This is really strange. I'm in Vermont, have Fairpoint dsl, and have had no problems whatsoever. No lag/rubberbanding, no disconnects and no problems logging in. Not bragging, just posting this as it might help pin this down.
I don't care what the header says, I am not now, nor have I ever been, nor will I ever be, an "ARC user".
In chat everyone who isn't experiencing these issues is outside the US. I find it odd that I can connect to servers in Boston via the EU proxy and I'm in the greater NYC area. I'm hearing people even in the Boston area have to use the EU proxy.
I live in the US and I don't have this issue.... but my ISP is Windstream, not Comcast.
It's not Comcast, I'm in western mass and pass through Boston just fine, I don't have an issue until I get to hop before Cryptic
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms TRIBBLE.TRIBBLE.x.xx 2 8 ms 9 ms 10 ms xx.TRIBBLE.xx.TRIBBLE 3 15 ms 11 ms 9 ms xx.xx.TRIBBLE.xx 4 17 ms 15 ms 14 ms be-49-ar01.needham.ma.boston.comcast.net [68.85.69.13] 5 29 ms 23 ms 19 ms be-7015-cr01.newyork.ny.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.90.21 6 20 ms 23 ms 28 ms be-10203-cr02.newyork.ny.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.85.5 7 42 ms 42 ms 42 ms be-10305-cr02.350ecermak.il.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.8 8 43 ms 42 ms 43 ms be-10506-cr01.350ecermak.il.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.8 9 63 ms 62 ms 63 ms be-10617-cr02.denver.co.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.85.17 10 61 ms 63 ms 62 ms ae-16-0-pe01.910fifteenth.co.ibone.comcast.net [68.86. 11 65 ms 62 ms 61 ms te0-0-0-0.rcr11.b006467-1.den01.atlas.cogentco.com [15 12 63 ms 65 ms 62 ms te0-1-0-3.ccr21.den01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.83.29 13 81 ms 88 ms 81 ms be2128.ccr21.mci01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.25.174] 14 62 ms 62 ms 65 ms be2156.ccr41.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.6.86] 15 72 ms 70 ms 69 ms be2351.ccr21.cle04.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.44.86] 16 67 ms 63 ms 65 ms be2009.ccr21.alb02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.25.89] 17 67 ms 64 ms 67 ms be2299.ccr21.bos01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.43.9] 18 65 ms 65 ms 66 ms te0-0-1-0.rcr11.b002133-1.bos01.atlas.cogentco.com [15 19 65 ms 67 ms 74 ms 38.111.40.114 20 67 ms 67 ms 66 ms 198.49.243.253 21 * * * Request timed out. 22 67 ms 73 ms 66 ms patchserverrebirth.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.41]
It's not Comcast in Boston. I'm located in Western Mass and my tracert passes through Boston and NY, I don't have an issue until the last hop to Cryptic.
1
Yeah, Western Mass too, on Comcast. But when I switched to the UK proxy everything improved by about 95%.
Thanks for the Advanced Light Cruiser, Allied Escort Bundles, Jem-Hadar Light Battlecruiser, and Mek'leth
New Content Wishlist
T6 updates for the Kamarag & Vor'Cha
Heavy Cruiser & a Movie Era Style AoY Utility Cruiser
for those who have missed this piece of info until now.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
This is obnoxious! I just bought 5000 Zen last night and I haven't been able to SPEND it because this stuff started happening shortly thereafter...I DO NOT like being a customer to a service in which I have spent nearly $500 in the last few months only to have them turn around and ignore customers who are having issues...I don't care if they can fix the problem or not, just tell me what the problem is so I don't spend hours thinking "It must be my machine because other players are doing just fine" and then spending hours trying to correct the problem with "my machine"...Thanks for that lil token of customer courtesy. :-/ You know, just maybe, one of those..."We are aware of the issue and are blowing smoke up your backsides diligently to keep you moderately appeased until things work themselves out naturally!" messages?
I've had a few lag-free hours so far after going back to no proxy but I don't expect it to last. I don't know why it's lag-free now just like I don't know what causes the lag when it returns.
Would be nice for some communication on this issue. Neverwinter has it even it's sparse now, so what's up with STO?
I think I am done. 100's of dollars invested in this game. Sad, but true. Connectivity issues have just gotten so bad that I rate a good game session not by how much I accomplish...or what goal I have achieved....or what new ship I am catting around in....Nope, I judge a good session these days by how few times I am booted. I regularly have to delete and reload game, launchers, arc, etc., just to get the game to minimally function.
