High latency at akamai.com

DarthVitrial

I have never had worse customer service than I have with eso. Support is endlessly sending me the same two or three form letters saying “power cycle your router and try again”. It’s enough to make me consider just giving up on the game.
@ZOS_GinaBruno , we need an official response here.

SirAndy

DarthVitrial wrote: »

I have never had worse customer service than I have with eso. Support is endlessly sending me the same two or three form letters saying “power cycle your router and try again”. It’s enough to make me consider just giving up on the game.
@ZOS_GinaBruno , we need an official response here.

It is very obvious that Akamai is the bottle neck and most likely the source of most of the lag complaints you see here on the forums.

From a business point of view, the solutions seems simple: Ditch Akamai ...

SirDopey

aetherial_heavenn wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_MattFiror

I have stopped playing. Sub due in a week. Getting ready to cancel as it is impossible to do any end game content. Spoke to ISP, but no joy because my tracert shows akamai is the problem.

@ZOS_BillE Haven't bothered with a ticket as last time all i got was a generic list of switch off add ons check cables and reach out to ISP

ESO/ZOS insists on acting like there is an ongoing DDOS attack for every player and sending stuff thru akamai's scrubbers is my understanding. Lazy cheap generic solution to a rare specific problem=really bad problem solving approach.

Lots of tracerts here showing the mad routing.....

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/439549/oceanic-lag-now-300-400-ms-even-with-a-vpn-was-250-300#latest

edit here's the latest

HAHAHAHA if there was not a better tracert showing the problem is within Akamai's network, hop 8 to 9 is just ludicrous (Japan to Netherlands).

Alaztor91

Same problem here, but it started just a few days ago. However I don't think that ZOS can or will do anything, I had the exact same problem last year and eventually the akamai hop that was giving me trouble just fixed itself.

xclassgaming

Having lag problems as well, especially in Murkmire.

DarthVitrial

Day five of not even being able to log in...I'm baffled by how awful this game's customer support is.

Teek

I am a gernan player, playing on EU Server.
Since Murkire release my ping has gotten significantly worse.
I also experience what I call "loadingscreen of doom" quite often throughout the day, not only during peak times.
Means: getting stuck in neverending loadingscreens or, if I don't need to restart the game to try again (often times without success), staing at a loadingscreen for 5 minutes or longer.
This happens especialy when I try to enter Delves, or anything instanced like my rooms at the Inn (which are not decorated).
Disabling all Addons (which I use very few) does not help at all.
Also, in areas like Coldharbor in the Prophet Questline (Main Storyline) my ping goes up to 250+ with spikes to 999 and even disconnects, making it really hard to play through the Storylines. The long loadingscreens appear anytime I got send into a an instanced quest area, or randomly while trying to enter a house/room/Delve...
Restarting the game sometimes solves it, sometimes not, usualy I give up and go do something else.
The overall ping has doubles since Murkmire (everywhere, not only in Murkmire), which once was a stable 25-30 ping is now a very unstable 60-120 in the outside world and 100-ragequit in Delves/Dungeons/"special" zones, IF I make it to enter these...

My internet is fine, I am on a wired direct cable connection (no router) with my ISP, and being an experienced IT professional I can assure you the problem is not on my side.
Traceroutes have been posted more than enough, so I spare you with mine because I get the exact same results as all the others. I don't want to waste my time opening yet another ticket for this.... the problem(s) appear to be very clear and I ask the responsible staff to look into it, to keep us informed and work on solutions for your paying customers.
Thank you.

PS: What really confuses me is this problem only happens since Murkmire release. Never before did I have this problem.

lurkuld

22nd of October was the last response I've had from support in relation to this issue. A tad disappointing. Any news anyone else?

SirDopey

lurkuld wrote: »

22nd of October was the last response I've had from support in relation to this issue. A tad disappointing. Any news anyone else?

Nothing but the sound of silence. This is when we know that ZOS has investigated and deemed it too difficult to action, so they just turn into emus and bury their heads in the sand

DarthVitrial

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_MattFiror
Anything? Support isn't helping, no reply here, I haven't been able to log in in over a week now. if I'm unable to get Murkmire from the login rewards because of this server issue and we aren't compensated for it, that's the last I'll ever spend money on this. We need a reply.

Bazgrim

I would absolutely love this game, but EVERY SINGLE TIME I play it I run into lag, disconnection, and login errors in the first freaking week.

Their customer support is also horrendous, I went down this road a few months back.
It seems ZOS is just not interested in fixing their servers what-so-ever.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/421280/why-are-us-servers-being-routed-through-the-netherlands

TourismTamriel

Welp, I'm cancelling the ESO+ subscription that I've had the last couple of years. Also in NZ.

