Akamai routing ESO though Sydney, Australia

MrGarlic

Seriously.

Why ZOS, why?

People all over the world on both EU and NA servers are being routed through Sydney because of your use of Akamai.

It's not like you are not aware of the issues Akamai causes to latency as this thread shows.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/439549/oceanic-lag-now-300-400-ms-even-with-a-vpn-was-250-300/p1

And while I appreciate your gesture of showing our friends in the northern hemisphere what ESO ping is like from our Oceanic region, so they can see how crap our ping is all the time for us, I really don't think this is a good idea.

You need to acknowledge this and fix it ASAP.

Someone at ZOS needs to be on the phone to Akamai right now.

REF:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/505527/ping-after-mx#latest
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/505571/can-we-get-an-acknowledgement-and-resolution-to-the-12-18-maintenance-ping-issue-please#latest
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/505556/minimum-300-ms-ping-in-kaal-pc-na-after-todays-patch#latest

And this thread shows a tracert (from @tmbrinks) from the USA showing a route through Sydney
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/505531/200-extra-ping-after-maintenance-in-pc-na#latest

My own tracert ends in Sydney where it disappears into the abyss that is Akamai

Jaraal

It's the primary reason for all the lag, but they'll tell you that they have a contract in place and can't do anything about it.

MrGarlic

Jaraal wrote: »

It's the primary reason for all the lag, but they'll tell you that they have a contract in place and can't do anything about it.

Experience says they won't acknowledge a problem at all. They certainly won't discuss anything security related, which their contract with Akamai Prolexic anti-DDoS would fall under.

JohnVNovelli

Skyrim is the last chance they have at baiting some more money out of players before they pull the plug completely. Performance has been getting worse and worse in a period of time where they said they were making year long changes to improve it across the whole game. The horrible ping won't matter to the player base they are targeting anymore.

wild_kmacdb16_ESO

Sigh... get it together ZOS

Kurat

They probably did it to balance the game more lol. Aussies had disadvantage before.
Now everyone got 300+ ping. Game is now balanced.

ArgoCye

Well, since last night’s ps4 patch pvp is near unplayable for me in Aus - so routing through Sydney hasn’t helped at all!

Alinhbo_Tyaka

Common now you know ZOS rather nerf everyone rather than fix those that need a buff.

Royaji

You know, after Australian players were routed through some congested node in south-eastern Asia (I really don't remember what it was) for like a year and a half it might be time...

Akamai Wars, Episode 2: Revenge of the Aussies.

Mazbt

It just works.

MidnightMusical

Can confirm that my connection to the EU server is half the ping than the NA server when logging in from the southeast US

jcm2606

I'm sorry, but as an Aussie who had to deal with this for a year before Zenimax stopped sweeping it under the rug, this is actually hilarious. Akamai should have been dropped the moment they *** up Oceanic routing, or Zenimax should have had a serious talk with them and renegotiated their contract.

JJBoomer

so apparently ZOS just red bannered an issue with Xbox ESO Plus stuff, but nothing about the high ping, fps drop or disconnect issues. Fun. Now Im pissed off. Because this game *** worked yesterday. like a dream, and now its a pile of trash. maintenance is supposed to have a positive effect ZOS.

Im really starting to doubt that the year long "performance improvement" was nothing more than placating us. and that they haven't actually made any changes at all. smoke and mirrors.

But sure, SOME xbox players lost the ESO plus temporarily. Thats clearly the bigger issue here. maybe its time to boycott ZOS and hit them right in the finances.

Mr_Walker

Turns out all that "easy" content becomes a bit more punishing when lag gets to the 3-400ms mark, doesn't it...?

jcm2606

JJBoomer wrote: »

so apparently ZOS just red bannered an issue with Xbox ESO Plus stuff, but nothing about the high ping, fps drop or disconnect issues. Fun. Now Im pissed off. Because this game *** worked yesterday. like a dream, and now its a pile of trash. maintenance is supposed to have a positive effect ZOS.

Im really starting to doubt that the year long "performance improvement" was nothing more than placating us. and that they haven't actually made any changes at all. smoke and mirrors.

But sure, SOME xbox players lost the ESO plus temporarily. Thats clearly the bigger issue here. maybe its time to boycott ZOS and hit them right in the finances.

If it's gonna be anything like the Oceanic ping issues we had for like a year from last October, they'll sweep it under the rug and act like nothing's wrong.

Again, Akamai should have been dropped the moment the Oceanic issues cropped up. It's insane that they've stuck with them for so long.

TheFM

Yeah my connection somehow bombs out the second it hits the eso servers now xD

SkysOutThizeOut

Have they acknowledged at all?

JJBoomer

here's mine for PC/NA from east coast

TheFM

SkysOutThizeOut wrote: »

Have they acknowledged at all?

Nope, nothing, which isnt surprising considering how they have gone about the EU issues over the years.

Jaraal

MrGarlic wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

It's the primary reason for all the lag, but they'll tell you that they have a contract in place and can't do anything about it.