I have exceeded, by far, any system and connection requirements to play the game. Yet, I spend more time trouble shooting problems than I spend playing the game. So I bid Cryptic goodbye. It will be hard. I have played many games over the years, many for years - but in installments. STO was the only game I have ever played consistently - nearly every day - for years, four to be exact.
Thank God Madden 16 just came out to help ease my withdrawal.
This was posted on the NW forum, but I think it's relevant for STO too as it mentioned that the whole of the Boston area - where Cryptic's servers are located - are still affected by the outage. So for once it may not (entirely) be Cryptic's fault.
Problem with that is, it has been happening longer that the time posted. Check through trace routes posted by people. Its the same thing in everyone. I don't think its Cryptic, its Comcast/Congentco issue. Hops are timing out before reaching Cryptic in every single tracert.
There's nothing wrong with the server just before the patch server (hop 22 in your image). That server's just configured not to respond to ping request. If there was a problem there, no further hops would be recorded.
That said I still have the incredibly slow log ins / lag issue. I'm going to try the EU proxy if the patcher ever finishes loading....
Just to follow up on how ping and trace route works so people better understand these.
Ping:
- Your computer sends an ICMP Echo Request to the destination.
- Destination sends an ICMP Echo Reply
Trace Route:
- Your computer sends an ICMP Echo Request to the destination, but the Time To Live (TTL) Field is set to 1, so the packet times out at 1 hop.
- The host 1 hop away sends back an ICMP Time Exceeded Request - you now know the host 1 hop away.
- Your computers sends an ICMP Echo Request to the destination, but the Time To Live (TTL) Field is set to 2, so the packet times out at 2 hops.
- The host 2 hops away sends back an ICMP Time Exceeded Request - you now know the host 2 hops away.
- (repeat that a lot until you've found out about all the hops between you and the destination)
- - Your computer sends an ICMP Echo Request to the destination with the TTL Field set to some number of hops away.
- Destination sends an ICMP Echo Reply.
- Trace complete.
If during the trace route the computer you're sending a request to doesn't reply with either a Time Exceeded or Echo Reply message before the timeout window (configurable, usually 1 second), the you seen that little * and Request timed out. This can happen if the remote computer is too slow to respond or just configured not to respond to ping requests.
If you ultimately get a response from the destination, even with some hosts in the middle timing out (they didn't reply to your ping request), then there is a functional network path between you and the destination.
Ping and traceroute only show that you can talk. They say nothing about bandwidth which can still be an issue.
I was able to bypass this problem by enabling Avast! SecureLine VPN. This pretty much proves that this issue really has nothing to do with Cryptic and pretty much everything to do with the data centers that Comcast (maybe others?) routes through in and around the Boston-area.
I've done a little more network testing. It appears pings greater than 16K in size have intermittent issues reaching the account server. Anything smaller than that goes through fine, so a normal ping won't show it. Here's a bunch of data for those who can interpret it. You'll notice pings about 16384 bytes fail 50% of the time.
