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STO Lag Issues, thank your ISP
asovanra
Member Posts: 139 Arc User
Some of you may have experienced this with other services, like HBO Go, Netflix, Hulu; essentially your internet connection to these sites is horrible while your internet speeds to other sites is as your ISP advertises.
IDK what this post has to do with Cryptic's terms of services, but I wanted to confirm that Comcast is throttling STO. I was getting continues server disconnect errors, STFs were unplayable but I could stream 1080p video on YouTube without issue. So I recently switched to an OpenDNS and now I have no lag issues what-so-ever. I did notify Comcast about this and I told them to stop, but we all know Comcast could care less what I have to say.
So if you're a Comcast customer or with another ISP and suspect their throttling your bandwith to/from STO, I'd advise you to consider changing your DNS.
And Cyrptic, if there's a way you can help fight the issue please do so. Thanks.
IDK what this post has to do with Cryptic's terms of services, but I wanted to confirm that Comcast is throttling STO. I was getting continues server disconnect errors, STFs were unplayable but I could stream 1080p video on YouTube without issue. So I recently switched to an OpenDNS and now I have no lag issues what-so-ever. I did notify Comcast about this and I told them to stop, but we all know Comcast could care less what I have to say.
So if you're a Comcast customer or with another ISP and suspect their throttling your bandwith to/from STO, I'd advise you to consider changing your DNS.
And Cyrptic, if there's a way you can help fight the issue please do so. Thanks.
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I have long heard that Comcast is one of, if not the worst when it comes to throttling and it usually seems to be related to services that provide video entertainment, which is of course Comcast's bread and butter as a cable company. I view that as an anticompetitive practice.
A recent post I read regarding statements made by Comcast's CEO at the Code Conference now comes to mind. With that kind of attitude, it's no surprise that Comcast won Consumerist's 2014 "Worst Company in America" contest.
If Comcast were throttling bandwidth, changing DNS servers would have ZERO impact.
It sounds more like a router DNS-proxy issue, which you have now bypassed by setting DNS manually.
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I posted this awhile ago and have reposted it here to explain the issue.
The issue is the so-called ISP that Crytpic uses which is the same one that Netfilx, Blizzard, and several other companies choose to use due to Cogentco's low prices.
Cogentco provides local Data Centers and"Building LANs" with huge bandwitdh to their customers like Cryptic, Netflix, and Blizzard. So to Cryptic and the others, their Internet pipe is great without LAG. Where the LAG comes from is explained below in my previous post and it is all due to Cogentco....
CogentCo has been doing this for years and years. They abuse the "Free-Peering" links and expect the "real" Tier 1 ISP's to keep taking it. Oh and once they overload a "Free-Peering" link and the "real" ISP throttles them per the agreement, CogentCo just reoutes the massive load to another "Free-Peering" link to another ISP. And the cycle continues. This is why some days it's one ISP having a so-called LAG issue to Cryptic and Netflix companies and other days it's another ISP. So it always looks like the real" ISP's are at fault.
Companies like CogentCo need to be exposed to their customers and then maybe the internet users will stop having massive LAG.
COGENTCO AKA THE LAG MACHINE of the Internet!
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While it looks less expensive and thier link to CogentCO always looks great, the reality is just the opposite!
Indeed, nerely all the time I have interconnect issues on STO (which is not that often for myself personally) I can trace it back into CogentCo interconnects.
None of it really has anything to do with net-neutrality. But with CogentCo violating peering-agreements; and which the flood of such creates provlems which can randomly effect interconnects on different paths depending on where the load issue is.
None of this really has anything to do with what the OP problem was though, which was a router DNS-proxy issue that they worked around by manually setting DNS on their computer to use OpenDNS rather than using the router-set which would proxy DNS lookups through the router to their ISP.... alternately they could also have set their ISP DNS addresses manually and fixed it the same way.
Ultimately the should look at firmware updates for their router, though.
Well he did start off this thread with thinking that Comcast was throttling and then went to changing his DNS settings. So I guess he did have that issue also.
