Problems with Akamai DDOS protection used by ESO - my ISPs response (Huge pings and packet loss)

Lashiec9 · August 2017

I posted this forum post on a common support forum for my ISP and network experts in Australia. It turns out this is very very similar to posts I see here complaining about lag since Morrowind/PvP DDOS fixes.

With ZOS being the customer of Akamai - maybe you can do something about it.

Original can be found here:
https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=2656949

In summary this is what ISP reps stated:

Akamai are advertising that subnet 198.20.200.0/24 at the Honk Kong Internet Exchange, and iiNet is using Singapore via SWM3 as a best path (the alternative to HK via the east coast would be slower from Perth).

This game server appears to be protected by Akamai Prolexic, which is an anti-(D)DoS routing service. That is the reason the path within/beyond Akamai's network is hidden. According to iiNet looking glass, there is no alternative path advertised, so the routing decision is Akamai's and iiNet has little say in it.

Lashiec writes...
So should I be messaging Akamai?

No, this advertisement is deliberate. Possibly the destination server is seeing malicious traffic so they are trying to mitigate the effect by using Akamai's Prolexic service.

And finally:

The basic way prolexic works is
1. Direct traffic to somewhere they have a lot of capacity.
2. Filter out any DOS or otherwise unwanted data.
3. Pass on 'clean' traffic to the target server.

Users for any protected server worldwide will be routed to the closest scrubbing centre.
Users and attackers route through the
closest scrubbing center where malicious
IP addresses are identified and blocked

Akamai also claims they have such a scrubbing centre in Sydney, and if so, I'm not sure why it does not appear to be used by Australian ISPs.
Dedicated global network —
Akamai’s Prolexic network includes seven globally distributed scrubbing centers with more than 3.5 Tbps of dedicated network bandwidth today.
Scrubbing centers are located in Ashburn, VA (USA), Frankfurt (Germany), Hong Kong (China), London(UK), San Jose, CA (USA), Sydney (Australia) and Tokyo (Japan)
source: https://www.akamai.com/us/en/multimedia/documents/product-brief/prolexic-routed-product-brief.pdf

edit: here's a press release about the Sydney centre from March 1st, 2016 https://www.akamai.com/us/en/about/news/press/2016-press/new-scrubbing-centre-in-sydney-will-combat-ddos-attacks.jsp

Phorumserfer · August 2017

Bump.

Would be nice to be able to play the game I payed $80 for.

asuzab16_ESO · August 2017

I am just going to copy the message I wrote in a different but related post. Playing ESO in good conditions from Australia has been almost impossible during the past month.

Same here playing from Australia. It has now been 3 weeks since this problem started, right after the maintenance, and so far I haven't seen any improvement. I went from 220ms to 400ms and the game has been barely playable since then. I can feel the latency in PvE and PvP became impossible. My unchanged latency in other games and other ESO players having the same issues confirm that it is not a problem coming from my internet connexion. My Australian and Kiwi mates are in the same situation and from what I can read on the forum, we are not the only countries.

It really sucks because I had decided to give another chance to ESO (left a few weeks after the release) a few months ago and so far, I was very happy with the current state of the game. I was really looking forward to keep progressing in the game but after three weeks of logging, hoping that things would be better, I just decided to give up and I now just cancelled my ESO+ subscription and decided to go for another MMO. I will probably check in 6 months or a year if the problems are fixed and maybe give it a try again. Still frustrating because I really enjoyed my time playing ESO and I was hoping that I could keep doing so...

MickeyBN · August 2017

I think the most frustrating thing is the lack of communication from ZOS, which they are famous for.

ZOS did something that changed Australia's latency, they didn't tell us what they did or why, and they have yet to tell us how to fix it.

MarzAttakz · August 2017

It's exactly the same for me - South Africa via SEACOM to EU.

My VPN ping fluctuates naturally between 170 - 190ms, in game 300 - 500ms regularly. Even when it registers sub-300 the UI response feels far slower. First night of HotR things felt relatively smooth, yesterday I arrive at Dolmens *sigh* get three skills off and my ping spikes to 3500 with maybe 10 players around, running away from the Dolmen eventually results in the latency stabilizing, staying at the Dolmen usually results in a drop, not a chest, an account drop.