Pinging accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165] with 8192 bytes of data:
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=8192 time=82ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=8192 time=81ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=8192 time=111ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=8192 time=83ms TTL=112
Ping statistics for 208.95.185.165:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 81ms, Maximum = 111ms, Average = 89ms
Pinging accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165] with 16384 bytes of data:
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=16384 time=90ms TTL=112
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=16384 time=81ms TTL=112
Ping statistics for 208.95.185.165:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 2, Lost = 2 (50% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 81ms, Maximum = 90ms, Average = 85ms
Tracing route to accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 2 ms 3 ms 1 ms 10.0.1.1
2 19 ms 9 ms 10 ms [REDACTED]
3 10 ms 9 ms 9 ms [REDACTED]
4 19 ms 11 ms 10 ms [REDACTED]
5 34 ms 14 ms 18 ms [REDACTED]
6 21 ms 21 ms 20 ms he-0-1-0-7-cr02.newyork.ny.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.90.97]
7 40 ms 39 ms 50 ms be-10305-cr02.350ecermak.il.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.85.202]
8 40 ms 39 ms 43 ms be-10506-cr01.350ecermak.il.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.86.230]
9 62 ms 62 ms 63 ms be-10617-cr02.denver.co.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.85.170]
10 61 ms 61 ms 61 ms ae-11-0-pe01.910fifteenth.co.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.84.22]
11 62 ms 63 ms 63 ms te0-0-1-0.rcr11.b006467-1.den01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.13.5]
12 62 ms 61 ms 62 ms te0-1-0-3.ccr21.den01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.83.29]
13 65 ms 65 ms 65 ms be2128.ccr21.mci01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.25.174]
14 64 ms 64 ms 63 ms be2156.ccr41.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.6.86]
15 70 ms 79 ms 72 ms be2351.ccr21.cle04.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.44.86]
16 64 ms 64 ms 65 ms be2009.ccr21.alb02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.25.89]
17 66 ms 66 ms 65 ms be2299.ccr21.bos01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.43.9]
18 67 ms 66 ms 66 ms te0-0-1-0.rcr11.b002133-1.bos01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.46.134]
19 73 ms 66 ms 65 ms 38.111.40.114
20 74 ms 67 ms 66 ms 198.49.243.253
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 67 ms 67 ms 65 ms accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165]
Pinging accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165] with 16384 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=16384 time=83ms TTL=112
Ping statistics for 208.95.185.165:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 1, Lost = 3 (75% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 83ms, Maximum = 83ms, Average = 83ms
Pinging accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165] with 8192 bytes of data:
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=8192 time=78ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=8192 time=83ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=8192 time=77ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=8192 time=78ms TTL=112
Ping statistics for 208.95.185.165:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 77ms, Maximum = 83ms, Average = 79ms
Pinging accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165] with 12000 bytes of data:
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=12000 time=79ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=12000 time=83ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=12000 time=92ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=12000 time=92ms TTL=112
Ping statistics for 208.95.185.165:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 79ms, Maximum = 92ms, Average = 86ms
Pinging accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165] with 14000 bytes of data:
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=14000 time=89ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=14000 time=80ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=14000 time=86ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=14000 time=83ms TTL=112
Ping statistics for 208.95.185.165:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 80ms, Maximum = 89ms, Average = 84ms
Pinging accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165] with 15000 bytes of data:
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=15000 time=87ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=15000 time=84ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=15000 time=84ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=15000 time=81ms TTL=112
Ping statistics for 208.95.185.165:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 81ms, Maximum = 87ms, Average = 84ms
Pinging accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165] with 16000 bytes of data:
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=16000 time=83ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=16000 time=95ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=16000 time=86ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=16000 time=91ms TTL=112
Ping statistics for 208.95.185.165:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 83ms, Maximum = 95ms, Average = 88ms
Pinging accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165] with 16384 bytes of data:
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=16384 time=89ms TTL=112
Request timed out.
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=16384 time=86ms TTL=112
Request timed out.
Ping statistics for 208.95.185.165:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 2, Lost = 2 (50% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 86ms, Maximum = 89ms, Average = 87ms
Pinging accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165] with 17000 bytes of data:
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=17000 time=97ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=17000 time=80ms TTL=112
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Ping statistics for 208.95.185.165:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 2, Lost = 2 (50% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 80ms, Maximum = 97ms, Average = 88ms
I was able to bypass this problem by enabling Avast! SecureLine VPN. This pretty much proves that this issue really has nothing to do with Cryptic and pretty much everything to do with the data centers that Comcast (maybe others?) routes through in and around the Boston-area.
Give a VPN a go!
It's almost certainly something close to their network. They've reported issues with Level 3 around their server. I can't speak for others, but STO is the only thing I have a problem with. Youtube's fine. Skype's fine. AIM, ICQ, Star Citizen, Team Fortress, reddit, steam, gog, origin, Netflix, Amazon Instant - not one single problem except STO. Even these forums work perfectly fine, no lag at all.
It's almost certainly something close to their network. They've reported issues with Level 3 around their server. I can't speak for others, but STO is the only thing I have a problem with. Youtube's fine. Skype's fine. AIM, ICQ, Star Citizen, Team Fortress, reddit, steam, gog, origin, Netflix, Amazon Instant - not one single problem except STO. Even these forums work perfectly fine, no lag at all.
Exactly, everything works great except for STO
SNR 120sec now, game was working fine an hr ago now its unplayable. I already know people who have left because of these constant problems and quite frankly I'm getting tired of it myself we the "customer" shouldn't have to work this hard its entertainment for us its a job for them.
