Hi all,
as recommended by the blizzard support agent after talking to them with regards to this issue, I thought I’d post it here so others can chime in with their own results.
I live in Alberta, Canada, and noticed just 2 days ago my ping which was normally quite nominal (60-70ms or so) had spiked to a frustrating 150ms+ in-game. I’ve done a little sleuthing to figure out what was happening and have discovered that the issue lies on Blizzard’s end - specifically, a routing problem between their servers in their “blizzardonline-net” group of servers.
For those of you that want to know more and/or are experiencing this issue:
- the problem is for sure not my - and likely not your! - local connection
- connecting to a VPN to route into the blizzard network in a different method solves the issue (more on that in a bit).
With regards to reproducing the problem, using a third party public trace you can replicate the issue. I’m focusing on/pinging to OW’s US-West server (24.105.30.129) using the public trace function on Network-Tools-com (results to US-Central are similar). Also, I’ve had to change the server/web extensions from .'s to -'s in order to avoid the forum not letting me post due to including links, so if stuff looks weird that’s why.
TraceRoute from Network-Tools.com to 24.105.30.129
Hop (ms) (ms) (ms) IP Address Host name
1 0 0 0 184.105.25.73 v509.core1.dal1.he.net
2 0 0 0 206.53.202.43 pr01-eqfr5.blizzardonline.net
3 1 1 0 137.221.74.33 ae1-br01-eqda6.blizzardonline.net
4 143 143 144 137.221.65.67 hu-0-0-0-0-pe02-swlv10.blizzardonline.net
5 143 143 143 137.221.83.74 be3-pe01-swlv10.blizzardonline.net
6 29 29 29 137.221.65.68 et-0-0-2-br01-eqla1.blizzardonline.net
7 143 143 143 137.221.68.67 be1-pe01-eqla1.blizzardonline.net
8 145 143 143 24.105.30.129 -
Trace complete
as you can see, specifically in hop 3-4 is where you get a massive spike in ping, and the server on hop 6 interestingly is responding normally in addition to some of the earlier servers in the grouping, which strongly indicates the issue is on Blizzard’s end. There was a brief hour or so yesterday in which it seemed to be resolved, and then latency increased once again – judging by the number of posts popping up concerning high ping I’m guessing this issue may be the root cause of a lot of frustration.
After a bit of back and forth with Blizzard support to rule out my local connection, they have made a case report and acknowledged that this issue is on their end, so I’m hopeful that we’ll see a resolution soon (my existing ticket # is US63327880 if anyone else needs to reference it).
R.e. VPN: using a VPN to change the way I’m routing into the OW US-West does reduce the ping, down to where it’d normally be (reporting 60-70ms in-game). From my provider I’m routing to Seattle -> OW US-West – so, this adds distance overall, but results in a playable game which is a plus.
This isn’t a great permanent solution but it is an option if you’re experiencing this issue like me, until some sort of more permanent resolution is made on Blizz’s end.