Extremely high latency (average around 340 - 400) with spikes of the 999+ on a regular basis .... it wasn't doing this a few months ago - I've been playing since beta - and although the game isn't technically 'literally unplayable' it most definitely is now 'literally unenjoyable'.

It's a bit of a shame, because I obviously would still like to keep playing. But it is what it is. Hopefully they eventually rectify the problem and I may consider resubscribing.

MrGarlic

TourismTamriel wrote: »

<SNIP>

It's a bit of a shame, because I obviously would still like to keep playing. But it is what it is. Hopefully they eventually rectify the problem and I may consider resubscribing.

Me too. But if anything, time away from ESO has allowed me to see how other games in the genre work and I hope ESO implements some of the features other games have that make them better such as group finders and skill cool-down indicators, guild housing and well, guilds in general.

aetherial_heavenn

Still going through a ridiculous route. Still shows akamai is the problem. STILL NO REPLY FROM ZOS TO THE THREAD after 4 pages here and multiple other threads.

lurkuld

Finally got a reply from support. Got to do a bug report instead. They've exhausted all they can do for me. Its up to the developers now.

Witar

Ping is just horrible lately constant nonending lagspikes to 999+

Creeper

Having the same problem since Murkmire Update, I thought it was my internet connection having packet loss issue causing my ping in-game to spike up to 999+ but when I tested with another game and did a ping test, I didn't had such problems. My game keeps freezing a lot lately with constant ping 999+ making the game almost unplayable and frequent disconnections which I didn't had before in my 5k Hours of ESO. I hope this problem is getting addressed.

Witar

Knowing zos they are gonna deny and insist it's all our fault or just ignore the problem. Until a lot of people stop playing.
And then it's gonna be like

Korax

you know.. I've been TRYING to play this game for the past month...
time to uninstall and ditch this game if Monday's patch fixes nothing regarding char logon issues.

MrGarlic

I give up. I couldn't even farm mats today.

When the displayed ping is 330 but it takes 5 seconds or more to harvest a mat, it's time to move on nad find something else to do.

ThePedge

The ping is killing me in vMA, and I don't mean I'm trying to Flawless I mean just trying to complete it a second time.
Stage 7 I can be meters away from a plants AoE and it still gets me.

First run, Stage 9 final boss, on the upper platform, can be directly behind the wall/shield and still get 1-shot by the pulse.

Absolutely absurd. I'm in an instanced area ffs.

Ethoir

It's not just ESO. I'm seeing it in Discord, Bethesda.net's launcher, and Star Trek Online. My ISP is trying to figure out if its my hardware at fault, but I gave them tracerts showing the ping spikes in action. They come and go frequently, making playing either ESO or STO less enjoyable. But more importantly, it makes downloading files and games slower too.

xMovingTarget

My thread about this got locked.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/445107/sometimes-abnormal-high-ping

But there it is.

Also, I am not sure this IP is correct

Tracing route to 195.122.154.1 over a maximum of 30 hops

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  FRITZ-NAS [192.168.178.1]
  2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  3    10 ms    11 ms     9 ms  83-169-173-14-isp.superkabel.de [83.169.173.14]
  4    19 ms    18 ms    18 ms  ip5886c147.static.kabel-deutschland.de [88.134.193.71]
  5    15 ms    15 ms    15 ms  ip5886c149.static.kabel-deutschland.de [88.134.193.73]
  6    15 ms    14 ms    14 ms  ip5886ed06.static.kabel-deutschland.de [88.134.237.6]
  7    16 ms    15 ms    22 ms  ip5886ca17.static.kabel-deutschland.de [88.134.202.23]
  8    15 ms    15 ms    14 ms  ae8-100-xcr1.hac.cw.net [195.10.62.5]
  9    15 ms    14 ms    17 ms  ae5-xcr1.ham.cw.net [195.2.24.181]
 10    21 ms    21 ms    19 ms  ae2-xcr1.dus.cw.net [195.2.9.133]
 11    21 ms    22 ms    21 ms  80.157.201.133
 12    24 ms    26 ms    26 ms  217.239.44.34
 13    23 ms    27 ms    24 ms  195.122.154.1

Trace complete.