It's almost certainly something close to their network. They've reported issues with Level 3 around their server. I can't speak for others, but STO is the only thing I have a problem with. Youtube's fine. Skype's fine. AIM, ICQ, Star Citizen, Team Fortress, reddit, steam, gog, origin, Netflix, Amazon Instant - not one single problem except STO. Even these forums work perfectly fine, no lag at all.
Exactly, everything works great except for STO
SNR 120sec now, game was working fine an hr ago now its unplayable. I already know people who have left because of these constant problems and quite frankly I'm getting tired of it myself we the "customer" shouldn't have to work this hard its entertainment for us its a job for them.
I'm not sure what we can expect Cryptic to do if the issue resides in the network outside of their server farm? They most likely have brought any pressure they can to bear on what / who they suspect is the problem, but beyond that they are pretty much in the same boat as we are.
So I went ahead and bought VPN access for a month. I selected a point in the UK to pop out. By chance I'm VPNing directly on Cogent's network. Lag issues are gone. Latency is high, but no issues with the patcher or logging in. My thoughts are it could be something with a particular peering point where the Comcast and Cogent networks meet. Or it could be something deeper in the Cogent network. It seems other users on Comcast have reported having no issues, so it's not Comcast in general. It's something with the specific path into Cryptic's network.
Here's my current traceroute:
Tracing route to accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 95 ms 94 ms 93 ms 10.1.1.1
2 95 ms 109 ms 94 ms [REDACTED]
3 94 ms 95 ms 94 ms be4357.rcr21.b015589-1.lon01.atlas.cogentco.com [149.6.146.65]
4 96 ms 96 ms 96 ms be2207.ccr21.lon01.atlas.cogentco.com [130.117.1.157]
5 94 ms 95 ms 102 ms be2178.ccr42.lon13.atlas.cogentco.com [130.117.0.206]
6 168 ms 168 ms 169 ms be2493.ccr22.bos01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.42.97]
7 169 ms 168 ms 169 ms te0-0-0-0.rcr11.b002133-1.bos01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.46.130]
8 168 ms 169 ms 168 ms 38.111.40.114
9 170 ms 171 ms 167 ms 198.49.243.253
10 * * * Request timed out.
11 168 ms 168 ms 168 ms accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165]
Trace complete.
Also, 16K pings get through fine, where on my non-VPN connection they were failing at a rate of 50%
Pinging accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165] with 16384 bytes of data:
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=16384 time=183ms TTL=118
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=16384 time=192ms TTL=118
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=16384 time=183ms TTL=118
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=16384 time=182ms TTL=118
Ping statistics for 208.95.185.165:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 182ms, Maximum = 192ms, Average = 185ms
I was able to bypass this problem by enabling Avast! SecureLine VPN. This pretty much proves that this issue really has nothing to do with Cryptic and pretty much everything to do with the data centers that Comcast (maybe others?) routes through in and around the Boston-area.
Give a VPN a go!
It's almost certainly something close to their network. They've reported issues with Level 3 around their server. I can't speak for others, but STO is the only thing I have a problem with. Youtube's fine. Skype's fine. AIM, ICQ, Star Citizen, Team Fortress, reddit, steam, gog, origin, Netflix, Amazon Instant - not one single problem except STO. Even these forums work perfectly fine, no lag at all.
I was having issues with GW2 and some DBG mmos earlier; could be related. I'm not convinced that it is only this game - especially when I can bypass the problem with a secure VPN.
I'm not sure what we can expect Cryptic to do if the issue resides in the network outside of their server farm? They most likely have brought any pressure they can to bear on what / who they suspect is the problem, but beyond that they are pretty much in the same boat as we are.
Run through a VPN - it works and it's easy.
Which is why I'm not upset with them. I suspect this is something they have no direct control over.
And are there any free VPNs we can use? I've never used a VPN in my life. Not even sure how to.
I've done a little more network testing. It appears pings greater than 16K in size have intermittent issues reaching the account server. Anything smaller than that goes through fine, so a normal ping won't show it. Here's a bunch of data for those who can interpret it. You'll notice pings about 16384 bytes fail 50% of the time.
Packets bigger than 1500 bytes should be getting hit with IP fragmentation, which causes royal pain for the far end system. I'm not surprised the really big packets aren't getting through well, they're probably either losing fragments somewhere on the path, or the end server is having trouble reassembling them. Nobody in the Internet engineering world likes fragments, and everyone wishes they would go away...
