What can done about LAG?

Actually it looks pretty horrid, especially at hop 9:

--
Robin Locksley, lvl 30 Archer
Thistledown

...

I seem to notice most of people with bad lag come form the US or europe, I
live in new zealand and although i do sometime have bad lag it is rare, I
guess it that there is less traffic entering the Us from the west as there
is from the east.
...

This is the trace info I get to mszone, it does not look to bad, certainly
not bad enough for the +1000ms ping times I get in the game at the moment.
What do you think?

Roger

1,,Timeout,n/a,
2,62.252.66.197,99ms,ltn-dam2-a-fa10.inet.ntl.com,
3,62.252.64.137,288ms,ltn-core-a-pos1000.inet.ntl.com,
4,62.253.187.194,303ms,gfd-bb-a-atm100-816.inet.ntl.com,
5,62.253.188.245,90ms,lng-bb-a-so-110-0.inet.ntl.com,
6,62.253.188.141,122ms,lng-bb-b-ge-130-0.inet.ntl.com,
7,208.185.188.41,90ms,above-ntl-2.lhr.above.net,
8,208.184.231.21,165ms,lga1-lhr1-stm4.lga1.above.net,
9,208.184.233.218,851ms,core3-core2-oc48.lga1.above.net,
10,207.45.196.133,177ms,if-8-3.core1.NewYork.Teleglobe.net,
11,64.86.80.29,169ms,if-7-1.core1.Montreal.Teleglobe.net,
12,207.45.221.132,168ms,if-3-0-0.bb2.Montreal.Teleglobe.net,
13,207.45.203.14,235ms,ix-11-0-1.bb2.Montreal.Teleglobe.net,
14,208.158.6.68,224ms,None,
15,206.48.57.74,218ms,None,
16,209.88.239.242,219ms,None,
17,206.128.208.250,216ms,None,
18,209.88.238.14,223ms,#

...

While someplaces may be speedy at any given time, the networks you use to
get to a specific place may not be. Hence, the behavior you see. Just as
an example, I traced the path from my office to the newserver you use
(news2-win.server.ntlworld.com). The path is quite clearly congested.
Here's a snippit;

11 mae-east-gw1.cableol.net (192.41.177.137) 139.169 ms 136.741 ms
142.861 ms
12 win-dc-a-atm500-2.inet.ntl.com (194.168.118.237) 336.438 ms 312.358 ms
293.937 ms
13 win-dc-a-ge400.inet.ntl.com (62.253.188.162) 322.736 ms 357.872 ms
362.950 ms
14 news2-win.server.ntlworld.com (62.253.162.102) 403.907 ms 428.020 ms *

That shows a 400+ms roundtrip time just for a tiny 32 byte packet. It also
shows a transit across MAE-EAST which is a very crowded interconnect between
the NSP backbones (and others).

To see the path that you take to get to the AC servers, use the tracert
utility (or traceroute on a UNIX box) from a command prompt. The two I use
to check to the Zone are:

c:\tracert mic.zone.com
c:\tracert web11.zone.com

You will reach a point when you'll just starting seeing a "request timed
out" as ICMP echo/replies are blackholed by many companies these days
(including Microsoft). You might also try traceroutes to a variety of
places to see the differences along the different paths.

--
Robin Locksley, lvl 30 Archer
Thistledown

...

I polled quite a few players tonight and all confirmed they were seeing more
lag. I appreciate the ones who were not may not have bothered to reply.

In my case my internet access speeds are as fast as ever (including other
online games), its only with AC I am seeing the problems. Up until
Christmas I was not seeing the problem to the current level with AC. A
year of experience with AC and the www should be long enough to gauge the
www is not the problem now.

What I am trying to ascertain is just how many people have lag problems as
opposed to those that don't. If its everybody then lobbying Turbine is a
possibility. If its just a few than I suppose I will have to accept it and
move on to something else.

Storm-Bird
Leafcull

...

The lag is most likely NOT server side, but caused simply by congestion on
the networks that make up the internet. There's only a finite amount of
bandwidth between any given set of points and with the myriad of
applications (games, telephony, etc., not to mention just regular old data)
that take advantage of the 'net, delays (lag) are expected. Ping times are
the amount of time it takes a packet to get from your computer to it's
destination and back. They're a good indication of latency in the network.
There's also distance to consider. Networks are ultimately only as fast the
physical layer they rely on. While many of the NSP backbones are fiber
based (ergo data travels at the speed of light), there's still physical
routers and copper connections along the path as well. Besides, even at
~300,000km/s, it takes an eternity (relatively speaking anyway) to travel
from London to Seattle.

--
Robin Locksley, lvl 33 Archer
Thistledown

...