Oh well sorry for turning this in another direction but anytime I get a chance to expose what Cogentco is doing I try my best to do so.
Zeus
I'm aware what the OP is on about. The OP is wrong.
If the ISP were throttling his connection to STO, changing DNS settings on his computer would have had zero impact. DNS is a name resolution tool, it doesn't control packet flow on the network.
If the issue were with general port 53 traffic it would effect connections to OpenDNS as well
If the issue were with the Comcast DNS servers I would get timeouts on lookups as well, using the same DNS servers in the same network
The OP's issue, that he isn't aware of as this is simply not an area of his expertise; is that he has problematic router firmware which is not effectively forwarding all DNS querries it received to the WAN-set DNS server. Not knowing that he's made false assumptions and accused his ISP of acts whch are possibly not their fault (the only way they may be their fault is if the router in question was leased equipment from the ISP, and as such they would bear responsibility for the firmware on it; but in that it would still not be what the OP is accusing them of).
Yeah, CogentCo is a rat, no doubt about it. Anytime I've had issues with STO connections that were not actual STO server issues effecting everyone; it's been with CongentCo interconnects primarily due to their shady practices.
I would be interested in seeing a traceroute from his system to STO and one to another site and compare them. Also would like to know what make/model of router he has and what firmware version it's running. I see alot of poeple just use the equipment and not maintain it. Firmware releases are created for valid reasons and most people just ignore them on both their routers and PCs.
If it's not in "Windows Update" then they just don't look...
Zeus
Though what would be more useful would be the 'pathping' results (which uses the same syntax as the 'tracert' command) as this would show where the packets were being dropped on his connection to the STO servers...
This is unlikely to be a Comcast policy issue, as I've had no problems connecting to STO from my Northern California Comcast connection..
given that his problem went away just by altering his DNS settings, I doubt his issue was even ever with packet flow, rather his timeout were due to name-resolution failures. As I said, if it were a packet flow problem or bandwidth throttling the issue would not have gone away simply by changing DNS server settings on his computer.... it would still be present.
I will at least say there could be a possibility of correlations =/= causation thing here too; in that maybe his DNS shift merely correlated with the problem going away but was actually unrelated. Would have to set the DNS server settings back to auto to see if the problem comes back.
What I would recommend to narrow is:
1)Set DNS settings back to auto, see if the problem comes back; if it doesn't then the DNS change was likely unrelated to the issue
2)If it comes back, then set the DNS settings to 75.75.75.75. and 75.75.76.76 (these are the actual comcast DNS servers) and see if the problem goes away (if it does, you're dealing with the DNS proxy issue in the router)
3)If it still happens then change back to openDNS again, as it shows some issue with Comcast DNS (but not likely as at least two of us are in fact using Comcast and therefore those DNS's with no resolution issue to STO).
I would also recommend doing tracert and pathping runs to STO servers when in failure states, just to make sure there is no intermittent packet loss problem being seeing between changes.
Now I have seen cases where the DNS time-out setting on the Client kicks-in just before the DNS response arrives, causes the connection attempt to fail. (probably a registry setting of some kind on Windows..)
... but keep in mind that DNS is involved only for converting URL network names into IP addresses, and once this is done, the Client caches the results, and DNS is then out of the picture.
So, if the problem occurs only during the initial connection attempt, and once that succeeds, everything works, then that may indicate a DNS time-out issue... If the problem occurs after the initial connection attempt, then that would indicate that it is not a DNS issue, and something else is happening...
Currently shows the classic signs of dramatic congestion (from too much traffic somewhere along the path), often caused by alt-routing during a circuit outage but sometimes simply because you don't have enough link at a critical point in the path.
>ping -t patchserver.crypticstudios.com
Pinging patchserver.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.41] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 208.95.185.41: bytes=32 time=364ms TTL=249
Reply from 208.95.185.41: bytes=32 time=697ms TTL=249
Reply from 208.95.185.41: bytes=32 time=409ms TTL=249
Reply from 208.95.185.41: bytes=32 time=661ms TTL=249
Request timed out.