What I've seen yesterday and today leads me to believe the problem is entirely within Cryptic's server farm. In particular, my wife and I were both playing from the same home network yesterday. She was getting really terrible lag, while I was seeing only occasional problems. Same network path (modulo possible multi-path routing), but entirely different experiences in game. Traceroute and ping showed none of the usual signs of congestion on the path: neither any packet loss nor any large variance in ping and traceroute entry times. I switched characters, and suddenly started having a lot of problems. Switched back to the first character, and things were much better. She then switched to another character (after logging in again) and saw somewhat better behavior, but switching back to her first character just gave her login timeouts. Since characters "stick" to specific instances (and thus servers) for a while, my conclusion is that the problem was almost certainly server overload on some of the servers. The fact that some people weren't seeing problems may merely have been their luck in drawing lighter-load servers. Not sure why the UK proxy trick is working, though, unless it influences server choice somehow, which is entirely possible.
But the fact that two players on the same home network were seeing different results, and also different results with different characters for the same player, pretty much pins it on the server end, or something to do with Cryptic's load-balancer. Nothing else in the network path cares which character you're playing, and while new connections when new characters log in might travel over different routes, it would be random each time characters switched, not correlated with specific characters.
(Sorry for the network geek-talk -- I was an Internet researcher off and on for 30 years, until I retired a few years ago.)
and I just saw that this was said about an hour and a half ago:
Update, 2015-08-30:
Hey folks! I just got an update. It's not what we want to hear but at least it means they have found the issue! The connection issue has been pinpointed to being an issue on the Internet Service Provider that the Cryptic Servers connect to and through. Alas, this means the Tech Team and Developers cannot resolve the issue, so we are now waiting for our ISP to correct the issue. We do apologize it has taken so long to find the cause but at least now the wheels are in motion to get this resolved.
So yeah it's confirmed to be an ISP issue, not ours but theirs.
It's always been an ISP issue. It's been happening for years. This is nothing new, it's just particularly severe this time. We've been told (or at least I have) that it was our ISP when in fact it's been theirs. Most of us knew it, and knew the excuses like "complain to your ISP" or "reboot your router" were bullplop.
Do a simple search for "Cogent" on the forum and see for yourselves just how far back these problems with them stretch.
I don't know what other ISP may be available to Cryptic but they have to look into switching providers.
EDIT: I do wonder though why people outside the U.S. aren't affected. I don't know nearly enough about how internet traffic is routed but it's weird to me that traffic from within the country is affected by their ISP but not from outside. Can someone shed some light on to why that is?
Comments
It seems something has gone wrong with the internet, so forgive my whinge.
My character Tsin'xing
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms TRIBBLE.TRIBBLE.x.xx
2 8 ms 9 ms 10 ms xx.TRIBBLE.xx.TRIBBLE
3 15 ms 11 ms 9 ms xx.xx.TRIBBLE.xx
4 17 ms 15 ms 14 ms be-49-ar01.needham.ma.boston.comcast.net [68.85.69.13]
5 29 ms 23 ms 19 ms be-7015-cr01.newyork.ny.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.90.21
6 20 ms 23 ms 28 ms be-10203-cr02.newyork.ny.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.85.5
7 42 ms 42 ms 42 ms be-10305-cr02.350ecermak.il.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.8
8 43 ms 42 ms 43 ms be-10506-cr01.350ecermak.il.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.8
9 63 ms 62 ms 63 ms be-10617-cr02.denver.co.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.85.17
10 61 ms 63 ms 62 ms ae-16-0-pe01.910fifteenth.co.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.
11 65 ms 62 ms 61 ms te0-0-0-0.rcr11.b006467-1.den01.atlas.cogentco.com [15
12 63 ms 65 ms 62 ms te0-1-0-3.ccr21.den01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.83.29
13 81 ms 88 ms 81 ms be2128.ccr21.mci01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.25.174]
14 62 ms 62 ms 65 ms be2156.ccr41.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.6.86]
15 72 ms 70 ms 69 ms be2351.ccr21.cle04.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.44.86]
16 67 ms 63 ms 65 ms be2009.ccr21.alb02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.25.89]
17 67 ms 64 ms 67 ms be2299.ccr21.bos01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.43.9]
18 65 ms 65 ms 66 ms te0-0-1-0.rcr11.b002133-1.bos01.atlas.cogentco.com [15
19 65 ms 67 ms 74 ms 38.111.40.114
20 67 ms 67 ms 66 ms 198.49.243.253
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 67 ms 73 ms 66 ms patchserverrebirth.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.41]
Yeah, Western Mass too, on Comcast. But when I switched to the UK proxy everything improved by about 95%.
for those who have missed this piece of info until now.
