Consistent Lag spikes linked to specefic Australian backhaul internet provider

Hi GGG team,

I want to bring attention to what I think could be a high priority issue.

Every league I've been having horrible lag spikes with little reasoning why. Other than it seems like a congestion issue because it would be worse at specific times. However my speeds remain solid (40-100Mbs). The lag spikes at times can be extremely bad to the point where it's unplayable with lag spikes every 3 seconds.

- Firstly it would happen only for PoE
- Happening to all machines on the same net (not my PC)
- My internet speeds remain fair (40 - 100 MBs)
- When I swap my internet to my phone data the lag completely disappears (definitely an internet issue)


The reason why I think it's a problem linked to a specific backhaul internet provider is because yesterday I made a reddit post and multiple people with the same provider (or backhaul provider) have reported specifically Poe lag and no other game issue.


**Please look Into to the Australian server and it's connection to the backhaul provider "Vocus"/iPrimus.**

ISP that use vocus:
-Mate communicate
-Dodo
-iPrimus

Link to the reddit post for more information:

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/b35m8d/

Thanks Fitzy.

I will post the info when I get home from work.

I have also messaged the other players with the same backhaul provider to do the same. Hopefully we can get to the bottom of this issue.

Collected information as follows, will continue to edit as I collect:

- Time: 5.45pm (GMT+8)
Speed 70-80 MBs (low congestion)
Lag Spikes - Yes - ~every 10 - 20 seconds
ISP: Mate Communicate
Location Perth Australia
https://pastebin.com/ccPASupE

Hi,

I suffer under the same lagspikes that vary by time of day.

I'm with mate communicate and am located in Sydney.

Today I had none to minimal lag until 5pm Sydney time.

Around 5:35, the lagspikes noticably increased.

From around 6pm I had to switch from lockstep to predictive mode as it was unbearable.

Now in the later evening, also predictive is unplayable. The lagspikes occur every couple of seconds and sometimes last for up to 5 seconds before I get rubberbanded.

I had the WinMTR tool on the second screen, but it doesn't 'align' with the ingame latency. Sometime I get a flat line with no refresh for multiple seconds ingame but all the pings in WinMTR are fine.

Is the mel.* gateway server the same that the latency ingame is measured from?

https://pastebin.com/G24gDDsD
https://pastebin.com/vuFnzqQ3
https://pastebin.com/4Z423psR

Hallelujah, I finally found out what has been going on for me since 3.6 launched!! My experience lines up exactly with the thread creator here as well as everyone in the Reddit thread linked above. Speedtests return perfectly normal results at all times, but from around 7pm to 10.30pm, Path of Exile specifically, is simply unplayable. The latency spikes are utterly unmanageable, spiking up to numbers in the thousands sometimes. My in-game Latency graph looks like a heart rate monitor hooked up to someone going for a ride on the worlds scariest roller-coaster! I am with Mate Communicate for ISP, and as I now understand, they use Vocus which seems to be the culprit here.

Picture for reference;

https://pastebin.com/hiNkqZ43 - And here is a 900 packet WinMTR trace.
https://pastebin.com/XhrtAtdJ - 2000 packets, about 45 minutes after the first.

Really hope this issue can be sorted out quickly, not being able to play during peak hours is really quite a bummer. Very thankful to have found this thread though, particularly with a GGG response!


And here's a speedtest ran 10 minutes after the MTR trace for good measure;

"

Slammu wrote:

https://pastebin.com/ccPASupE

The guide Fitzy linked you to asks for between 300 and 500 echo requests to each hop.

Your log has 13. Please run WinMTR again for a longer period of time, then post the log.

WinMTR will show you a slowly incrementing number in the Sent column. That’s the one.

My extract is below. Put this out during peak unplayability time.

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| WinMTR statistics |
| Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
| 192.168.1.1 - 2 | 355 | 351 | 0 | 3 | 98 | 1 |
| lo10.lns01.sydnmtc.nsw.m2core.net.au - 0 | 370 | 370 | 6 | 26 | 124 | 33 |
| 225.330.dsl.syd.iprimus.net.au - 0 | 370 | 370 | 6 | 29 | 258 | 31 |
| ae4-20.per03.alexvoc.nsw.m2core.net.au - 0 | 370 | 370 | 7 | 34 | 255 | 31 |
| as36351.sydney.megaport.com - 0 | 370 | 370 | 7 | 29 | 256 | 31 |
| f6.12.2da9.ip4.static.sl-reverse.com - 1 | 366 | 365 | 8 | 31 | 251 | 35 |
| b.13.2da9.ip4.static.sl-reverse.com - 0 | 370 | 370 | 8 | 30 | 261 | 34 |
| 2f.10.35a9.ip4.static.sl-reverse.com - 0 | 370 | 370 | 19 | 42 | 247 | 46 |
| ae6.dar01.mel01.networklayer.com - 0 | 370 | 370 | 20 | 42 | 261 | 42 |
| po1.fcr01b.mel01.networklayer.com - 0 | 370 | 370 | 20 | 42 | 244 | 41 |
| speedtest.mel01.softlayer.com - 0 | 370 | 370 | 20 | 42 | 242 | 45 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|
WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider

https://pastebin.com/RDBPLs5N

Here's a trace I took today starting at 6:20pm - I wasn't experiencing any lag spikes at this time.


https://pastebin.com/5JpRcS3s

And this one I took from 7pm to 9.30pm.

I am experiencing the exact same issue and it is infuriating.

Every night for the same 4+ hours at peak time the game is almost completely unplayable. Outside of these hours, latency is a very stable 16ms and runs great.

ISP: Mate Communicate (Vocus backhaul also confirmed by traceroute).
Location: Melbourne
Server: Melbourne

My internet connection is otherwise fine during this period. Switching to phone data helps for me too, but obviously this is extremely inconvenient.

Please look into this as it is undoubtedly affecting a lot of people if the issue is nationwide and across multiple ISPs. I have been looking for a thread like this for a long time.

I will post logs the next time I am online during peak hours, possibly tomorrow but certainly by Sunday night.