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Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 11:01 am Post subject: Latency Problems?
Hi everyone. Up until recently, I've been playing the game with a latency of about 53 ms. Well after the last patch, I'm now slowed down to about 212....sometimes even getting as slow as 600+ depending on what zone I'm in. This is a disaster for me. As a bard, I rely on being agile and nimble enough to dance through the combats. Yes, I play from behind a firewall or two. And I have compensated by opening a few of what I thought were the correct Ports. Mind you I'm not at all technically minded, most of the time. ehehe Well it seems that during the last patch on Aug 11 they secretly changed those port protocols and SOE has been lagging to update their knowledge base. I contacted a support rep about the situation and hopefully I'll get the new information soon before our next raid. When I do, I'll append this post. Just thought if any of you are experiencing similar problems, this might be of help. _________________
The following information might be helpful if you need to troubleshoot a connection that utilizes routers, switches, or software-based firewalls:
Patch Application:
A TCP connection is initiated from the player's PC (using ports numbered >1023) to patch.everquest.com, port 7000. There are multiple IP addresses for the patch.everquest.com clusters, and they may change as the network demands, so check often using a DNS lookup tool if you provide a specific firewall rule for patching.
EverQuest client:
UDP datagrams are sent to/from the player's PC (using ports numbered >1023) from/to the EverQuest servers (using ports numbered >1023). Additionally, ICMP Unreachables (ICMP type 3) are sent to/from the player's PC from/to the EverQuest servers.
The EverQuest server IP addresses are on the subnets:
Please note that EverQuest opens a random UDP data port from the player's PC every time EverQuest is run. Thus, the need to have all ports >1023 available.
Regards
Paul Pomplun
Technical Support Representative
Sony Online Entertainment
My brain is spinning already. How I'll make use of this, I don't know _________________
First off, ignore the patch protocol paragraph - The patch application is a whole seperate program to the game itself, and uses its own ports. If your patches are as fast as always, then don't change what isn't broke!
From what I remember about trying to play EQ on a firewall about 7 years ago, I tried to find what ports EQ used because I couldn't play at all, not just that I got lag. When contacting Verant/Sony (I forget who was in charge back then) I was told almost exactly the same thing that you just were. That they basically choose a random port anywhere from 1024 to 65536 (65536 is the max windows goes up to, and it uses special processes for <1024). In otherwords you'd have to open all your ports from 1024 - 65536 to be sure you covered EQ, although you can specify the application thats allowed to use these ports, rather than open them for Everything (which kinda negates the point of having a firewall!). Also be sure to include UDP and TCP.
But I don't think thats your problem anyways. I mean do it, make those changes, and see if it fixes it. Personally I'd expect if EQ was caught in the firewall it's either fail completely, or you'd get really bad lag (like 1-2k).
I don't have any alternate suggestions though if it all started directly since the patch!
Joined: Mar 02, 2006 Posts: 1688 Location: San Jose California
Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 5:03 pm Post subject:
For what it is worth, I do this sort of thing for a living (network/computers) and I can tell you for a fact that you should not need to have any "open" ports on your hard firewall at all unless you run a server that you want the outside world talking too. Any soft firewall you may be using should prompt you to allow/deny an application when it is ran. Home network firewall/routers allow internal application to open outbound ports on an as needed basis for your applications to run. opening a port to the outside world just allows external sources to initiate an exchange.
I run a hard firewall with all ports blocked and only 22, 25 and 80 NAT'd through to my servers for ssh, mail and http services. every other computer on my home network runs soft firewalls with that have been set to allow everquest to initiate contact. All that said and done, I get sub 100ms ping times.
Now what I would recommend you do is check your outbound path using tracert. It is a windows utility that lives under windows\system32 and will trace your network connection to any given remote server. That will break down each "hop" in your link by ms showing you where the bottleneck is.
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms heimdall.gotdns.com [192.168.2.1]
2 13 ms 10 ms 11 ms adsl-75-62-7-254.dsl.snfc21.sbcglobal.net [75.62.7.254]
3 12 ms 12 ms 11 ms dist2-vlan62.snfcca.sbcglobal.net [206.13.3.130]
4 12 ms 11 ms 10 ms bb2-10g2-0.snfcca.sbcglobal.net [216.102.176.226]
5 20 ms 12 ms 18 ms 151.164.95.246
6 16 ms 12 ms 13 ms asn10310-yahoo-10g.eqsjca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.248.58]
7 18 ms 12 ms 13 ms ae0-p161.msr1.sp1.yahoo.com [216.115.107.59]
8 15 ms 20 ms 24 ms te-8-1.bas-a2.sp1.yahoo.com [209.131.32.19]
9 30 ms 16 ms 13 ms f1.www.vip.sp1.yahoo.com [209.131.36.158]
Trace complete.
The problem may not even be yours is what I am getting at. Best bet is to check so you know. I am looking for the server name of the bristlebane server but cant seem to find it atm. I know I have looked em up before but it might take me some time. If anyone else knows what it is, please chime in. _________________
Joined: Mar 02, 2006 Posts: 1688 Location: San Jose California
Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 5:21 pm Post subject:
Oh, I thought I would add... If you want to know more about tracert, you can find information here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traceroute _________________
Actually you can tracert to the Bristlebane server we play on just spool out to a DOS prompt by Start->Run->and type in CMD and hit enter then at the DOS prompt type: tracert bristlebane.everquest.com
If you see anything with a high ping then that's where your problem is but then doing something about it may be another story. However the tracert will let you know if it's internal as all internal hops should come up <1ms.
Let us know what you find out. _________________ Sorcier
Tracing route to eqworld-165.everquest.com [199.108.15.130]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 8 ms 7 ms 7 ms 10.193.128.1
3 10 ms 9 ms 9 ms 172.28.2.141
4 11 ms 18 ms 9 ms 66-169-96-237.ftwo.tx.charter.com [66.169.96.237]
5 13 ms 13 ms 13 ms 12.116.98.5
6 41 ms 40 ms 43 ms tbr1.dlstx.ip.att.net [12.122.100.14]
7 40 ms 38 ms 41 ms cr1.dlstx.ip.att.net [12.122.18.169]
8 44 ms 55 ms 42 ms cr1.phmaz.ip.att.net [12.122.28.182]
9 41 ms 40 ms 39 ms cr1.sd2ca.ip.att.net [12.122.31.233]
10 40 ms 39 ms 39 ms 12.123.215.129
11 42 ms 40 ms 40 ms 12.122.255.30
12 43 ms 41 ms 41 ms mdf4-bi8k-1-eth-1-2.san2.attens.net [63.241.0.162]
13 39 ms 41 ms 41 ms vl10.sdkoll1sw-1.sonyonline.net [63.241.60.42]
14 40 ms 59 ms 40 ms eqworld-165.everquest.com [199.108.15.130]
How do you paste that so nicely? I'd like to post mine up, if possible?
When I run a trace, I get several lines with "timed out request" and also some lines are 81 - 325 ms returned values.
Use [code] tags to keep the formatting. Highlighting text in a command prompt is done with right-click->Mark in case you don't know. Timed out just means that node is not responding to echo requests.
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