Would be nice for some communication on this issue. Neverwinter has it even it's sparse now, so what's up with STO?
>
>
> for those who have missed this piece of info until now.
STO Dev's ... crickets.
I have had zero problems with the internet over the past few days. I think them solely blaming this on the level3 problems is BS.
I have exceeded, by far, any system and connection requirements to play the game. Yet, I spend more time trouble shooting problems than I spend playing the game. So I bid Cryptic goodbye. It will be hard. I have played many games over the years, many for years - but in installments. STO was the only game I have ever played consistently - nearly every day - for years, four to be exact.
Thank God Madden 16 just came out to help ease my withdrawal.
There's nothing wrong with the server just before the patch server (hop 22 in your image). That server's just configured not to respond to ping request. If there was a problem there, no further hops would be recorded.
That said I still have the incredibly slow log ins / lag issue. I'm going to try the EU proxy if the patcher ever finishes loading....
Ping:
- Your computer sends an ICMP Echo Request to the destination.
- Destination sends an ICMP Echo Reply
Trace Route:
- Your computer sends an ICMP Echo Request to the destination, but the Time To Live (TTL) Field is set to 1, so the packet times out at 1 hop.
- The host 1 hop away sends back an ICMP Time Exceeded Request - you now know the host 1 hop away.
- Your computers sends an ICMP Echo Request to the destination, but the Time To Live (TTL) Field is set to 2, so the packet times out at 2 hops.
- The host 2 hops away sends back an ICMP Time Exceeded Request - you now know the host 2 hops away.
- (repeat that a lot until you've found out about all the hops between you and the destination)
- - Your computer sends an ICMP Echo Request to the destination with the TTL Field set to some number of hops away.
- Destination sends an ICMP Echo Reply.
- Trace complete.
If during the trace route the computer you're sending a request to doesn't reply with either a Time Exceeded or Echo Reply message before the timeout window (configurable, usually 1 second), the you seen that little * and Request timed out. This can happen if the remote computer is too slow to respond or just configured not to respond to ping requests.
If you ultimately get a response from the destination, even with some hosts in the middle timing out (they didn't reply to your ping request), then there is a functional network path between you and the destination.
Ping and traceroute only show that you can talk. They say nothing about bandwidth which can still be an issue.
Give a VPN a go!
C:\Windows\system32>ping -l 8192 accounts.crypticstudios.com
Pinging accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165] with 8192 bytes of data:
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=8192 time=82ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=8192 time=81ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=8192 time=111ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=8192 time=83ms TTL=112
Ping statistics for 208.95.185.165:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 81ms, Maximum = 111ms, Average = 89ms
C:\Windows\system32>ping -l 16384 accounts.crypticstudios.com
Pinging accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165] with 16384 bytes of data:
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=16384 time=90ms TTL=112
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=16384 time=81ms TTL=112
Ping statistics for 208.95.185.165:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 2, Lost = 2 (50% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 81ms, Maximum = 90ms, Average = 85ms
C:\Windows\system32>tracert accounts.crypticstudios.com
Tracing route to accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 2 ms 3 ms 1 ms 10.0.1.1
2 19 ms 9 ms 10 ms [REDACTED]
3 10 ms 9 ms 9 ms [REDACTED]
4 19 ms 11 ms 10 ms [REDACTED]
5 34 ms 14 ms 18 ms [REDACTED]
6 21 ms 21 ms 20 ms he-0-1-0-7-cr02.newyork.ny.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.90.97]
7 40 ms 39 ms 50 ms be-10305-cr02.350ecermak.il.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.85.202]
8 40 ms 39 ms 43 ms be-10506-cr01.350ecermak.il.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.86.230]
9 62 ms 62 ms 63 ms be-10617-cr02.denver.co.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.85.170]
10 61 ms 61 ms 61 ms ae-11-0-pe01.910fifteenth.co.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.84.22]
11 62 ms 63 ms 63 ms te0-0-1-0.rcr11.b006467-1.den01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.13.5]
12 62 ms 61 ms 62 ms te0-1-0-3.ccr21.den01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.83.29]
13 65 ms 65 ms 65 ms be2128.ccr21.mci01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.25.174]
14 64 ms 64 ms 63 ms be2156.ccr41.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.6.86]
15 70 ms 79 ms 72 ms be2351.ccr21.cle04.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.44.86]
16 64 ms 64 ms 65 ms be2009.ccr21.alb02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.25.89]
17 66 ms 66 ms 65 ms be2299.ccr21.bos01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.43.9]
18 67 ms 66 ms 66 ms te0-0-1-0.rcr11.b002133-1.bos01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.46.134]
19 73 ms 66 ms 65 ms 38.111.40.114
20 74 ms 67 ms 66 ms 198.49.243.253
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 67 ms 67 ms 65 ms accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165]
Trace complete.