This is what I am connecting to atm. (EU)

Ethoir

xMovingTarget wrote: »

Tracing route to 195.122.154.1 over a maximum of 30 hops

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  FRITZ-NAS [192.168.178.1]
  2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  3    10 ms    11 ms     9 ms  83-169-173-14-isp.superkabel.de [83.169.173.14]
  4    19 ms    18 ms    18 ms  ip5886c147.static.kabel-deutschland.de [88.134.193.71]
  5    15 ms    15 ms    15 ms  ip5886c149.static.kabel-deutschland.de [88.134.193.73]
  6    15 ms    14 ms    14 ms  ip5886ed06.static.kabel-deutschland.de [88.134.237.6]
  7    16 ms    15 ms    22 ms  ip5886ca17.static.kabel-deutschland.de [88.134.202.23]
  8    15 ms    15 ms    14 ms  ae8-100-xcr1.hac.cw.net [195.10.62.5]
  9    15 ms    14 ms    17 ms  ae5-xcr1.ham.cw.net [195.2.24.181]
 10    21 ms    21 ms    19 ms  ae2-xcr1.dus.cw.net [195.2.9.133]
 11    21 ms    22 ms    21 ms  80.157.201.133
 12    24 ms    26 ms    26 ms  217.239.44.34
 13    23 ms    27 ms    24 ms  195.122.154.1

Trace complete.

That looks normal. You should worry if it regularly returns responses of 300ms or higher. Also yes, you might have pinged the wrong IP.

Elsonso

The IP 195.122.154.1 is owned by ZeniMax Germany, and it appears to be in Germany, so I would say it is OK for this purpose.

Seri

Ethoir wrote: »

It's not just ESO. I'm seeing it in Discord, Bethesda.net's launcher, and Star Trek Online. My ISP is trying to figure out if its my hardware at fault, but I gave them tracerts showing the ping spikes in action. They come and go frequently, making playing either ESO or STO less enjoyable. But more importantly, it makes downloading files and games slower too.

Those massive 1000ms lag spikes before it even leaves your ISP's network make it very likely to be something local to home for you.

AboveLegends

I created my own ticket just yesterday and it closed to be redirected here... which hasn't been resolved for 2 months now.

I'll probably cancel my plus service subscription until the game becomes playable again. I've put a lot of money and time into this service (game) that no one is maintaining properly - why should I be paying for this and not get reimbursed?

It shouldn't be the community's responsibility to reach out to third parties and find fixes. Get your *** together.

chaz

Hi, there is a lot to read here so I will skip ahead a bit. So, it is not only affecting N/A pc server, I have played for 2 days straight on the E/U server and it has the same issues.

Ok, so I have been here for a long time now. And after 4 years of playing it is only recently that I'm having these issues that has destroyed my gaming experience, so much I now [snip] hate this game, ****PERIOD*** !

All the money I have spent, all the time I have spent, all the dedication, resources, marketing by streaming of uploading for this game and or on this game is now a big fat waste. To me, these people here at zenimax know, """KNOW"" they are the cause and effect that is affecting so many many people now yet they do nothing but make this game worse.

All they have to do is turn off this crap. Thats it. If it due to hackers, well so what, I play games all the time that have hackers in it, I would rather spend my gaming life in eso with the 5% chance of meeting an actual hacker, than waste my 95% chance at high ping, lag and abrupt disconnects, server timed out, account already logged in, or notices that tells me to check if I , Yeah "" I "" have a valid internet connection.

Seriously? That message alone is enough to laugh at, if I didn't have internet connection how it is that I had obtained the launcher, and how would it then be that I would even get a message telling me to check my internet.

So unfortunately zenimax is their own Achilles heel in this situation. I have seen it but did not realize why until now why people are randomly canceling subs , it is because we can't even play this game. So why continue to dump money in a game that simply does not work? Thus, I myself recently canceled and am quitting this game. ZOS seems to think they have the best course of action in mind for all of us, but in fact they do not.

What they are doing to the server is only making people upset, angry, noxious, venomous, toxic, resentful, and so on. Even myself, after a good long run, all the positive aspects of this game is now overpowered by the negative aspects of this game. Making someone like me cancel and quit, let me tell you, it takes a lot. You don't know that, but it is true.

I don't know what else to say, other than what ever means I have I will be slowly and surely letting people know to stay away from this game because the server is trash. You can't play it. High ping causing lag, you can't [play], can't [dps], can't even tell if you're being hit by several [kill blows] to die before it's even too late.

All the free gifts in the world won't make up for this. Zenimax should hide their heads in shame for this.

[edited for profanity bypass]

chaz

Vapirko wrote: »

I did some research on this a while back after discovering the same thing. From what I understand Akamai was implemented to protect against DDOS attacks (a year or so ago? Maybe two?), that also coincided with a noticeable downgrade in connection quality especially for overseas users..

