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Is STO or PWE/Cryptic in general under extended DDoS attack or something?

tasshenatasshena Member Posts: 543 Arc User
The lag and rubberbanding the last couple of days have been totally atrocious...​​
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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  • rattler2rattler2 Member, Star Trek Online Moderator Posts: 59,174 Community Moderator
    Not sure about the lag and rubberbanding, but there were a couple times the last few days where I tried to log in, it would take a LOOOOONG time, and then boot me within a minute of getting in game.

    So... no idea.
    db80k0m-89201ed8-eadb-45d3-830f-bb2f0d4c0fe7.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2ExOGQ4ZWM2LTUyZjQtNDdiMS05YTI1LTVlYmZkYmJkOGM3N1wvZGI4MGswbS04OTIwMWVkOC1lYWRiLTQ1ZDMtODMwZi1iYjJmMGQ0YzBmZTcucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.8G-Pg35Qi8qxiKLjAofaKRH6fmNH3qAAEI628gW0eXc
    I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
    The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
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  • tribbulatertribbulater Member Posts: 307 Arc User
    Over the years Cryptic has had many messages and posts regarding the horrendous stints of lag, rubberbanding, SNRs and disconnects. I believe it even goes back to their original City of Heroes days.

    The first step is to use traceroute and pingplotter tools to determine that the problem isn't on your end or at a hub in between you and Cryptic's servers. Cryptic used to have an available post called "Performing a traceroute (tracert)" that gave you the info you needed, but the last couple times I checked it, that page was offline (go figure).

    While you will sometimes find that the issue is indeed on your end, your ISP, or an intermediate hub; it is still the case that Cryptic has worse server/connection performance (on all games) than any other MMO/dev company I have ever played.

    Most of us assume it is because they are using badly set up, old connection management-TCP/IP libraries and routines (what normally gets called the 'netcode'), and that they no longer employ anyone who has any ability whatsoever to improve the performance of these routines.

    Cryptic regularly does something to their code or servers that takes the problem from 'fairly frequent, quite annoying' up to "constant and nearly unplayable" levels.

    For myself, I gave up trying to diagnose the issue years ago. When it gets really bad, I check my end to make sure my router or cable connection hasn't died, and then if it is still happening I just go play a game that employs people who know how to fix these things (or at least not break them on a regular basis).

  • rocketman33#0665 rocketman33 Member Posts: 100 Arc User
    edited September 2019
    STO labors through startup mode and never starts. After running a trace & ping, it looks like my isp along with the first few stops is excellent, but then it all crashes into a black hole in Miami, Florida. Have to wonder if there's a hurricane influence here.

    ***Update***
    I finally got through Miami but at a game-high 169ms. I appear to be back in business.
  • tasshenatasshena Member Posts: 543 Arc User
    edited September 2019
    *shrug* In the north central plains here, and the launcher isn't moving from 'loading.. please wait'. Or it'll close out while sitting there sometimes. Once it started logging me on and said 'loading' for several minutes then stopped.; Never had that happen, and not close to the coast, so it shouldn't be from Miami unless that's where the servers are.

    Update: Seems to be working better now for the moment at least.​​
  • gaevsmangaevsman Member Posts: 3,190 Arc User
    edited September 2019
    Same here, takes forever to load.... thgey did a prepatch yesterday thou..
    The forces of darkness are upon us!
  • lexusk19lexusk19 Member Posts: 1,430 Arc User
    gaevsman wrote: »
    Same here, takes forever to load.... thgey did a prepatch yesterday thou..

    Same here, taking for ever just to load the launcher... Going on five minutes now.
    5qq2uyi63rep.jpg
  • legendarylycan#5411 legendarylycan Member Posts: 37,284 Arc User
    the servers are in boston, but the connection has to route through many steps - sometimes even dozens

    in an ideal world, an internet connection from end-user to service and back again would be like the blue line int he picture below...in reality, it's like the red one


    men%2Band%2Bwomen%2Bshopping.jpg​​
    Like special weapons from other Star Trek games? Wondering if they can be replicated in STO even a little bit? Check this out: https://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1262277/a-mostly-comprehensive-guide-to-star-trek-videogame-special-weapons-and-their-sto-equivalents

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  • tasshenatasshena Member Posts: 543 Arc User
    gaevsman wrote: »
    Same here, takes forever to load.... thgey did a prepatch yesterday thou..
    And I patiently waited and let the entire gig of prepatch (supposedly) load up last night after accidentally closing the STO window instead of another one I'd intended to close. I waited until prepatch was done to get back on.