C:\Windows\system32>
C:\Windows\system32>ping -l 16384 accounts.crypticstudios.com
Pinging accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165] with 16384 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=16384 time=83ms TTL=112
Ping statistics for 208.95.185.165:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 1, Lost = 3 (75% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 83ms, Maximum = 83ms, Average = 83ms
C:\Windows\system32>ping -l 8192 accounts.crypticstudios.com
Pinging accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165] with 8192 bytes of data:
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=8192 time=78ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=8192 time=83ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=8192 time=77ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=8192 time=78ms TTL=112
Ping statistics for 208.95.185.165:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 77ms, Maximum = 83ms, Average = 79ms
C:\Windows\system32>ping -l 12000 accounts.crypticstudios.com
Pinging accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165] with 12000 bytes of data:
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=12000 time=79ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=12000 time=83ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=12000 time=92ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=12000 time=92ms TTL=112
Ping statistics for 208.95.185.165:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 79ms, Maximum = 92ms, Average = 86ms
C:\Windows\system32>ping -l 14000 accounts.crypticstudios.com
Pinging accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165] with 14000 bytes of data:
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=14000 time=89ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=14000 time=80ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=14000 time=86ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=14000 time=83ms TTL=112
Ping statistics for 208.95.185.165:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 80ms, Maximum = 89ms, Average = 84ms
C:\Windows\system32>ping -l 15000 accounts.crypticstudios.com
Pinging accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165] with 15000 bytes of data:
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=15000 time=87ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=15000 time=84ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=15000 time=84ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=15000 time=81ms TTL=112
Ping statistics for 208.95.185.165:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 81ms, Maximum = 87ms, Average = 84ms
C:\Windows\system32>ping -l 16000 accounts.crypticstudios.com
Pinging accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165] with 16000 bytes of data:
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=16000 time=83ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=16000 time=95ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=16000 time=86ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=16000 time=91ms TTL=112
Ping statistics for 208.95.185.165:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 83ms, Maximum = 95ms, Average = 88ms
C:\Windows\system32>ping -l 16384 accounts.crypticstudios.com
Pinging accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165] with 16384 bytes of data:
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=16384 time=89ms TTL=112
Request timed out.
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=16384 time=86ms TTL=112
Request timed out.
Ping statistics for 208.95.185.165:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 2, Lost = 2 (50% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 86ms, Maximum = 89ms, Average = 87ms
C:\Windows\system32>ping -l 17000 accounts.crypticstudios.com
Pinging accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165] with 17000 bytes of data:
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=17000 time=97ms TTL=112
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=17000 time=80ms TTL=112
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Ping statistics for 208.95.185.165:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 2, Lost = 2 (50% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 80ms, Maximum = 97ms, Average = 88ms
It's almost certainly something close to their network. They've reported issues with Level 3 around their server. I can't speak for others, but STO is the only thing I have a problem with. Youtube's fine. Skype's fine. AIM, ICQ, Star Citizen, Team Fortress, reddit, steam, gog, origin, Netflix, Amazon Instant - not one single problem except STO. Even these forums work perfectly fine, no lag at all.
Exactly, everything works great except for STO
SNR 120sec now, game was working fine an hr ago now its unplayable. I already know people who have left because of these constant problems and quite frankly I'm getting tired of it myself we the "customer" shouldn't have to work this hard its entertainment for us its a job for them.
I'm not sure what we can expect Cryptic to do if the issue resides in the network outside of their server farm? They most likely have brought any pressure they can to bear on what / who they suspect is the problem, but beyond that they are pretty much in the same boat as we are.
