Latency problems in WoW. Please advise.

[Pokot]

Hello guys,

I would really appreciate it if those of you who understand networks and can properly read trace routes could advise me regarding the following problem. I'll try to explain in as much detail as possible so please bear with me.

I play on EU server located in Amsterdam (~1700 km). Usually my ping is around 70-80 ms and pretty stable with no packet loss (as far as I'm concerned).

Almost a couple of weeks back when I think all this crazy stuff with huge DDOS attack started happening, my latency went up significantly. The traceroute showed hops with 400-500 ms on teila and the problem was obvious. Couple days past it was all fixed and I've enjoyed a day of decent latency again. The next day is when another thing started that has not been resolved yet and quite frankly, I do not understand what's happening at all.

What happens is lag spikes ranging from 500 ms to several seconds sometimes. A very weird thing is that sometimes I can't even loots mobs for several minutes even though the game plays fine.

Sometimes the spikes are mild and sometimes they are pretty brutal. I haven't found any clear connection between intensity of the spikes and the time of day, meaning I can get severe lag late at night when everyone is asleep as well. But I do think that the lag gets significantly worse in raids or in high-pop zones during prime time. It almost feels like there's not enough bandwidth to fit all the incoming-outgoing traffic. The ingame latency is mostly of no help. It can show stable 70 ms but I would be lagging out or it can show 400 ms and I would play fine. To add, both local and global latency bars are jumping up and down like crazy almost all the time.

I've submitted several reports to the usual place on official forums but there was no reply or improvement so I'm trying to dig deeper. Some technical info now:

My usual route to the server according to trace routes was 16 hops till time out. After telia started lagging my route changed to 11 hops and stuff got worse. I'd blame the route but it's now back to 16 and still lagging.

During 11 hops route I've had traceroutes with full hops being like that

* * * Request timed out.

but final hops were fine. I do not know what that means.

I've talked to my ISP for several nights. We've pinged all local hops and saw around 2% of packets with pretty high latency on them. I do not know what that means as well and they couldn't explain. In the end they even replaced some equipment somewhere but it didn't help as well, so they told me that pinging my local IP reveals lost packets and that they suggest changing my modem.

That's what I did. I've bought a P660 series Zyxel in replacement of ISP issued ZTE modem. I've also checked my PC for malware, cleaned the registry, played with IP4-IP6 both in the system and in WoW settings for some time - all for nothing.

My latest trace route to the server looks like that:

Tracing route to 195.12.246.165 over a maximum of 30 hops

  1    <1 ms     1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.1.1 
  2    16 ms    17 ms    16 ms  mm-1-0-121-178.dynamic.pppoe.mgts.by [178.121.0.1] 
  3    19 ms    18 ms    18 ms  aggr1.mgts.by [93.84.80.124] 
  4    20 ms    19 ms    19 ms  core3.net.belpak.by [93.85.80.161] 
  5    22 ms    23 ms    20 ms  core1.net.belpak.by [93.85.80.45] 
  6    23 ms    23 ms    23 ms  ie1.net.belpak.by [93.85.80.38] 
  7    17 ms    17 ms    17 ms  asbr1.net.belpak.by [93.85.80.66] 
  8    26 ms    44 ms    27 ms  213.242.112.73 
  9    58 ms    50 ms    51 ms  ae-9-9.ebr1.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.153.69] 
 10    48 ms    48 ms    48 ms  ae-94-94.csw4.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.163.30] 
 11    50 ms    50 ms    50 ms  ae-4-90.edge4.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.154.200] 
 12    62 ms    62 ms    62 ms  Telia-level3-10G.Frankfurt.Level3.net [4.68.70.106] 
 13   126 ms    61 ms    60 ms  ffm-bb1-link.telia.net [80.91.251.121] 
 14    70 ms    71 ms   127 ms  hbg-bb1-link.telia.net [213.155.135.143] 
 15    76 ms   110 ms    70 ms  adm-bb3-link.telia.net [80.91.250.134] 
 16    73 ms    73 ms    74 ms  adm-b5-link.telia.net [80.91.253.171] 
time out after that

I think reading trace routes isn't as easy as it looks so I try not to draw any conclusions. I can see there are hops with higher latency but do they warrant 1,5 sec lag spikes?

It would be really good to at least get an understanding of what's going on and who/what is causing the problem, that's what I'm aiming for. If you could give me some ideas that would be great. Sorry for what could've probably been a much shorter post, that's just how I roll.

[Tehterokkar]

Almost a couple of weeks back when I think all this crazy stuff with huge DDOS attack started happening, my latency went up significantly. The traceroute showed hops with 400-500 ms on teila and the problem was obvious. Couple days past it was all fixed and I've enjoyed a day of decent latency again. The next day is when another thing started that has not been resolved yet and quite frankly, I do not understand what's happening at all.

DDOS doesn't cause lag, it causes disconnection because of the network overload. That's why when someone gets "DDOS'd", they disconnect because of the data flow to their IP is so high.

[Pokot]

DDOS doesn't cause lag, it causes disconnection because of the network overload. That's why when someone gets "DDOS'd", they disconnect because of the data flow to their IP is so high.

There was a huge DDOS battle between Spamhaus and Cyberpunker with around 300 Gb/s peaks. It supposedly caused overloads even on major providers networks, thus creating the initial lag I was talking about. I doubt it has any relevance to my issue, just wanted to point out the time when all the problems started.

---------- Post added 2013-03-31 at 09:40 AM ----------

So yeah I can see that there aren't many who want or can give advice in this situation.

Just wanted to add, I just tested it for some time and I'm definitely getting lag based on the amount of players and effects going on around me. Hell if I know what that means and who's to blame but at least it's something definite.