Hello theydies and gentlethems! Have you been experiencing seemingly random latency/lag spikes while in certain Shadowland zones, dungeons, or raid(s)? Well so have I. I spoke with GM Rachiomyst today, and we did a lot of network testing to try and find the issue. To try and help GM Rachiomyst compile as much data as possible to assist the network engineers in figuring out why these spikes are happening, please run the following Windows 10 commands:
Inside WoW, go to the zone, dungeon, or raid that is giving you latency problems
Open the command prompt as administrator (click the start button, type cmd, then right click “Command Prompt” and choose “Run As Administrator”
Type the following command and press enter: netstat -an | findstr 3724 - You should get maybe 1-4 lines printed on the screen. Choose the IPv4 address in the third column that has “ESTABLISHED” next to it in the fourth. In the example below, I would choose 34.105.110.230:
TCP 192.168.1.234:55746 34.82.77.194:3724 TIME_WAIT
TCP 192.168.1.234:56221 34.105.110.230:3724 ESTABLISHED
Inside WinMTR, paste the IP address into the “Host” field, and let it run for at least 5-10 minutes.
Once done, click stop, and then choose to copy your results as either text or HTML. HTML should parse fine on this forum, and look nicer too.
Please post your WinMTR results, along with the zone you are in, and your ISP.
Here is the result of a half hour of running WinMTR while inside “De Other Side” on an M+ run, at 530pm PST (-8 UTC), with Cox as my ISP:
WinMTR Statistics
WinMTR statistics
Host
%
Sent
Recv
Best
Avrg
Wrst
Last
router
0
1532
1532
0
1
18
0
10.82.128.1
0
1532
1532
5
11
42
7
100.127.6.4
0
1532
1532
6
10
48
7
100.120.103.112
0
1532
1532
7
14
126
8
68.1.4.252
0
1532
1532
11
18
117
12
68.105.30.142
0
1532
1532
12
18
41
14
No response from host
100
310
0
0
0
0
0
209.85.245.228
0
1532
1532
12
17
37
14
108.170.247.243
0
1532
1532
12
17
41
13
108.170.234.37
27
749
549
0
16
70
15
209.85.254.222
52
504
242
0
42
95
41
216.239.57.45
0
1532
1532
36
45
126
62
209.85.240.145
1
1528
1527
37
41
138
43
No response from host
100
310
0
0
0
0
0
No response from host
100
310
0
0
0
0
0
No response from host
100
310
0
0
0
0
0
No response from host
100
310
0
0
0
0
0
No response from host
100
310
0
0
0
0
0
No response from host
100
310
0
0
0
0
0
No response from host
100
310
0
0
0
0
0
No response from host
100
310
0
0
0
0
0
No response from host
100
310
0
0
0
0
0
No response from host
100
310
0
0
0
0
0
No response from host
100
310
0
0
0
0
0
No response from host
100
310
0
0
0
0
0
No response from host
100
310
0
0
0
0
0
No response from host
100
310
0
0
0
0
0
No response from host
100
310
0
0
0
0
0
No response from host
100
310
0
0
0
0
0
No response from host
100
310
0
0
0
0
0
I hope I get enough results in this thread for both GM Rachiomyst and the Blizzard network engineers, thanks!
Think of the internet as sort of like a road system. Maybe you can drive to work just fine and there is no traffic. And to your friend’s house. But maybe driving to chik-fil-a, there is a big pot hole or bad traffic on that road every day. So you can’t just say hey my drive to work was fine why was my drive to chik-fil-a so slow, it must be chik-fil-a’s fault. At least not without doing some testing to see.
You’d be better off making a new thread since this one is not related to your issue, and explaining what you are actually experiencing with some detail, and then starting some troubleshooting like posting a winmtr.
The packet loss you see is not real - those are simply backbone switches set to disregard test pings or mostly ignore them. If you look you sent 261 packets and Blizzard received 261 packets on last hop.
Looking at your old WinMTRs from February and the most recent the only thing of concern I see is the most recent has high latency on the home network. Like bad Wireless latency.
This makes me think your issue is something else. If this is primarily in dungeons and raids you should take a look at addons. Run a test with the default UI.
As I mentioned this is a test. If it doesn’t help simply remove the OLD from your original folders then delete the new folders the game installed. This will return your original settings
That would make sense except a test run 20 minutes later on the same routing from my VPN to my VPS in a colo center in DTLA had zero packet loss from those same servers. If the servers were set to drop/ignore ICMP packets, I should have had the same results. I know the WinMTR test that every CS agent points to has a server that is intentionally configured to be slow to respond, which throws up 1000-4000ms response times, every time that test is run.
Here’s the deal. When I am on a world server that uses IPv6 routing, such as Orgrimmar, I have zero problems with high latency and packet loss. When I am on a world server that uses IPv4, such as any Shadowlands zone, I have this problem. This is why I am adamant that this is a network routing issue, and not an errant add-on. If it was an add-on, it should happen on a consistent basis, every time I am in any IPv4 zone, but it is not. It is entirely inconsistent.
If I could force the game to only connect to the world server, on any zone, using IPv6, none of this would be happening.
Have you tried switching off IPv6 in-game? What does that result in? I use IPv6, but I’m not seeing any difference in latency no matter what zone I’m in, like Org, Oribos, Mists, etc. And I am always monitoring latency.
I also agree with Tratt. The home network signal is relatively poor and might be contributing to the overall issue.
There’s no need to ping in other threads to draw attention to your own, if someone responds to a thread they are automatically tracking and will see pings for the replies.
If I shut off IPv6, the whole game ends up lagging, not just in dungeons, because now both the Home and World servers are on the godawful IPv4 routing.
At this point, I’ve given up and started logging into my VPN every time I need to run M+ or raids, because this is the only way I am able to get a stable connection to this dumpster fire of a IPv4 routing. The VPN has a different routing, and I do not get the lag spikes. So there is something outside of my ISP’s control that nobody wants to fix, and after almost 7 months of this I am tired of getting nowhere and no answers.
So basically it sounds like it’s the routing peer they use for the two types of connections. If you’re persistent enough with the ISP and can get escalated to a network engineer, they might be able to help.