Few questions regarding ISP routing to a game server.

[electronicworld]

Hello everyone, i have 200 mbps internet connection with relatively low ping (40-50) to many game servers around europe, i have recently got back to playing WoW and i have noticed i have about 140-150 ms latency.

I brought this problem on the game forum, and the GM responded. Asked me to run a tracert command through cmd to blizzard servers, and here is the result.

Tracing route to 185.60.112.157 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 10 ms 9 ms * host-213-14-0-246.reverse.superonline. net [213.14.0.246]
3 4 ms 3 ms * 10.36.251.29
4 * 8 ms * 10.40.141.51
5 4 ms 3 ms * 10.38.219.5
6 3 ms 3 ms * ix-ae-6-0.tcore1.it6-ankara.as6453. net [5.23.8.21]
7 46 ms * 46 ms if-ae-47-2.tcore1.fr0-frankfurt.as6453. net [5.23.8.13]
8 47 ms 47 ms 47 ms if-ae-54-2.tcore2.fr0-frankfurt.as6453. net [195.219.219.73]
9 * * * Request timed out.
10 54 ms 56 ms 54 ms ae1.3104.edge7.Amsterdam1.level3. net [4.69.162.177]
11 139 ms 139 ms 139 ms BLIZZARD-EN.edge7.Amsterdam1.Level3. net [212.72.41.90]
12 139 ms 177 ms 138 ms ae1-br01-eqam1.as57976. net [137.221.78.33]
13 138 ms 139 ms 138 ms 137.221.65.75
14 137 ms 137 ms 136 ms 137.221.78.51
15 139 ms 139 ms 138 ms 185.60.112.157

The big jump in latency happens on route 10 to route 11

The gamemaster analyzed the results and told me its a problem on my part and i should contact the ISP and get them to fix routing.

First question is; Is this a problem on my ISP's end, is he correct with the analysis ? Since it only happens with this one game.

Second question is; Can my ISP do anything about it, if i bring this up ?

Third question; If the ISP cant do anything, is there anything i could do about it ?

Fourth question; Would demanding the ISP to change my IP adress and changing it, fix the routing issue ?

Sorry for the long post, looking forward to answers. Since i am a noob and have little to no knowledge about networking, i apologize if the questions are utter non sense and a waste of time.

 

[Solaris17]

Oh boy lots to unpack here.

I responded inline.

Hello everyone, i have 200 mbps internet connection with relatively low ping (40-50) to many game servers around europe, i have recently got back to playing WoW and i have noticed i have about 140-150 ms latency.

I brought this problem on the game forum, and the GM responded. Asked me to run a tracert command through cmd to blizzard servers, and here is the result.

blah blah

Tracing route to 185.60.112.157 over a maximum of 30 hops

This likely isnt the server itself, this is probably the IP to the cluster in which the servers run on. For your purpose "close enough".

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
Local hop from your machine to router.

2 10 ms 9 ms * host-213-14-0-246.reverse.superonline. net [213.14.0.246]
First connection to ISP node. This probably exists in a box somewhere on your block.

3 4 ms 3 ms * 10.36.251.29
4 * 8 ms * 10.40.141.51
5 4 ms 3 ms * 10.38.219.5
Private network of your ISP likely something like
3a. Ingress border router from DSLAM
4a. AGG switch
5a. Edge router for peering

6 3 ms 3 ms * ix-ae-6-0.tcore1.it6-ankara.as6453. net [5.23.8.21]
this edge router has the prefix (ix) so this is the interchange between your ISP to ankara networks. (This is the first step on how it will get to blizzards supernet.)

7 46 ms * 46 ms if-ae-47-2.tcore1.fr0-frankfurt.as6453. net [5.23.8.13]
ankara frankfurt agg iface 47 core router 1

8 47 ms 47 ms 47 ms if-ae-54-2.tcore2.fr0-frankfurt.as6453. net [195.219.219.73]
ankara frankfurt aff iface 54 core router 2

9 * * * Request timed out.
Hidden internal hop that is ignoring ICMP traffic thus the stars, this router is really busy but more than likely this is a border device between networks, prob the next hand off.

10 54 ms 56 ms 54 ms ae1.3104.edge7.Amsterdam1.level3. net [4.69.162.177]
Handoff, ankara frankfurt to L3 ams on L3s edge router.