Which would be me as a perfect example as I'm in the Hawaiian Islands, which is far from the mainland.

chaz

RinaldoGandolphi wrote: »

I think its pretty irresponsible to blame this issue on Akamai. Akamai is one of the Internet Backbones for North American along with Level Networks 3 and Verizon who bought Genuiity.



I only get a 25ms ping inside Akamai's Network. All the request timeouts mean is that those routers filter ICMP Time Exceeded packets, which is common in many network setups. They in now way cause any issues.

Now my ISP is Comcast, and I know that Comcast has peering agreements with both Level 3 and Akamai. This could be the reason why I only see a 25 ms ping and you guys are seeing higher pings.

If you Google "Comcast Level 3 peering dispute" you will find that the big ISP often sign peering agreements where each side agrees to peer(allow traffic though the network) on contractual specified terms. If one side ends up peering more traffic then the other then that side usually ends up having to pay an agreed amount of cost via the contract. Its for these reasons that ISP's and Large CDN's will sometimes change routers on traffic if it appears they may be on the short end of the peering agreement.

Simply put, their are routes for traffic coming from networks where a peering agreement is in place, and routes for traffic that doesn't come from a source with a peering agreement. It has been like this since 1990's, these are signed contracts between companies. This is the reason it seems every year AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner, etc...the big ones raise rates, because costs go up on both sides due to these peering agreements.

If your traffic is being funneled though a node that seems slower, its probably being done because your ISP is on the short side of the agreement to peer traffic and has to send that traffic though a different route until they even out the peering arrangement.

I don't see this as Akamai's fault, even Akamai has been on the short side of this with Level 3 and Comcast before and had to dial things back a bit to get things even again. Their are no routers overloaded on Akamai's side of the fence.

It is what it is. Maybe one day this will change, but for now even perring network traffic isn't a free lunch, and no company should be forced to peer someones traffic for free.

This is actually very old news:

https://youtu.be/HnbDsqzK5ss?t=127

And to go on further, why should I have to discontinue my service with what I'm using now, which is Spectrum, and having to live on an Island over seas buddy, limited options to get internet services, FURTHERMORE, I'm going to point out to you, and especially ZENIMAX, buddy I have been using spectrum all this time, if my game was running fine, why thee *** would """ALL OF A SUDDEN"" this issue be a problem?

So can you even see what you wrote? It makes clearly no sense at all. To be objective here, and I will be crystal clear about this so there is no confusion or misunderstandings,

1. I have been with spectrum all this time
2. Game runs fine
3. September, when downloading the last patch of the month was being ISP blocked, on,,,,, not my end, has this issue become a problem
4. September, begins blocked files (2 files actually out of the entire patch packet, Odd HUH?) for the game launcher, and additional high end latency issue (High ping)
5. High ping end of September/ Beginning of October turns to massive lag
6. Beginning of November massive lag and high end ping begins random disconnects, server time out, and unplayable game.

Now how is any of this my fault?

Did I someone unwittingly subscribe to a 3rd party "CDN" that I have never heard of until today? How is any of this my fault as a paying customer, paying for a game and counting on and relying on and depending on the content providers, **eg Zenimax** to provide me a valid means to access their content without interruptions, saturation, IP forwarding from normal high end net transit to low end net transit services? I, as a paying customer, this should all be blamed on me for paying out my money and begging to get high end ping, lag and disconnects for no good reason simply because I love throwing my money away for free to enrich the pockets of the content providers that distribute these packets in order for me to play a game. Well that is basically what you just claimed.

If you disagree with that, take case in point, on my end, same service, same location, same ISP, same Island over seas, 4 years of nigh perfect playing, then one day and out of the blue, Since the last week of September 2018, I'm getting hit so conveniently by several issues. When nothing I have done has changed. Well I will take a little of that back, in May 2018 I bought a newer high end top model computer in order to play these types of games, yet since May, right up to the last week of September is definitely where I started having problems.

I'm sorry , those of you that want to blindly defend zenimax have every right to. But it's not going to do you any good because the rest of us see where the issue is and it's not up to us to fix it. Zenimax, in all intents and purposes will not even speak to when they subscribed to akamai, if it's been there all along or just something new they started and or if in regards to has always been here, then what of contract? Did they renew it or agree or disagree to certain terms, meaning if they had to pay more for services to fulfill the needs of their paying customers to receive packets which area are going to have high end transit and which area will not have the premium service.

So again, true believer here since the end of September is where these issues started to snowball and none of us are getting the proper customer service, and it appears this company (zos) has no public relations department to even do a press release of any and or all information they have in their discovery as to what may be causing so much trouble for their customers, with proper customer service apologies, addressing all of us in a manner that will be satisfactory.