Huge amounts of lag in multi-party areas.

[atrofiated_one]

Hi,

I have been using this forum for quite awhile now, and it has helped me in any questions I needed regarding any of the Phantasy Star games I have played so far, I never really needed to get registered until now, so, I will get to the point.

The game runs smoothly, but if I enter a multi-party area, which is an essential part of the game, I get huge amounts of lag, so much lag, that it can reach about five to ten minutes, which forces the PSO2 server to disconnect me.

I am using a 130 mbit fiber optics ISP named Zon in Portugal, my PC specs are:

AMD Phenom 9600 Quad Core 2.3ghz
6gb DDR II 800
Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX 768mb
Windows 7 Ultimate X64 SP1
The lan card is a generic 1gbit realtek onboard.

My brother is playing the same game in another computer and it does not lag for him, so I doubt the problem comes from the router.

I have searched the forum for a similar issue and did not find it, I am sorry if I missed it and made another thread, if I did so, please redirect me.

Thank you for your attention.

[Chik'Tikka]

130 mbit fiber 0.o U.S. really needs to upgrade infrastructure, anyway, what's you connection speed and PING to Tokyo's Worlds Fastest Indian server on http://speedtest.net/??
http://www.speedtest.net/result/2067817115.png
anyway, your brother not lagging may indicate some sort of network issue, maybe your particular machine's antivirus or firewall settings could be jamming up the ports PSO2 uses, also try swapping the Ethernet cable from your brothers machine and connect it to yours, if the lag goes away you may have a router issue+^_^+ also, check your wireless drivers and settings if your using WiFi as well as distance from the access point, you may have packet loss from interfering signals like microwaves or other WiFi devices+^_^+

[Ana-Chan]

Also, try the very simple case of playing the game when your brother isn't playing, preferably when he isn't using the internet for anything. This is to test whether you get the same problems to really rule out the router.

[atrofiated_one]

I mostly play the game while my brother is not playing, I have also tried to shut down any programs that use the Internet, such as utorrent, MSN, IRC, browsers, etc... and it stays the same.

We are using the same OS, antivirus and firewall programs. I have tried changing the lan cable, but I cannot use his, since his computer's in another room and I am not about to move my desktop there.

I also rarely use the wireless connection with my laptop, so even if there was some problem with the wireless, I would not have trouble with it.

Using the speedtest website that you suggested, it seems that the ISP is having some trouble getting any speed at all when connecting to Japan, I have called the ISP's support to check if there is some trouble related to it.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/2122897137.png
http://www.speedtest.net/result/2122900898.png

Of course, the 130mb are the maximum speed I can get, it never reaches there.

[Ana-Chan]

There could be something wrong with the Tokyo speedtest server too. Since it could be getting accessed a lot, or just on a slow network.

I'm getting pretty variable results from them.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/2123003551.png
http://www.speedtest.net/result/2123007233.png

That in a space of two minutes or so.

But also to let you know, you don't have to move your desktop, you can just unplug the network cable and bring it through to yours if that makes things easier. If it is down to different length cables then yes, you can't really do much about it.

[atrofiated_one]

My ISP support contacted me just now, and they traced my connection to the Japanese PSO2 website (where I suspect the game servers are too), it seems that one of Japan's servers is giving me that giant ping and making me lose connection to the game's server when there are too many people around.

I pinged and traced the site's IP.
http://i.imgur.com/g4bbz.png

[Ana-Chan]

Well, considering between those two steps it travels from the UK to Japan then I'm not surprised there is such a jump in ping. That is several thousand miles and even more kilometres in one step. It obviously isn't going to be free, my increase in latancy is similar.