11 139 ms 139 ms 139 ms BLIZZARD-EN.edge7.Amsterdam1.Level3. net [212.72.41.90]
L3 edge 7 this is the edge router in the blizzard supernet.

12 139 ms 177 ms 138 ms ae1-br01-eqam1.as57976. net [137.221.78.33]
as57976 is owned by blizzard we are now on the internal routed network.

13 138 ms 139 ms 138 ms 137.221.65.75
14 137 ms 137 ms 136 ms 137.221.78.51
No idea how these are segmented but the supernet matches -ish these are internal routers or agg switches that are moving your traffic to wows servers.

15 139 ms 139 ms 138 ms 185.60.112.157
Target IP. This the load balancer or public facing ip for the cluster. (this is not assigned to a game server, this is simply how the traffic will get into the internal network to talk to the servers/services)

I will try to explain this clearly. Inside the quote

The big jump in latency happens on route 10 to route 11
Thats because this is when L3 hands traffic off to blizzards network.

The gamemaster analyzed the results and told me its a problem on my part and i should contact the ISP and get them to fix routing.
No. The problem is on neither part and he doesn't know how to read an MTR.

First question is; Is this a problem on my ISP's end, is he correct with the analysis ? Since it only happens with this one game.
The latency spike does not exist inside your ISP network.

Second question is; Can my ISP do anything about it, if i bring this up ?
Hm, for normal consumers probably not. It will also depend on your NOCs capability. Basically, what is happening is that the latency is increasing outside your ISPs network and on entry to blizzards. This is because of a few things.

1: That is probably the ingress for everyone in the area/taking that route. So load on that router at blizzard is probably high in general. Not to be confused with your ISP. This is the router to ams from fra via L3 communications. Probably for the entire country to blizzards AS.

2: The route itself adds latency with every hop. YOUR latency IE from your ISP to the network is fine. Your issue is the TOTAL latency. You and your ISP cannot fix someone elses network. They MAY be able to shave a few MS off with a ROUTE CHANGE to your target IP. this may reduce your TOTAL latency to that IP but it will not fix the latency of that network.

Will they do any of this for some random kid that wants to play wow? No.

Third question; If the ISP cant do anything, is there anything i could do about it ?
Nope, you dont work for L3 or blizzard. and AFAIK your not a network engineer.

Fourth question; Would demanding the ISP to change my IP adress, and after the change, would the routing change ?

Nope, I dont know when or why people think IP changes are gods gift to earth, but they arent. Your ISP assigns a block of IPs to the AS in that AREA. you will get a new IP and it will be part of the same AS. and you will get the same results because that may be the only route TO BLIZZARD in your area/AS.

Sorry for the long post, looking forward to answers. Since i am a noob and have little to no knowledge about networking, i apologize if the questions are utter non sense and a waste of time.

Just enjoy your game.

 

[N3utro]

Dont use traceroute to check this, use WinMTR instead (open source).

If WinMTR indeed shows that you have packet loss / latency to this specific IP, buy a 1 month VPN subscription from one of the most popular VPNs providers (nordvpn / expressvpn / ect) and check if it fixes the problem.

If with a VPN the problem is solved it means the link between your home and the game server through your ISP is saturated (the vpn allows you to take an alternative, non saturated route). In other words, your ISP is greedy and doesn't want to pay enough for the link to your game server to be correct.

In that case you can either keep a VPN subscription (not very convenient) or change to an ISP in your country that has better peering (it's useless to try to contact superonline support, they wont do anything). Search on google on turkish specialized forums on ISP peering where you can find that kind of information. You can also try WinMTR with your neighbours to see if peering is better with their ISP. Turkish Telecom is probably the first thing you'd like to try instead of superonline.

 

[electronicworld]

Hey guys, i have fixed my issue.

I have told the ISP about the problem in this specific routing.

They have changed my static IP, and gave me a new one, which then changed my routing to the game servers. I am back to 60ms again.

 

[eidairaman1]

Hey guys, i have fixed my issue.

I have told the ISP about the problem in this specific routing.

They have changed my static IP, and gave me a new one, which then changed my routing to the game servers. I am back to 60ms again.

Sounds like they changed a card on you