Reply from 208.95.185.41: bytes=32 time=81ms TTL=249
Request timed out.
Reply from 208.95.185.41: bytes=32 time=536ms TTL=249
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 208.95.185.41: bytes=32 time=196ms TTL=249
Reply from 208.95.185.41: bytes=32 time=820ms TTL=249
Reply from 208.95.185.41: bytes=32 time=23ms TTL=249
Ping statistics for 208.95.185.41:
Packets: Sent = 13, Received = 9, Lost = 4 (30% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 23ms, Maximum = 820ms, Average = 420ms
Latency ranges from 23ms to 820ms. There's no way i'm going from 23ms terrestrial to satcom connections, so the magnified latency is from buffering along the way. The 30% packetloss is probably from things dropped, or packets where the latency rose above the general 2000ms/2 second max.
Tracing route to patchserver.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.41]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms router.asus.com [192.168.3.1]
2 25 ms 19 ms 16 ms Wireless_Broadband_Router.home [192.168.1.1]
3 45 ms 60 ms 8 ms L100.CLPPVA-VFTTP-11.verizon-gni.net [98.118.244.1]
4 67 ms 40 ms 59 ms G0-1-0-4.CLPPVA-LCR-22.verizon-gni.net [130.81.223.62]
5 * * * Request timed out.
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 76 ms 47 ms 20 ms 0.ae2.GW15.BOS4.ALTER.NET [140.222.231.203]
8 91 ms 74 ms 36 ms internap-gw.customer.alter.net [152.179.134.214]
9 58 ms 55 ms 50 ms border11.te7-1-bbnet1.bsn.pnap.net [63.251.128.41]
10 32 ms 87 ms 107 ms perfectworldent-4.border11.bsn.pnap.net [216.52.61.78]
11 37 ms 183 ms 139 ms patchserverrebirth.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.41]
Trace complete.
From that (run a few times to look at min/max), once it gets to bbnet1.bsn.pnap.net, it starts doing wild latency swings (one patchserver response was 521ms 24ms 190ms, one perfectworld was 104ms 26ms 102ms. Generally speaking it looks clean to Boston (BOS4 Alternet), and starts to flake out at the internap-gw.
YMMV. Provider is FIOS, which goes out on the Alternet backbone, then drops off through the internap-gw to BBNet to perfectworld.
wow... that is PERFECTLY Comcast/Xfinity.
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Your info is outdated. Those links all refer to voicing your opinions on the Net Neutrality Rules they were making decisions on.. Too late now. Decisions have already been made and they were mostly good ones. Now it's the cable companies and what not trying to harass them into undoing the rules, or working in new loopholes.
P.S. I just downloaded a program called pingzapper.. you have to pay. It is $3.99 per month, but you can purchase other time periods...
It creates a tunnel between you and a destination. In my case, I chose los angeles. Anyway, a VPN tunnel changes your internet route to a destination.
I had to manually add in star trek online as it is not one of the predefined games.
I only purchased one month so I can see how it performs, and if it is TRIBBLE, then I will use something else.
Crappy that I have to choose alternate methods to get to cryptic's servers because they do not have a WAN and because they go with the lowest bidder as far as internet is concerned.
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It is highly frustrating trying to get any of this Delta Recruit stuff done when I am getting rubber-banded with server not responding, disconnect from server, or the launcher just outright not connecting. There have been no error codes or anything on this end, just continuous disconnecting from the server. Instead of trying to point the blame on either the players or STO's ISP, could it be a stability issue that needs to be resolved? It wouldn't be the first time STO has run into that problem.
I've done all of the tracert, ping, etc tests on patchserver.crypticstudios.com and it's hit & miss how well those perform, but that seems to be the only one that I have problems with pings coming back timing out. It's a heck of a way to bring in a timed event and then have problems staying connected to play.
If you're using wifi to play this game, you're in bigger trouble.