whereas anything over 50 and I'd not play on an fps server.

 

That aside, the way WoW actually reports latency is much different than most other games. Other games give you a real time report on your connection to the server that will update several times a second. WoW gives you an average over the last 10 minutes. Hence, although I'm not denying there must be something that's causing a huge spike at times, the average figure the WoW player is looking at is greately inflated as to what it actually is for the other 9m59 of the reporting period. So I wonder how much of it is a perception thing. You can see this 2-3000 'lag' being reported and convince yourself that it's worse than it actually is. Like I say though, something must be causing that spike.

[immortalpuppet]

Anyone tried to report this through Blizz?

[Rock]

I've been having lag issues for a while in most games - a lot of the time they will just freeze for 10-30secs then come back to speed (where i'm usually dead).

 

It started doing it only a couple of times a hour so wasn't too bad, but it's getting worse and this afternoon it happened 20+ times in a 35mins map, will report to MT tomorrow if it's not improved (am off so can test during a weekday)

[House]

The core point about a lot of these related broadband threads is that prior to the (cough) 8 meg 'upgrades' - MT's 2 meg connection was damn near bulletproof.

 

As a keen gamer myself (both PC and 360) who's pretty much always playing games online or dicking about on the web in my spare time, along with a reasonable amount of downloading, when a connection is flaky, I notice it quickly. (If Mrs House hasn't lodged a complaint first, that is )

 

Our connection started to go to shit before we were 'upgraded' to 8 meg, which is guess is related to this funky new equipment MT bought in (did it fall off the back of a lorry somewhere?), and when our area did get 'upgraded', the wheels really fell off the wagon.

 

The odd spike in latency whilst gaming is fair enough, that's the nature of the web, but when your connection is consistently unable to stream a YouTube video, you know things are in the crapper.

 

I wouldn't have minded so much but for the constant denial of problems/misdirection/excuses from MT about the issues, a simple 'hey guys we know things are a bit shit at the moment, here's 50% off next month's broadband bill' would have gone a long way with me and I'm sure others as well.

 

As it is I lost patience and switched to WiManx, and save for the odd spike here and there (at the end of the day there is still a chunk of MT infrastructure in there), the connection is absolutely flawless. Whereas WoW would regularly descend into an unplayable mess with MT (which not only affects the one person but the rest of the group as well), and Mrs House would give up on trying to stream basic video and/or audio, with WiManx the connection is superb - great download speeds and low latency, and consistently good which is arguably the most important thing.

 

Before the 8 meg fiasco I was very much pro-MT when it came to broadband on the IOM, and would recommend them to others without hesitation, but that's completely turned around now, and given the continuing problems with the service (which I've seen for myself over and over again when an MT connected chum gets problems on WoW whereas the rest of us (WiManx or Domicilium) have no issues at all, and that's us all playing on the same server at the same time) - I'm in no hurry to give MT another crack of the whip.

 

So to get back to the original point, one thing we do a lot better here on the IOM than the UK is switching broadband providers - i.e. it's dead easy over here whilst it can be a total nightmare in the UK - that being the case, if MT's broadband service is really hacking you off, give someone else a try.

 

I'd personally recommend WiManx but friends of mine use Domicilium and have no problems either, although I'm not sure Domicilium are too much of a 'home user' ISP.

 

It's all very well talking about checking cabling and firmware revisions and microfilters and 'ooohh have you got a virus' and all that shit, but when nothing changes about someone's setup other than the ISP network behind it, and that person's connection disappears down the nearest toilet - it's time to start pointing fingers at the ISP.....

[immortalpuppet]

Maybe its something to do with the IP ranges? IF Wimanx/Dom dont get issues then things i could think of would be contention or an issue with the routing or something to do with the IP`s.

 

If it was contention then i think it would cause everything to slow down and you would notice if you ran a speed test. If the speed test was fine and it was still lagging out then maybe it is a routing issue.

 

If its the route then who controls the routing?

 

If its an IP thing thn try refreshing the IP address and see if you notice a particular group of IP`s that have the problem?

[Celt]

MT's 2 meg connection was damn near bulletproof.

 

My thoughts to but you can't be capped back to that as it all runs through the same system now according to MT.

 

it's telia

 

Who's telia? I like to slap her or him

 

But going back to the 2meg connection. It was bulletproof then, why not now or is it just a concidence?

[Jimi]

I've been having lag issues for a while in most games - a lot of the time they will just freeze for 10-30secs then come back to speed (where i'm usually dead).

 

It started doing it only a couple of times a hour so wasn't too bad, but it's getting worse and this afternoon it happened 20+ times in a 35mins map, will report to MT tomorrow if it's not improved (am off so can test during a weekday)

 

Exactly the same for me, thought I fixed it the other day in BF2 but still getting the same thing. I get it in CS:S as well.

 

Hope it's sorted by Thursday (wishful thinking) as Crysis Wars is out.

[Manx_Boydy]

I've been having lag issues for a while in most games - a lot of the time they will just freeze for 10-30secs then come back to speed (where i'm usually dead).

 

It started doing it only a couple of times a hour so wasn't too bad, but it's getting worse and this afternoon it happened 20+ times in a 35mins map, will report to MT tomorrow if it's not improved (am off so can test during a weekday)

 

I've monitored the network connection over the last few days and it consistently drops the packets. I'm going investigate this further.

 

It consistently spikes and makes WOW unplayable at times. I mean the lag spikes pretty much kill me each time unless I pre-empt the situation. Obviously I can't even play any FPS onlines shooters at all eiher.

 

The 2MB broadband was perfect and I've never had any complaints.

[joeyconcrete]

Each ISP 'may' have a different route to the game-server. It's difficult to diagnose to be honest, the only way is troubleshoot the path taken.

 

If someone has the actual server address, I can have a gander.

 

For instance, one ISP may go;

 

ISP - Level3 - Telia - WoW

 

Whilst another;

 

ISP - Cogent - Telia - WoW

 

The Lag in this instance may be due to a congested link between Cogent and Telia, or Level3 and Telia. This may explain why one ISP has the problem and another doesn't. This isn't the ISP's fault - but a problem with a upstream peer, which could be 2 or 3 hops away. It isn't straight-forward to workaround, and there are some things that can be done, but it's all best effort to be honest - as it is reliant upon someone elses network.

 

I'd doubt Telia Sonera have general problems, they're massive, I would say it could be a link on their network, perhaps between two providers that is congested at peak times.

 

Best way of finding out is using traceroute, WinMTR or similar - and maybe a looking glass server e.g. http://lg.as42455.net - that will show you which providers your traffic will go through to reach it's destination. To further complicate things, dropped ICMP\Ping doesn't necessarily constitute packet-loss either, some routers\firewalls are designed to limit ping traffic etc... All fun and games this internet.