Elevated ping to GSG1 since nov 2020

Technical Support
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i play from Perth and have been getting 150ms on the singapore server gsg1 since november last year. i used to get 60ms on the amazon hosted pse1 before it changed to the google hosted gsg1. i am with the ISP MATE. i have not experienced high ping on any other game’s singaporean servers, only overwatch. other users are having the same problem with Aussie Broadband, and a friend of mine experienced the same thing with Dodo.

Blizzard keeps saying its an ISP problem, so i contacted MATE and was told it was not a problem on their end and that the elevated ping only occurs after the data leaves their network.

i have been using mudfish VPN to achieve 60ms again on gsg1. if the problem was the ISP’s routing, a VPN would not lower the latency. a VPN is also not a fix to the problem, it is a bandaid.

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And that’s probably true, since it looks to be happening on the middleman hops routing their traffic. It’s not the ISP network, and it’s not the Blizzard server, it’s the routing peer in the middle. The ISP has contracts with companies to route their data, so they (the ISP) have to resolve this on behalf of their customers.

As the staff mentioned in the previous thread, they have no control over ISP routing or changes. The average latency for most players in Perth is 60-80ms. Your ISP may share some hops, or the same routing partner, with AussieBB.

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would it not still go through those routing partners when using a vpn? do the routing partners and ISP route based on a per region or per IP address / website basis? trying to understand better

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It depends on how many routes are available out of the city/surrounding area to the destination. The VPN servers may not share the same routes, but there’s always a possibility that they do.

The ISP has their own network setup, but their lines don’t reach all over the country or world. They hand off their traffic to a routing partner that has hops available to take the data around and/or outside the country.

It looks something like this:
Your home > ISP network > peering partner > possible 2nd/3rd peering partners > Blizzard server

These connections are pre-decided by the ISP and the contracts they hold with the peering partners. They can make adjustments to them for maintenance reasons, to get around crowded nodes, or to create a better experience for customers.

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what should i put in an email to my ISP in order to get the problem across so they can get it fixed with their routing partner(s)?

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Tell them that you’re experiencing higher than expected (much higher) than you do to other games hosted in the same region. You will likely need to escalate your issue to a Level 3 network technician. In other words, someone beyond the basic troubleshooting the help desk staff offers.

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Please recognise that this constantly repeated reply has been disproven. John Alexander at Aussie Broadband explained why they couldn’t fix the latency already:

And no, he isn’t just a guy at a help-desk, he’s pretty much one of their head honchos when it comes to managing their network.

@68128048 John Alexander writes…
[“Google are in Sydney and advertise it out of there. I’ve adjusted it slightly so it now goes direct to Singapore, but it looks like the return path is being preferred by Google to come back in via their PNI with us in Sydney. It’s taken 50ms off the times though.”]

You can check the looking glasses of ALL of the below, and they are all broken

Aussie Broadband
Superloop
iinet
TPG
Telstra

and every single vpn node publically available in Perth:

Perth Binarylane: Broken, 105 ping rather than 50-60
Perth RansomIT: Broken, 150 ping rather than 50-60
Perth Wombat: Broken 100 ping rather than 50-60
Perth iinet public node: Broken, 170 ping rather than 50-60.

So when you say that, you have to realise, there is no isp that isn’t broken for this issue, and those that have tried to fix it have all failed. Aussie Broadband have failed, despite it being elevated as far as it could be. Mate have failed as in the start of this thread.

There is no one who can fix it on even the isps end. It is google who has to fix how they handle their reverse routes.

The variance in latency mentioned is because players in Perth get 60-80 ms to Syd2 as well; which is entirely irrelevant to the topic of the thread, but I can see how it could confuse someone who is not as familiar with the Perth gaming landscape. Keep in mind that due to three hour time difference, and Syd2 having a small peak, playing on Syd2 is not exactly a solution.

I am focusing on Perth because that’s what I have had the most information on, but google’s terrible handling of their reverse routes also seems to be affecting India, Sri-Lanka and Mauritius.

And when you talk about Peering …

Aussie Broadband on this broken route are peering directly with google as far as I am aware.

It goes straight from Aussie Broadband to google back to Aussie Broadband?

So if peering with google causes issues with routing to google servers, doesn’t that also indicate that there’s a bit of an issue?

So when Aussie Broadband is peering with google, they hand it off to google in Sydney by default purely because even access to the Singapore server is being advertised out of there. The route stays within Google’s Network to go from Sydney to Singapore. Then back to the node in Sydney, hands back off to Aussie Broadband in Sydney, then goes back to Perth.

Even if Aussie Broadband ignores how it’s advertised and forces the forward path, Aussie Broadband hands off to google at Singapore, google in Singapore then to get to Perth decides to route via Google in Sydney, hands off to Aussie Broadband in Sydney then goes back to Perth.

This behaviour is just continually repeated. To any Australian destination, google in Singapore routes to google in Sydney, then decides how to go the rest of the way from there, regardless of isp, that is the crux of the problem. Because this behaviour has been present in literally everything I have been able to check, it’s definitely a fault on google’s end.

If you want to see why forcing all Australian routes to go via Sydney is extremely bad, then just look at a map. The distance from Perth to Sydney is only marginally less than the distance from Perth to Singapore, meaning that this broken route of forcing Google in Sydney as a checkpoint both ways causes triple the latency.