Run through a VPN - it works and it's easy.
Here's my current traceroute:
Tracing route to accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 95 ms 94 ms 93 ms 10.1.1.1
2 95 ms 109 ms 94 ms [REDACTED]
3 94 ms 95 ms 94 ms be4357.rcr21.b015589-1.lon01.atlas.cogentco.com [149.6.146.65]
4 96 ms 96 ms 96 ms be2207.ccr21.lon01.atlas.cogentco.com [130.117.1.157]
5 94 ms 95 ms 102 ms be2178.ccr42.lon13.atlas.cogentco.com [130.117.0.206]
6 168 ms 168 ms 169 ms be2493.ccr22.bos01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.42.97]
7 169 ms 168 ms 169 ms te0-0-0-0.rcr11.b002133-1.bos01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.46.130]
8 168 ms 169 ms 168 ms 38.111.40.114
9 170 ms 171 ms 167 ms 198.49.243.253
10 * * * Request timed out.
11 168 ms 168 ms 168 ms accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165]
Trace complete.
Also, 16K pings get through fine, where on my non-VPN connection they were failing at a rate of 50%
C:\Windows\system32>ping -l 16384 accounts.crypticstudios.com
Pinging accounts.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.165] with 16384 bytes of data:
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=16384 time=183ms TTL=118
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=16384 time=192ms TTL=118
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=16384 time=183ms TTL=118
Reply from 208.95.185.165: bytes=16384 time=182ms TTL=118
Ping statistics for 208.95.185.165:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 182ms, Maximum = 192ms, Average = 185ms
I was having issues with GW2 and some DBG mmos earlier; could be related. I'm not convinced that it is only this game - especially when I can bypass the problem with a secure VPN.
Which is why I'm not upset with them. I suspect this is something they have no direct control over.
And are there any free VPNs we can use? I've never used a VPN in my life. Not even sure how to.
Packets bigger than 1500 bytes should be getting hit with IP fragmentation, which causes royal pain for the far end system. I'm not surprised the really big packets aren't getting through well, they're probably either losing fragments somewhere on the path, or the end server is having trouble reassembling them. Nobody in the Internet engineering world likes fragments, and everyone wishes they would go away...
What I've seen yesterday and today leads me to believe the problem is entirely within Cryptic's server farm. In particular, my wife and I were both playing from the same home network yesterday. She was getting really terrible lag, while I was seeing only occasional problems. Same network path (modulo possible multi-path routing), but entirely different experiences in game. Traceroute and ping showed none of the usual signs of congestion on the path: neither any packet loss nor any large variance in ping and traceroute entry times. I switched characters, and suddenly started having a lot of problems. Switched back to the first character, and things were much better. She then switched to another character (after logging in again) and saw somewhat better behavior, but switching back to her first character just gave her login timeouts. Since characters "stick" to specific instances (and thus servers) for a while, my conclusion is that the problem was almost certainly server overload on some of the servers. The fact that some people weren't seeing problems may merely have been their luck in drawing lighter-load servers. Not sure why the UK proxy trick is working, though, unless it influences server choice somehow, which is entirely possible.
But the fact that two players on the same home network were seeing different results, and also different results with different characters for the same player, pretty much pins it on the server end, or something to do with Cryptic's load-balancer. Nothing else in the network path cares which character you're playing, and while new connections when new characters log in might travel over different routes, it would be random each time characters switched, not correlated with specific characters.
(Sorry for the network geek-talk -- I was an Internet researcher off and on for 30 years, until I retired a few years ago.)
http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter/#/discussion/1202961/unplayable-network-lag-as-of-today-8-28/p8
So yeah it's confirmed to be an ISP issue, not ours but theirs.
It's always been an ISP issue. It's been happening for years. This is nothing new, it's just particularly severe this time. We've been told (or at least I have) that it was our ISP when in fact it's been theirs. Most of us knew it, and knew the excuses like "complain to your ISP" or "reboot your router" were bullplop.
Do a simple search for "Cogent" on the forum and see for yourselves just how far back these problems with them stretch.
I don't know what other ISP may be available to Cryptic but they have to look into switching providers.
EDIT: I do wonder though why people outside the U.S. aren't affected. I don't know nearly enough about how internet traffic is routed but it's weird to me that traffic from within the country is affected by their ISP but not from outside. Can someone shed some light on to why that is?