Disconnecting in 25s.

[Dayon]

My friend has a very frustrating issue.

She has a decent enough laptop to play WoW on. She has an nVidia GeForce GTX 260m graphics card installed on it. She's running Windows 7 64-bit.

Her latency is always below 200. Her FPS is always at about 60.

She can play without an issue in any battleground or in any ten-man raid encounter.

But in any 25-man raid encounter in Cataclysm, she experiences constant disconnecting. She can't even do the trash.

What could the issue be? Her drivers? Is there a glitch?

[jimmyjingle]

Has it been a problem before cataclysm?

[DarkPhoenix]

Think theres some huge issues with the servers raids are instanced on to be honest. And its only since Cata release.

We have a ton of people in my guild with awesome computers, low ping, huge FPS that have no trouble at all doing ANYTHING in game, but as soon as they enter the 25m raids they begin having intense lag spikes, disconnections and ridiculous drops in frame rates.

reminds me of an issue I had when cata first came out where as soon as i entered dungeons after 7pm my ping would go from 200 up to 24k making the game unplayable. Blizzard never acknowledged the issue but alot of people at the time were having the same problem and the problems mysteriously cleared themselves up all at once.

[Aspect of Death]

It might not be her laptop but some bug with the game, could try to use "wow repair" delete folders etc, or reinstall the game (this take time, but its worth trying).
I have almost the same issues, i get wow error every 20min if i dont relogg every so often, i dont have any problems raiding tho, aslong as i relog.
I dont know why i get wow errors all the time but normally happen every expansion, then it stops for 1.5years and come back next expansion so cant be my pc either (nor addons since i removed everything and still got them).

[Deleted]

Sounds like her ISP is using a traffic management system that's causing her to disconnect during moments of heavy packet transfer.

Basically, some (most) ISPs use some system to ensure that some users can't hog the bandwidth of everyone on that particular network, so they introduce a packet queuing and priority system.
One of the ways that ISPs do this is to deliberately "lose" some of the data being sent from the PC across the network.
Say, for example that your computer sends "123456" to World of Warcraft.
"123456" comes out of your PC, across the cable/telephone lines and eventually reaches your ISP's main exchange.
At the main exchange, a little bit of code on one of the servers removes "4"
The server then sends "123*56" to the World of Warcraft Client
The WoW client thinks "Wtf, that's not the whole message!" and sends a request back to your PC for the missing digit.
The PC sends "4" back again to WoW through the exchange and WoW then goes "Ah, it's 123456"

It's actually a bit more complicated than that, but it's a very basic way to explain how ISP's keep users from congesting the network. The problem is that games like WoW are extremely reliant on having a reliable uninterrupted stream of data in order to function properly. And if some data is coming through fine, but other data is being held up, then it gets a bit pissy and starts lagging or disconnecting you as it waits for the information.
When you're playing Solo, or in 5 mans or whatever, it's rarely a problem, because the information is being sent fairly irregularly anyway. You've basically just got 5 or 10 people pinging information back and forwards, and that's fine for most connections.
When you're in a 25 man raid though, the information is being sent backwards and forwards in a much more concentrated stream, and that's where it gets messy if the ISP is using one of the traffic management systems WoW doesn't like.

That's my best guess to what it is anyway. I had the exact same problem for over a year before finally switching to a new ISP and now I get a steady 60ms in all raid sizes

[Dayon]

Has it been a problem before cataclysm?

There was a similar and very brief period of trouble in Icecrown Citadel 25. That was around February.

Think theres some huge issues with the servers raids are instanced on to be honest. And its only since Cata release.

We have a ton of people in my guild with awesome computers, low ping, huge FPS that have no trouble at all doing ANYTHING in game, but as soon as they enter the 25m raids they begin having intense lag spikes, disconnections and ridiculous drops in frame rates.

Well, at least we can say this is something affected more than just her.

It might not be her laptop but some bug with the game, could try to use "wow repair" delete folders etc, or reinstall the game (this take time, but its worth trying).

She will certainly be trying the WoW Repair utility, and if that doesn't work she'll uninstall and reinstall. She'll back her WTF and Interface folders, of course.

---------- Post added 2011-01-20 at 04:02 AM ----------

@Hobbes: Her ISP is AT&T. Does AT&T use any kind of packet queueing or traffic management system that WoW disagrees with?