    And it's back to rubberbanding. on Kobali I go to interact with objectives and get pulled 3 feet back ftom them on hitting interact. And I'm checking around, but it seems to only be acting that way for STO. Another MMO I play worked just fine.​​
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  • tasshenatasshena Member Posts: 543 Arc User
    edited September 2019
    Got a full traceroute now, apparently Akamai Technologies is the big slowdown for me. 'dfw' is Dallas-Fort Worth I assume, then one with just an IP, and 'deploy.static' jumps from 54ms clear to 102.​​
  • fred26291#2759 fred26291 Member Posts: 1,441 Arc User
    I went to kobali prime to do a personal endeavor and kept getting bounced by rubber banding that none of my shots were counting and it took more time to kill them due to the rubber banding. Also had lag starting gaming client this afternoon between 3pm EST and 6pm EST has not been good.
  • manwholaughsmanwholaughs Member Posts: 65 Arc User
    edited September 2019
    The lag and rubberbanding has been terrible as of late, and at some points the connection to the servers drops completely. A few days to a week ago it got to the point most players couldn't log in, there was a topic for it under general discussion.

    I noticed changing instances in some cases helps, which shows it is a server-side issue, but the game decides for you which instance to load you into when traversing to another game area, and go figure the game selects the worst instance when it comes to lag and rubberbanding.

    It has really become off putting!
  • tasshenatasshena Member Posts: 543 Arc User
    edited September 2019
    I'd guess the prepatching was it, it's a gig of patch per computer running it, but it doesn't add up when the traceroute shows problem before that.

    (two hops privacy censored, 4 and 7 ms for them)
    3 7 ms 7 ms 7 ms be60.660.sxflsdch38r.edge.sdnet.net [208.53.242.41]
    4 13 ms 12 ms 12 ms 10ge1-11.core1.oma1.he.net [184.105.32.21]
    5 15 ms 15 ms 15 ms 100ge7-1.core1.mci3.he.net [184.105.65.165]
    6 26 ms 25 ms 25 ms 184.105.64.213
    7 26 ms 28 ms 28 ms 206.223.118.209
    8 30 ms 26 ms 29 ms po110.bs-a.sech-dfw.netarch.akamai.com [23.57.102.243]
    9 26 ms 26 ms 26 ms a72-52-1-189.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [72.52.1.189]
    10 28 ms 25 ms 26 ms ae120.access-a.sech-dfw.netarch.akamai.com [23.57.102.249]
    11 54 ms 54 ms 55 ms 93.191.173.201
    12 102 ms 102 ms 102 ms a72-52-28-178.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [72.52.28.178]
    13 109 ms 102 ms 105 ms 198.49.243.237
    14 101 ms 102 ms 101 ms patchserver.crypticstudios.com [208.95.184.200]

    Trace complete.​​
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  • jonsillsjonsills Member Posts: 10,558 Arc User
    azrael605 wrote: »
    You know there is a category 5 hurricane that just TRIBBLE up infrastructure right?
    Well, Cat 2 by the time it hit the States, but yeah. :)

    OTOH, the big issue in Tasshena's trace would appear to be this Akamai Technologies - jumps from 54ms to 102ms on that node. Hopefully they'll be able to make a connection at some point that doesn't go through that node.

    Haven't been on STO this week myself, but CO's been working like a champ, so it's not Cryptic per se, apparently.
    Lorna-Wing-sig.png
  • phoenixc#0738 phoenixc Member Posts: 6,085 Arc User
    azrael605 wrote: »
    You know there is a category 5 hurricane that just TRIBBLE up infrastructure right?

    About five or ten years ago that would not have mattered, but the internet is not as flexible as it once was due to the way big business runs things. Better get used to the problems, with net neutrality gone it can only get worse as companies stake out their territories and make new deals with each other so the pathing ends up even less flexible and more convoluted.
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  • starkaosstarkaos Member Posts: 11,557 Arc User
    azrael605 wrote: »
    A hurricane today is just as damaging as one 10, 15, or 1000 years ago. A Tornado does not care how good you think infrastructure is, it will wreck it. Net Neutrality or its lack has never and will never protect physical lines from storms, earthquakes, fires, random accidents, nor any other physical damage.

    And a hurricane only affects a certain region with its devastation. Internet connections can always find another path to reach their destination instead of going through an area that is devastated by natural disasters. If I am in California and want to communicate with a computer in New York and Texas is devastated by a hurricane, then I can go through the Northern States to reach my destination.

  • ussvaliant#6064 ussvaliant Member Posts: 1,006 Arc User
    edited September 2019
    The Lag/rubberbanding/stalls/power tray misfires have been going on since Cryptic's huge behind the scenes updates last year when we had half days where the servers were down whilst they did their work
    .
    This is not new and definitely not weather related. It is a long term problem and all my tracerts jump the shark when they hit akamaitechnologies.com.

