Increased network latency to Europe servers — part 4

For the past couple weeks, the latency described in my previous blog posts has been somewhat tolerable. There have been times where it’s gotten pretty bad, but overall it’s been acceptable (averaging around 500ms). I’ve also seen a couple occasions where it’s dropped to under 200ms, which is ideal (pristine, even!), but it only lasts for a few minutes.

During the past 2-3 days when I’d see 800-1000ms latency, my mtrs would show absolutely no packet loss in Paris or Frankfurt. That indicates the problem (at that time) was somewhere between Frankfurt and the Blizzard server itself (which isn’t visible in any traceroute), or something on the server.

I decided to check the forums to see what others have been seeing… and sure enough, the problem continues. The official thread (for February) is listed first:

European English realm list

What a morning! First my ISP decided to do some form of maintenance which took 3+ hours, and now Quel’Thalas is down (easily confirmed by trying to connect to 80.239.149.29 on TCP port 3724 — no answer), despite what the Realm Status page says. Or, well, it was down — and it wasn’t just me who noticed, either…

This, along with a post from a Blizzard rep. about server location, got me wondering: what exactly are the IPs of the servers, and where are they geographically situated? Well that’s somewhat of a pain to figure out… but I bust out Wireshark this morning, spent some time analysing packets, and then hand-editing the results to get server names, their IPs and TCP port numbers, and where they’re located geographically.

Increased network latency to Europe servers — part 3

Folks in the Netherlands apparently lost all connectivity to all European Realms on the 29th, supposedly due to a fibre cut somewhere. The following LeaseWeb item documents the problem:

http://storingsoverzicht.nl/2009/01/29/problems-in-telia-network/

The official WoW Forum thread for the issue is quite long (presently 16 pages), and the last few pages are continued indication that the issue is more widespread than just the Netherlands:

Lag since roughly 15.00 today (Netherlands)

A fibre cut could indeed explain general oversaturation of a router or network interface, resulting in packet loss and high latency.

Also, I see that the US Realms experienced what were labelled “rolling restarts” yesterday. I logged on to WoW tonight to see the message “Server shutdown in 13:00″. Nothing on the “Breaking News” page indicated the European Realms were undergoing rolling restarts — but Blizzard’s Realm Status page had the following to say:

30/01 Rolling restarts

There will be rolling restarts of all realms to apply hotfixes, starting at approximately 05:00, Paris time (CET). Each realm will receive a 15 minute notice prior to being restarted.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Equally as interesting: if they’re being restarted, why does the message say server shutdown and not restart like usual? This makes me think they’re actually fixing something server-side (server/daemon software update).

Increased network latency to Europe servers — part 2

The problem I spoke about in my previous post is still occurring. Blizzard’s official thread for the problem is:

Latency Submission Thread | 23rd Jan 2009

This morning I woke up to read a thread on the forums which indicated most Belgian players can’t connect at all. Blizzard, in their infinite wisdom, recommended the users use IPCONFIG /FLUSHDNS and reset their DSL/cable modems. A few of the users pointed out the same thing I have: the problem is with Telia, particularly their POP in Paris.

While I was asleep, apparently some members in our guild who live in Sweden were also seeing crazy latency and bizarre “bursty” lag.

Increased network latency to Europe servers

Starting a few days ago, latency to the World of Warcraft EU servers has been significant. Many users — including myself — are reporting in-game latencies ranging from 500ms all the way into the tens of thousands. Users located in North America, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, and other portions of Europe are experiencing this issue.

There is a WoW EU Forum thread about this problem. Be sure to note the timestamps of the replies, even though the thread itself was started in 2008:

16/01/2008 – Latency Submission Thread

Notepad addons

So today I went looking for a simple notepad-like addon for WoW — something where you could write notes about certain things (reminders, “next time I’m in Gadgetzan do this”, etc.) and save them.

The current state of such addons for WoW is atrocious, bordering on absurd.  In fact, based on my findings, there isn’t a single addon that suffices (most do not work at all).  Here’s a list and their problems:

Jotter K — doesn’t work with 2.4.3; last update was in 2006

Omnibus — doesn’t work with 2.4.3, despite many beta builds being available according to the FishEye ChangeLog on WowAce

nefPad — doesn’t work with 2.4.3; interface also appears to be complete garbage, author admits he “is not happy with the state of this addon”

NoteIt — doesn’t work with 2.4.3; last update was in 2007

NoteIt (resurrected by Zayla) — also doesn’t work with 2.4.3; last update was 2007

NotesUNeed — works with 2.4.3, but is complete and total overkill.  Guaranteed to be bloated as hell, and supports numerous multi-player/sharing capabilities with no way to disable them (from what I can tell; the screenshot on Curse is horrible, impossible to read)

Rashenn’s Notepad — doesn’t work with 2.4.3; last update was in 2007

tekPad — doesn’t work with 2.4.3; tekpad.toc’s Interface version string refers to Wrath of the Lich King.  Editing the version string makes the addon supposedly load, but the /pad and /tekpad do not work (no such command)

TinyPad — doesn’t work with 2.4.3; claims “Incompatible addon”.  Choosing “Load out-of-date addons” doesn’t work

Like I said: the state of something as simple as a note add-on is absolutely atrocious.  TinyPad is quite possibly the best one of the bunch, based on screenshots and user comments, but what good is it unless it’s maintained or at least updated to work with the present-day client?

Amazing.