[jimmyjingle]

yo hobbes whats your isp. im curious because i've had problems with my own.

[Syrrah]

My friend has a very frustrating issue.

She has a decent enough laptop to play WoW on. She has an nVidia GeForce GTX 260m graphics card installed on it. She's running Windows 7 64-bit.

Her latency is always below 200. Her FPS is always at about 60.

She can play without an issue in any battleground or in any ten-man raid encounter.

But in any 25-man raid encounter in Cataclysm, she experiences constant disconnecting. She can't even do the trash.

What could the issue be? Her drivers? Is there a glitch?

I have the same issue, I have a $3,000 laptop (Mac) works fine, until I step into a 25 man raid, I get DC'd twice every pull, huge lag spikes all the time

[Aspect of Death]

Also does she play with "sound" on?
Because there is a sound bugg up atm, you notice the bugg during raids, if you are range/healer and stand far away from combat, then later "run in to the boss or pass the dead mobs" you will hear the combat sound of everything that happend over 15min in 10sec, wow crash and fps gets to 1-5fps, some say its because of DBM, but i doubht its the addon. Try take of the sound and see next raid if it would help

[Deleted]

yo hobbes whats your isp. im curious because i've had problems with my own.

I was with Tiscali, moved to Plusnet and now have 0 problems (both UK ISPs)

---------- Post added 2011-01-20 at 05:08 AM ----------

@Hobbes: Her ISP is AT&T. Does AT&T use any kind of packet queueing or traffic management system that WoW disagrees with?

Tell her to download 3D Traceroute and perform a trace to the Realm she's playing on. (There's information in the WoW Technical Forum about how to find your Realm's IP address.
Leave the program running in the background for 10 minutes or so while she's playing then take a look at the results.
If the graph appears generally smooth, then it's probably not a network issue.
If however there are large spikes regularly appearing in or around the hop which represents her ISP then you can be pretty much certain that there's some sort of traffic queuing in place that WoW isn't very happy with.

Here's a couple of screenshots of my traces when I was with my old ISP



As you can see, at hop 12 I was getting massive variation in ping times. Varying from 30ms to 3729ms. That's a pretty extreme example. But if you're regularly seeing a variation of 15ms or above on your ISP's hops (sometimes low ping, sometimes high) then it's a pretty good indication that it's your ISP at fault. Wherever the variation begins is where the fault is lying.

Don't worry too much if you're getting high pings at the router on these traces (it's just an anomaly with some routers) and don't worry too much if you get a very occasional peak. What you're looking for are regular peaks like you can see in the image.

[Krid]

Disable all add-ons and put settings on as low as possible so you can eliminate all graphical issues.

[underdogba]

Sounds like her ISP is using a traffic management system that's causing her to disconnect during moments of heavy packet transfer.

Basically, some (most) ISPs use some system to ensure that some users can't hog the bandwidth of everyone on that particular network, so they introduce a packet queuing and priority system.

You're totally confusing throughput (bandwidth) with latency.

[Deleted]

You're totally confusing throughput (bandwidth) with latency.

No I'm not

The bandwidth of certain ports/applications are managed by your ISP. They decide what traffic gets which priority.
More often than not they'll utilize techniques like the one I described earlier to control how much bandwidth particular applications/ports are assigned. (Giving HTML traffic higher priority than P2P traffic during peak hours and so on)
If they're also limiting the bandwidth available to WoW using this or similar methods, WoW will begin to build up latency when it requires a particularly high amount of bandwidth (25 man raid bosses for example)
The latency that the poster seems to be describing isn't true latency, which is based on how long it takes data to travel between two destinations, but more a "psuedo latency" based on the fact that the server is continuously sending requests back to the client for missing packets of data.
In 5 mans and solo play, there are plenty of breaks in the stream of data where this can happen without any noticeable issues. But in raids, where the data is constantly being sent back and forth, a backlog quickly develops which results in what appears to be a sudden high latency spike and eventual disconnect.

