Random huge several seconds lags ending in DCs today - 06/01/23 (when moving to/from hideout mostly)

Hi,

today i logged in in my EU morning to Frankfurt realm and started facing strange issue which persist to this moment.

When i log in everything is usually fine, my ping is around 10ms stable (i have 4ms ping to google etc). But when i move to hideout, very often it started behave strangely - ping started rising to several seconds, cannot move, or move for a second and then i am frozen and usually ends with DC. It is strange that few times i logged in moved to hideout without problem, moved to map and then i got this DC - i was in the map, have delirium mirror, saw that ping is rising and can move :) but caanot start delirium, cannot go throught the mirror (one time). Or i was able to even finish map and then when i ported to hideout i got this issue and was DCed (again after 20s timeouting).

It seems like my account or routing issue. My friend played same time on frankfurt realm with no issue. I also tried MTR tool/tracert and tried to trace ips/hostnames that i was connecting to with no issue (yeah i saw several timeouts there but at the end it reached the destination).

I really dont know what is the problem, never ever faced similar issue before (have very old account, more than 10 years old). Playing over steam.

And as i said it usually starts behaving strangely when i port somewhere else (from town to hidout, from hideout to map from map to hideout. Most often when porting to hideout.)

I also ran ping on the background and have stable ping. So lagspikes do not seems to be the problem of my connection but rather the game/routing.

I did some more test now and it seems that this is happening only in Frankfurt realm.

I tried other gateways - Milan, London and Amsterdam, all were fine ( i always play on frankfurt due to best ping ). I tried move to another town, move to act map, move to hideout, everytime all fine, then i swapped back to frankfurt, logged in, move to hideout and bum - freeze and DC

"

kang666 wrote:

I did some more test now and it seems that this is happening only in Frankfurt realm.

I tried other gateways - Milan, London and Amsterdam, all were fine ( i always play on frankfurt due to best ping ). I tried move to another town, move to act map, move to hideout, everytime all fine, then i swapped back to frankfurt, logged in, move to hideout and bum - freeze and DC

next time post the WinMTR reports so maybe we can see if it's a connection / routing issue.

a winmtr report would really help.

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for a basic understanding of the issue you need to remember how computers work.

ggg has servers combined in server farms which can host a certain amount of instances where people play or have hideouts.

when you login, your hideout is created on a certain server and if you start playing, those instances are created on other servers in the same server farm (for example frankfurt).

if you join parties you get diverted to other gateways and their server farms and play where the map owner started the area and return when you're finished.

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if a server of a server farm is on heavy load, you will have lag. load can be caused by instances where players use skill combinations that challenge the cpu(s) alot, or some routing issue or hardware configuration causes lag.

everytime you move from hideout to town and back you play on different servers with different load.

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what can you do?

if your hideout has lag, you can't create another one directly (cause that got removed cause people abused it to dupe currency). you need to logoff and wait for 5 min to have your hideout run into a timeout. it gets recreated when you login again, hopefully on a different server.


if you join a instance and it lags, make a winMTR report to that instance on that server. if the report shows that the instance itself was at fault, you did a great service and ggg can maybe remove bottlenecks caused by misconfiguration or overload in that specific server farm.

if one of the companies involved delivering your traffic to ggg servers is at fault, people will tell you too ;)

how to get the ip address to make a winMTR?

download https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/tcpview, run it and write down the destination ip address of pathofexile.exe while your're playing on the faulty instance.

enter it in winMTR and let it run while you're playing for some minutes.

Hi, as the problem strangely appears, it strangely disappears :) It was really just that 1 day - 1st Jun, when i tried it 2nd Jun everything is fine. You can close, delete the issue. It was just some sort of anomaly maybe on one some of the cluster nodes of the server farm in Frankfurt.

"

kang666 wrote:

It seems like my account or routing issue. My friend played same time on frankfurt realm with no issue. I also tried MTR tool/tracert and tried to trace ips/hostnames that i was connecting to with no issue (yeah i saw several timeouts there but at the end it reached the destination).

This absolutely screams “packet loss”, as tbh does your description of the symptoms you experience.

If the problem returns, please actually show us the diagnostic information next time.

"

kang666 wrote:

I also ran ping on the background and have stable ping. So lagspikes do not seems to be the problem of my connection but rather the game/routing.

Speaking as a Network Engineer by trade, I’m not sure what distinction you’re attempting to draw between your “connection” to the server and your “routing” to the server.

They’re very much the same thing?