It would be akin to forcing all routes to NA west to go back and forth via New York when you live in Texas; it just doesn’t make sense when you look at a map.

And no, it doesn’t make sense to close a thread just because the problem hasn’t been fixed for 5 months.

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I’m going to check if the average latency was checked for SYD2 or GSG. No guarantees I can get that info, though. Please stop pinging me :slight_smile:

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Keep in mind that due to three hour time difference, and Syd2 having a small peak, playing on Syd2 is not exactly a solution.

this is also 100% not a solution for me as i play exclusively with friends from singapore and other SEA countries, and even when i play alone without a VPN on it will still put me on GSG1 with high ping about 40% of the time. To add to this, when i duo with someone from SEA while using a singaporean mudfish node, sometimes it will still put us on Syd2, giving them about 110+ms and forcing me to turn the VPN off or play with 200+ms. we always have to 3-stack to force GSG1

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Hello,

The game does not currently have any feature to pick which server the game will be hosted on. Since it’s a normal aspect of the matchmaking system to use multiple different servers our technical support staff is unable to assist with that aspect of the issue. On this topic we can only discuss the connection data and routing.

I noticed this data in the winMTR posted on the other thread back in December:

| as15169.per03.sydnmtc.nsw.vocus.network - 0 | 254 | 254 | 52 | 69 | 210 | 53 |
| 108.170.247.50 - 0 | 254 | 254 | 53 | 66 | 84 | 69 |
| 142.250.61.2 - 0 | 254 | 254 | 144 | 155 | 166 | 160 |

Basically, Vocus is sending the data to Sydney then handing it over to their peer network which in this case is Google. Since Vocus is peering with them directly their network engineers should be able to reach out to Google and discuss more optimal routing to Singapore.

I’d definitely include the winMTR and also let them know that the Mudfish VPN is working to reduce latency. This information may help to get the case escalated through the ISP to the right departments.

I wish we had a more direct solution here but I do hope the information helps. Cheers!

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This behaviour is essentially replicated with every isp that is peering with google in Australia.

An Aussie Broadband rep said they contacted Blizzard over this, initially and then google. Unfortunately no resolution was found, so hopefully the vocus reps have more luck.

@68147069 Jarryd S writes…
[“We have some contacts at Blizzard we usually use for peering related configurations, I’ll reach out to them early next week and see if they can help us at all to help you.”]

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Hey yedrellow,

Normally the peer network, which in the MTR on the above quoted case is Vocus, should be able to resolve the issue. We will send the data up internally to see if we can have someone reach out to them as well. I’ll post any updates we receive on the situation here.

Cheers!

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any updates on the situation?

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Singapore is not an appropriate location for data from Aus or NZ to travel to.

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it is appropriate for perth, not for eastern states or nz

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Exactly, you actually get marginally better ping to Singapore than Sydney in normal (i.e not run by google) circumstances. Perth accessible player populations were completely destroyed by this change, and it largely ruins the game to be forced in to having about 20% of the accessible low ping population than was had before. 20% of the accessible population, 5 times the queuetime.

The fact that google are probably aware of how poorly their Singapore server routing is for the region, and that they show exactly no initiative in fixing it is kind of sad to say the least.

You can very easily go to ausnog(dot)net(slash)tools(slash)lg, go through the list and click on every looking glass that has a Perth server, run a tracert to 35.240.229.28 and verify that this is still a problem for every single australian isp and vpn provider.

If one isp has a problem, it’s the isp’s fault, if every isp has a problem, it’s the server’s fault.

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We will send the data up internally to see if we can have someone reach
out to them as well

I don’t mean to be a bother but are you able to confirm whether or not somebody actually ended up reaching out to Vocus?

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Hey there,

We are only able to reach out to our peering partners, for example it would be Google in this case. They were reached out to through another department within Blizzard. So far I have not received any updates from them on the topic. When an update is available I will update this thread as soon as possible.

Thanks for following up with us on this. We hope to have more info soon.

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Every isp that is having issues is peering directly with Google. So I don’t understand how contacting google could not be the solution to this problem.

Aussie Broadband peers with google and so does Vocus and Telstra (https:// www(dot)aussiebroadband.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/NETWORK-Diagram-2020.png). You peer with google, most Australian isps peer with google, yet it produces this broken route precisely because this peering is causing routes to erroneously route both on the forward and reverse route via the Google PNI in Sydney. It shouldn’t be doing this, and this is why it is broken for every Perth user.

Some Perth routes manage to avoid the broken forward path (only available with a vpn service like mudfish, maybe they don’t peer with google?), however you literally have to vpn outside of Australia to avoid the broken reverse path.

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Been playing this game from Sri Lanka ever since it launched but now I get 140 ms whereas it used to be 70 ms. A VPN doesnt work well for me cuz it only lowers the ping from 140 ms to 110 ms. The switch from Amazon servers to Google servers completely messed up the game for me. All the other games I play dont have this issue. Your company and Activision basically gave us a low budget Google server after deeming the SEA region a “low population” region. If you had fixed all the issues within the game people wouldn’t have left. I’l never be able to enjoy overwatch anymore because of your corporate greed.

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