Think of it as if every 50ms your WoW client sends and receives a chunk of data for that time period between the server and your PC.
Every 3 seconds your ISP deliberately loses some of that data .
So every 3 seconds the server sends a request back to your PC for the missing piece of data, but you're still in combat and the server still has to send and receive data between itself and your computer about what's currently happening.
The server can't make up some imaginary data for that missing piece, so it waits for that missing data to be sent back from your PC, and queues any other information gathering up in the meantime.
If this happens once or twice it's no big deal, you'll just get a lagspike for a second or two. But if it happens constantly every 3 seconds due to some traffic management system, eventually the backlog will get larger and larger, you'll get what appears to be massive increasing latency and eventually the server will kick you off.

The latency is caused by the way the bandwidth (throughput) is reduced in this case. It's not real latency in the true sense of the word, but it's how the WoW client and the server perceive it, and that's what matters.

[Squirreludecker]

@Hobbes: Her ISP is AT&T. Does AT&T use any kind of packet queueing or traffic management system that WoW disagrees with?

Yes. AT&T DSL has been known to use traffic shaping.

[WesM63]

If that was the cause of your problems Hobbes, that ISP really blows. Honestly, i really have a hard time believing it.

WoW transfer's minimal data, not enough to warrant throttling from an ISP on that traffic alone. (Unless you live in a country that pay's per Mb of data. Reports put it at around 100MB/hr on the high end)

The problem in hobbes's SS, is that Tiscali's core router to Level3's backbone was congested, either at a specific time or just all together. Tiscali either needs a bigger/more powerful router to handle the traffic or the "internet" was simply congested at that time. e.g lots of traffic

With your logic, your problem could also lay within your first hop. i.e. your home router.

There could be tons of things causing disconnects in 25man raids. Simply putting the blame on the ISP is like saying the "tires on my car are bald because of the bad roads".

Yea, bad roads may help the further deconstruction of the tires, but that alone is not going to destroy your tires. e.g Bad Alignment, Poor Driving habits, poor quality tires, old tires

Personally, I would look at the PC first. I know when i played on a laptop, it would seem as if i were getting disconnected (e.g. losing connection to the server) but it was actually my video card overheating. Simply propping the back of the laptop up to allow more airflow solved the problem.

Obviously, that's not going to be everyone's solution.

Oh, Professional in the field. (CCNA, CCDA, CCVP and i have worked at ISP's)

EDIT: Every ISP uses some sort of Throttling, Traffic Shaping or QoS. 99% of the time you'll never notice it. (Unless we're talking BitTorrent and Comcast) The main reason for it is to allow time sensitive material to pass without issues. (Voice, generally speaking)

[Deleted]

If that was the cause of your problems Hobbes, that ISP really blows. Honestly, i really have a hard time believing it.

WoW transfer's minimal data, not enough to warrant throttling from an ISP on that traffic alone. (Unless you live in a country that pay's per Mb of data. Reports put it at around 100MB/hr on the high end)

The problem in hobbes's SS, is that Tiscali's core router to Level3's backbone was congested, either at a specific time or just all together. Tiscali either needs a bigger/more powerful router to handle the traffic or the "internet" was simply congested at that time. e.g lots of traffic

With your logic, your problem could also lay within your first hop. i.e. your home router.

The high pings on the first hop are apparently an anomaly with certain routers and can generally be ignored as far as I'm aware. The issue wasn't that there was a constant high ping anyway, but that Tiscali were causing lots of regular but intermittent high pings by delaying packets and forcing the server to re-request them.
As you mentioned, WoW uses very little bandwidth, even if the network was badly congested, it should still be able to handle the minimal throughput WoW requires. It's pretty apparent (as you can see from the traceroute) that packets were being deliberately delayed.
You can be certain that after over a year of being completely unable to raid 25 man content I had exhausted every single possibility I could think of. New NIC, new router, direct connection to the test sockets, different realms, absolutely everything. I tested at every hour of the day and night, with absolutely no change in the situation. Absolutely nothing worked until I switched to a competent ISP. Amongst my numerous phonecalls to their technical support line, continuous posts on their technical support forum and general pulling of hair. The best answer I got was "We don't support games, you'll need to talk to the game supplier"
But yeah Tiscali really blew. They went out of business after a while, but if you google any kind of reviews about Tiscali Broadband's service standards you'll see they really were as bad as I'm making out

[Strafir]

Your so adorable helping your girlfriend out like that.