Tandor · August 2017

MickeyBN wrote: »

I think the most frustrating thing is the lack of communication from ZOS, which they are famous for.

ZOS did something that changed Australia's latency, they didn't tell us what they did or why, and they have yet to tell us how to fix it.

What they have said is that they have been subject to considerable DDOS attacks and that for obvious reasons they are unwilling to go into details of what they have done to mitigate them in future. We tend to assume that the attacks were directly on ZOS's servers, but perhaps they were more on the network leading to the servers. Either way, the OP provides useful information which does make things a bit clearer, and either way it is those perpetrating DDOS attacks who impact on everything we do on the internet and not those taking measures to mitigate that impact.

ZOS_GinaBruno · August 2017

Hey all, could you please submit a Support ticket and paste your ticket number here? To get the ball rolling, go ahead and include your pathping and tracert info. Thanks!

asuzab16_ESO · August 2017

Thank you for your answer @ZOS_GinaBruno

Here's my ticket number : 170817-000401

In my case, I played from Melbourne for months and I was ALWAYS between 200 and 220ms. At the moment, I am usually around 350ms and I can't pvp anymore because the high latency and spikes make players teleport.

Here's the pathping and tracert info :

Détermination de l'itinéraire vers 195.122.154.1 avec un maximum de 30 sauts.

0 Vince.lan [10.1.1.98]
1 dsldevice.lan [10.1.1.1]
2 lo0.bras1.mel11.on.ii.net [150.101.32.129]
3 be1.cr2.mel11.on.ii.net [150.101.35.169]
4 ae10.cr1.mel4.on.ii.net [150.101.35.207]
5 ae2.br1.syd7.on.ii.net [150.101.33.28]
6 ae0.br1.syd4.on.ii.net [150.101.33.14]
7 be19.cr2.syd2.on.ii.net [150.101.40.131]
8 syd-apt-ros-wgw1-be-40.tpgi.com.au [202.7.162.249]
9 203.29.134-4.tpgi.com.au [203.29.134.4]
10 ix-xe-0-3-0-0.tcore2.SQN-San-Jose.as6453.net [64.86.21.149]
11 if-ae-5-2.tcore2.PDI-Palo-Alto.as6453.net [64.86.21.2]
12 62.157.248.217
13 217.239.45.238
14 195.122.154.1

Traitement des statistiques pendant 350 secondes...
Source vers ici Ce nœud/lien
Saut RTT Perdu/Envoyé = % Perdu/Envoyé = % Adresse
0 Vince.lan [10.1.1.98]
0/ 100 = 0% |
1 3ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% dsldevice.lan [10.1.1.1]
0/ 100 = 0% |
2 79ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% lo0.bras1.mel11.on.ii.net [150.101.32.129]
0/ 100 = 0% |
3 71ms 1/ 100 = 1% 1/ 100 = 1% be1.cr2.mel11.on.ii.net [150.101.35.169]
0/ 100 = 0% |
4 87ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% ae10.cr1.mel4.on.ii.net [150.101.35.207]
0/ 100 = 0% |
5 97ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% ae2.br1.syd7.on.ii.net [150.101.33.28]
0/ 100 = 0% |
6 116ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% ae0.br1.syd4.on.ii.net [150.101.33.14]
0/ 100 = 0% |
7 82ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% be19.cr2.syd2.on.ii.net [150.101.40.131]
0/ 100 = 0% |
8 67ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% syd-apt-ros-wgw1-be-40.tpgi.com.au [202.7.162.249]
0/ 100 = 0% |
9 70ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 203.29.134-4.tpgi.com.au [203.29.134.4]
0/ 100 = 0% |
10 251ms 1/ 100 = 1% 1/ 100 = 1% ix-xe-0-3-0-0.tcore2.SQN-San-Jose.as6453.net [64.86.21.149]
0/ 100 = 0% |
11 240ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% if-ae-5-2.tcore2.PDI-Palo-Alto.as6453.net [64.86.21.2]
0/ 100 = 0% |
12 266ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 62.157.248.217
0/ 100 = 0% |
13 421ms 2/ 100 = 2% 2/ 100 = 2% 217.239.45.238
0/ 100 = 0% |
14 413ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 195.122.154.1

Itinéraire déterminé.

Vapirko · November 2017

Did this ever get resolved? Just got back to SE Asia from the US and noticed the ping is freakin awful.