    My constant lag and rubberbanding started after that work was completed, before that if I got lag or rubberbanding it was due to internet issues or genuine server issues with Cryptic and very very infrequent. Now I can guarantee any day, any time I log on I will have issues.
    Post edited by ussvaliant#6064 on
    maR4zDV.jpg

    Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
  • alcyoneserenealcyoneserene Member Posts: 2,414 Arc User
    The Lag/rubberbanding/stalls/power tray misfires
    I've had the power tray misfiring from years ago since I started playing. It makes me hate this game.

    Now, there's some extreme rubberbanding and lag that hits quite often. Very annoying and immersion breaking when your starship just teleports in place, or you can't walk into a wide corridor cause the lag thinks you're trying to walk into the wall on the right.

    To me, only STO has these -severe, game breaking- problems. No other games I play do, and when they suffer, it affects all players and the developers get on it and fix it.
    Y945Yzx.jpg
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  • jonsillsjonsills Member Posts: 10,558 Arc User
    After a little Google investigation, I found that players of Elder Scrolls Online were reporting a very similar issue starting about a year ago. Apparently Akamai Technologies is a platform that's supposed to protect against DDoS attacks and similar network-overload issues - but it appears to define the sort of high-bandwidth contact produced by online games as a DDoS. It starts slowing such traffic down within its own network, giving horrendous ping times.

    As of last June, when the comment thread I found petered out, the situation was still ongoing. It didn't affect every player - but those affected never got a break; it happened literally every time they tried to log in.

    Note to anyone from Cryptic reading this thread: Akamai Technologies does not do what it says it does, at least not for your purposes. Its designers were trying to ensure people could reach banks and other "normal" businesses, not games. If it's possible for you to route traffic away from Akamai's network, your players would be much happier.
    Lorna-Wing-sig.png
  • sthe91sthe91 Member Posts: 6,371 Arc User
    I created a thread in April of this year showing a problem that was plaguing me for days and still is. For me it started with the first planet Pahvo event and not the second one which I did not participate in. It involves lag and constant SNRs (server not respondings). The name of the thread is Problem Between These Two Places And The Server, Tracert, Nettest, Pathping Attached. Yet so many people did not believe me and kept on saying it was on my side. That tracerroute showed that Akamai Technologies is the problem and still is the problem. Thanks. :)
    Where there is a Will, there is a Way.
  • duasynduasyn Member Posts: 492 Arc User
    Over the years Cryptic has had many messages and posts regarding the horrendous stints of lag, rubberbanding, SNRs and disconnects. I believe it even goes back to their original City of Heroes days.

    The first step is to use traceroute and pingplotter tools to determine that the problem isn't on your end or at a hub in between you and Cryptic's servers. Cryptic used to have an available post called "Performing a traceroute (tracert)" that gave you the info you needed, but the last couple times I checked it, that page was offline (go figure).

    While you will sometimes find that the issue is indeed on your end, your ISP, or an intermediate hub; it is still the case that Cryptic has worse server/connection performance (on all games) than any other MMO/dev company I have ever played.

    Most of us assume it is because they are using badly set up, old connection management-TCP/IP libraries and routines (what normally gets called the 'netcode'), and that they no longer employ anyone who has any ability whatsoever to improve the performance of these routines.

    Cryptic regularly does something to their code or servers that takes the problem from 'fairly frequent, quite annoying' up to "constant and nearly unplayable" levels.

    For myself, I gave up trying to diagnose the issue years ago. When it gets really bad, I check my end to make sure my router or cable connection hasn't died, and then if it is still happening I just go play a game that employs people who know how to fix these things (or at least not break them on a regular basis).


    Being totally ignorant on interneting, I just have my POV... of all the games I play; STO is the only one that has issues like this. So blaming the ISP or some-such would seem a bit... implausible? If I had any other games giving me issues, then maybe...

    And since I'll assume their servers aren't in the middle of nowhere where there is bad/old infrastructure, I'm gonna have to guess it's their issue. Like having a smooth 100 mile drive until you hit a huge pothole in Cryptic's driveway. You just can't go generically say 'the roads are bad'. :D
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  • jonsillsjonsills Member Posts: 10,558 Arc User
    For Cryptic, you'll want to check weather patterns on the Eastern Seaboard - their server farm is located outside Boston, MA. Yes, that's on the far side of the continent from their offices in California. No, I don't know why.
    Lorna-Wing-sig.png
  • duasynduasyn Member Posts: 492 Arc User
    jonsills wrote: »
    For Cryptic, you'll want to check weather patterns on the Eastern Seaboard - their server farm is located outside Boston, MA. Yes, that's on the far side of the continent from their offices in California. No, I don't know why.

    That seems inconvenient.
This discussion has been closed.