Extreme Lag Spikes since 49.4

Assiniboia-1450 · March 18, 2020, 12:38am

I have been dropped or disconnected all week (since the latest patch went live) with no abnormal failure of service via my service provider (I mostly just spend forever on the Reconnecting Screen with no other option but to force quite the program).

I run a leaver deficit now which is incredibly frustrating because I do not choose to leave games, ever.

I am in Canada, however. Because no other service has been compromised (internet via the browser, Netflix/Prime, etc…) I can see no reason why this issue would be on my end. I have also changed my in-game settings from “ultra” to less than “high” and the performance does not change, the lag and endless reconnecting is simply less sharp.

My ping, according the speedtest, never rises above 14 and the download and upload speeds remain steady around 30mbps.

Jambrix · March 18, 2020, 1:32am

Hey there,

Based on what it sounds like this issue is probably going to be between your internet provider and the Blizzard network. Since your other internet activity is functioning correctly but Heroes of the Storm is having issues this lets us know that there’s something going on with that specific route through the internet to get to the Blizzard servers.

Speedtest the connection and pinging a local server wouldn’t really show any issues, but we may be able to identify the issues using WinMTR.

Download WinMTR

Right-click on the downloaded .zip folder and select “Extract All”, to extract the files to a new folder.

Open the new WinMTR-v092 folder that was created, then open the WinMTR_x32 folder.

Right-click on the WinMTR application and select “Run as administrator”.

Launch the game and join a match. Once you’re loaded into the match press Ctrl+Alt+F to bring up the performance stats in the upper-left corner and note the server you are connected to.

Quickly Alt+Tab out of the game and type the server IP address in the “Host” field.
Central - 24.105.62.129
West - 24.105.30.129
Australia - 103.4.114.233
Singapore - 202.9.67.59
Brazil - 54.207.104.145

Click “Start” to begin the test then Alt+Tab back into the game. Allow the test to run for the full duration of the match, then click on “Stop” when you’re done playing.

Click on “Export TEXT” to save the results as a text document, then post the results.

Nemesiz303-1776 · March 19, 2020, 2:43am

Do you use Bell or Rogers? because I have a similar issue sometimes. I use Rogers and I know for a fact every single day at around 8:00 PM EST the internet gets extremely extremely bad, I have 1GB and my ping still shoots up to 9000+. I don’t know what is up with them. Maybe this can help you bro.

Celestecia-1672 · March 19, 2020, 1:28pm

Also been having lag spikes for about a month, Happens 1-3 times per game, Ping would go up to 500ms causing game freezing. I am with Rogers.

Qualkhek-2795 · March 19, 2020, 2:25pm

Is this a Rogers thing? Makes sense.

Same boat here. 1GB connection that recently seems to be 200ms at the low end and frequently spikes to 6-900 causing second long screen lock then rubberbanding to catch up.

My region seems be all over the place too, im as far east as Canada goes and have routinely connected to US West over Central(there is no US East?)

Caterpepi · March 21, 2020, 9:43pm

We have a US Central server (Chicago). Some games do have temporarily USE servers when the servers are overloaded.

I wanted to mention that we are tracking reports of high latency and disconnection issues with Canada at the moment. So far we have seen reports from these ISPs:

Shaw Communications
Rogers Cable
Telus Communications
Bell Canada

Please include the WinMTR test Jambrix requested above.

Assiniboia-1450 · March 22, 2020, 6:01pm

From my attempt with Central. However, it seems to have spontaneously changed to Western, so I suspect this is not an accurate data set.

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

| WinMTR statistics |

|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|

| 10.0.0.1 - 90 | 11889 | 1238 | 1 | 14 | 2500 | 3 |

|rogers (included as link so couldn’t post) - 90 | 11887 | 1243 | 8 | 33 | 2500 | 19 |

| 24.156.143.1 - 90 | 11887 | 1243 | 5 | 31 | 2499 | 36 |

| 69.63.248.101 - 90 | 11887 | 1243 | 6 | 32 | 2499 | 48 |

| 209.148.233.102 - 90 | 11872 | 1242 | 22 | 48 | 2644 | 36 |

| No response from host - 100 | 1111 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

| Destination host unreachable. - 100 | 1112 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

| No response from host - 100 | 1111 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

| No response from host - 100 | 1110 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

|____________|||||||

WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider

Now. From Western, most recent game:

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

| WinMTR statistics |

|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|

| 10.0.0.1 - 90 | 8396 | 852 | 1 | 105 | 2605 | 4 |

|rogers (included as link) - 85 | 5494 | 849 | 10 | 140 | 3924 | 20 |

| 24.156.143.1 - 85 | 5498 | 849 | 10 | 137 | 3924 | 29 |

| 69.63.248.105 - 85 | 5494 | 849 | 8 | 137 | 3924 | 24 |

| Destination host unreachable. - 90 | 8432 | 849 | 21 | 150 | 2669 | 58 |

| No response from host - 100 | 222 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

| Destination host unreachable. - 100 | 15097 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

| No response from host - 100 | 222 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |

|____________|||||||

WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider

So. I suspect there is absolutely an issue with Rogers, as I am forced to use Rogers. However, I have been with this service since July 2019 and have only had issues as I explained in the original post.

There is a secondary issue with HoTs in which I cannot reconnect to a game without restarting battle.net app and HoTs. So, I must leave, reopen, start the game, then reconnect. Once it drops me in the game itself it will never reconnect, at all, no matter how long I wait or attempt to reconnect to my wifi by manually disconnecting and reconnecting.

Thanks for all your help everyone!

Jambrix · March 25, 2020, 12:22am

Hey there,

Thanks for the WinMTR tests

Both tests show huge latency and packet loss starting on the 1st “hop” which would be the connection to your router. Unfortunately we can’t tell exactly what is going wrong here, but the issue lies in the local connection to your router. It may be your wifi adapter is having issues, or the router device itself is at fault, or there’s some wireless interference causing it. From what the tests show you are completely disconnecting from the router, that’s usually what happens when you see the sent value so much higher than the received value in WinMTR data.

If you have the ability to hook up to the router with an ethernet cable, even temporarily just to test, that would be a good way to confirm if it’s a problem due to the wifi. Otherwise you would want to maybe try a different wifi adapter, try a different wifi band (2.4ghz vs 5ghz), or contact your internet provider so they can check the router to see if there’s any firmware updates available. If the router is an older one it may need to be replaced.

The secondary issue would likely be related to the disconnections as well, so if you can get those resolved the second issue would go away.

Assiniboia-1450 · March 29, 2020, 2:53pm

Thanks for getting back!

Resetting the router helps. However, except for general internet personality (or landlady mishaps), all the major issues ceased with the scheduled maintenance on this Tuesday past.