Experience says they won't acknowledge a problem at all. They certainly won't discuss anything security related, which their contract with Akamai Prolexic anti-DDoS would fall under.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/436992/high-latency-at-akamai-com

Hallothiel

Have no idea about any of this as am a console peasant so had to go and look up who/what the hell Akamai is.

All I can gather from the wiki entry is that they are meant to be fabulous and wonderful at delivering content via their network - specialising in routing via their servers nearest to the user for an amazing experience:

Receiving content from an Akamai server close to the user allows for faster download times and less vulnerability to network congestion. Akamai claims to provide better scalability by delivering the content over the last-mile from servers close to end-users, avoiding the middle-mile bottleneck of the Internet.

Are you saying this is not the case?! 🤣🤣

Jaraal

Hallothiel wrote: »

Have no idea about any of this as am a console peasant so had to go and look up who/what the hell Akamai is.

It's like a virtual border crossing on the Interstate freeway, where traffic slows down and filters through a bunch of gates so you and your vehicle can get inspected and searched for bad stuff like drugs, undocumented passengers, etc. Except in this case, the cars are data on the internet, which gets slowed down and filtered through the Akamai firewall, and is searched for trojans, hacks, and other sorts of malicious bits and bytes. Once it passes inspection and gets "scrubbed", it gets sent along the way to your destination..... which in this case is the ZOS servers and your computer.

When traffic gets heavy, it will tend to back up, and these choke points are the primary source of your latency and lag.

dem0n1k

Yay! Everyone gets the "playing ESO from Australia" experience! Remember to get your room up to 104 degrees F for the full immersive experience! XD

(Joking... I would not wish the 'playing ESO from Australia' on anyone)

wavingblue

In response ZOS is going to turn off trading data.

Banana

Welcome to our world

Banana

That new server guy cant be hired fast enough. I hope they like overtime

Contaminate

ArchMikem wrote: »

JohnVNovelli wrote: »

ZonasArch wrote: »

JohnVNovelli wrote: »

Skyrim is the last chance they have at baiting some more money out of players before they pull the plug completely. Performance has been getting worse and worse in a period of time where they said they were making year long changes to improve it across the whole game. The horrible ping won't matter to the player base they are targeting anymore.

I've read "pull the plug" to this game since tamriel unlimited became a thing. When was that?

No need for an answer.. just reflect on it. See how dumb your statement is.

6 star forum warrior look at you go baby

Those year long changes don't even really start until Q1 of 2020, it's all laid out in their timeline. Though with your single forum star you probably didn't even read it.

Their year long improvement plan started about three years too late

And so far their “improvements” made things worse:
- Guild finder lagging out the game on release, causing a neutering of trade guild tools for nearly a month until the addon creators managed to make it work
- LFG tool not working for groups of three, or at all, crashing, creating 30+ people BG teams
- Every single post-maintenance day full of new lag, the same bugs, sometimes new bugs, generally worse performance than the game had the day prior

I won’t hold my breath for any kind of meaningful improvement. If it happens I’ll be pleasantly surprised, it things keep getting worse, they’d be meeting my expectations.

jcm2606

Contaminate wrote: »

ArchMikem wrote: »

JohnVNovelli wrote: »

ZonasArch wrote: »

JohnVNovelli wrote: »

Skyrim is the last chance they have at baiting some more money out of players before they pull the plug completely. Performance has been getting worse and worse in a period of time where they said they were making year long changes to improve it across the whole game. The horrible ping won't matter to the player base they are targeting anymore.

I've read "pull the plug" to this game since tamriel unlimited became a thing. When was that?

No need for an answer.. just reflect on it. See how dumb your statement is.

6 star forum warrior look at you go baby

Those year long changes don't even really start until Q1 of 2020, it's all laid out in their timeline. Though with your single forum star you probably didn't even read it.

Their year long improvement plan started about three years too late

And so far their “improvements” made things worse:
- Guild finder lagging out the game on release, causing a neutering of trade guild tools for nearly a month until the addon creators managed to make it work
- LFG tool not working for groups of three, or at all, crashing, creating 30+ people BG teams
- Every single post-maintenance day full of new lag, the same bugs, sometimes new bugs, generally worse performance than the game had the day prior

I won’t hold my breath for any kind of meaningful improvement. If it happens I’ll be pleasantly surprised, it things keep getting worse, they’d be meeting my expectations.

This. The point of server upgrades is to reinforce the servers for when a pop spike happens, not to stop the servers burning in the middle of or after a pop spike. They should have happened years ago.

IndianaJames7

How do you check what route your computing is using as others have posted?

MrGarlic

IndianaJames7 wrote: »

How do you check what route your computing is using as others have posted?

Open a Command Prompt on your PC. (Type CMD in your 'run' box after right clicking on the windows icon.)

Type tracert 198.20.198.110 and hit enter.

mrfrontman

It's amazing ZoS hasn't taken Akamai to court and filed any sort of legal action yet. Akamai is the primary reason so many people have quit the game, costing ZoS tons of money. If they have a contract in place, I'm 99% sure that a negative impact wasn't part of the deal so the question remains - Why won't ZoS do ANYTHING?