C:\Users\******>tracert pso2.jp

Tracing route to pso2.jp [210.129.153.233]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms 1 ms <1 ms BTHUB3 [192.168.0.254]
2 17 ms 16 ms 17 ms 217.32.141.36
3 17 ms 17 ms 17 ms 217.32.141.78
4 20 ms 20 ms 20 ms 213.120.161.114
5 20 ms 19 ms 20 ms 217.32.26.54
6 20 ms 20 ms 20 ms 217.32.26.182
7 21 ms 20 ms 20 ms acc2-10gige-0-3-0-1.bm.21cn-ipp.bt.net [109.159.248.240]
8 30 ms 35 ms 35 ms 109.159.248.140
9 30 ms 35 ms 35 ms peer3-te0-1-0-4.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net [109.159.254.245]
10 166 ms 166 ms 166 ms gw5.lax1.asianetcom.net [195.66.225.168]
11 274 ms 274 ms 273 ms gi8-0-0.cr1.nrt1.asianetcom.net [202.147.0.121]
12 265 ms 265 ms 265 ms gi1-0-0.gw1.nrt5.asianetcom.net [202.147.0.178]
13 258 ms 258 ms 258 ms yhj-0001.gw1.nrt5.asianetcom.net [203.192.150.178]
14 277 ms 272 ms 271 ms 203.141.47.226
15 278 ms 278 ms 277 ms ae2.tnhcr01.idc.jp [158.205.134.18]
16 259 ms 258 ms 258 ms po14.ta1ag01.idc.jp [158.205.192.102]
17 259 ms 262 ms 258 ms ge2-20.l303.ta1.eg.idc.jp [158.205.188.250]
18 275 ms 276 ms 272 ms 158.205.104.60
19 270 ms 271 ms 270 ms 210.129.153.233
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * * Request timed out.
26 * * * Request timed out.
27 * * * Request timed out.
28 * * * Request timed out.
29 * * * Request timed out.
30 * * * Request timed out.

Trace complete.

Since I live in the UK, my latancy doesn't get that high because I also don't have that initial Portugal to UK jump in there too. I'm sure that anyone else who plays in Europe and America get similar latency times because of the time it takes to travel to the other side of the world.

There could currently be a problem on your route, but if your brother has no issues while playing too then that would be unlikely. It could either be different times of day causing problems or something else entirely.

Has this problem been going on for a long time? Do you have similar problems in busy lobbies? Do you have problems with downloading files from Japan in general? (Just out of curiosity, try downloading the PSO2 installer again if you don't have a monthly download cap). Do you generally have stable internet and able to download properly from elsewhere in the world?

[atrofiated_one]

This problem has existed ever since I installed the game three weeks ago, I had the stupid huge loading time too that never went away, I even replaced my HDD for the sake of speed, the solution for the issue written in this forum did not work for me, but that is the least of my worries.

I get huge amounts of lag in multi party areas where I see everything way later than everyone else, as I have stated before, in the lobbies, I get lag if there are lots of people in there, but I see everything in real time. I have put the character models at minimum but that does not seem to help either.

As for downloading, I remember downloading stuff at about 2mb/s from Japanese websites, this game's installer was at about 1.2mb/s which was not that bad.

I am trying your suggestion, and it seems like it is stuck at 270kb/s.

[kaitokamina]

This problem has existed ever since I installed the game three weeks ago, I had the stupid huge loading time too that never went away, I even replaced my HDD for the sake of speed, the solution for the issue written in this forum did not work for me, but that is the least of my worries.

I get huge amounts of lag in multi party areas where I see everything way later than everyone else, as I have stated before, in the lobbies, I get lag if there are lots of people in there, but I see everything in real time. I have put the character models at minimum but that does not seem to help either.

As for downloading, I remember downloading stuff at about 2mb/s from Japanese websites, this game's installer was at about 1.2mb/s which was not that bad.

I am trying your suggestion, and it seems like it is stuck at 270kb/s.

Are you playing wirelessly? Would you mind taking some screenshots of some of your router's setup pages. I would recommended blocking out your public IP and SSID. There may be an adjustment in there that can be made to help this as well. Also, how many characters are you set to load in the option. In the menus hit the cog wheel, then hit the third option. Expand the last box. Click the first option and tell me what the first slider is set to.

[Revolted]

First of all, hi everyone, I'm atrofiated_one's brother, sup little bro :-P

I decided to register so I can state what we have done so far to try and solve this.

First of all I decided to apply for the closed beta because of a friend of mine so he would have a better chance to be invited and it ended on both of us having an invite for the closed beta so I decided "why not?" to give it a try, I've never been a fan of PSO but this one is AMAZING!

Ok enough of that :-P SO I basically played with my friend through all the closed beta saw some cool and neat stuff and got hooked to the game, we had the occasional lag from the servers, they changed servers it got better until the closed beta finally ended and I was all sad and wished for more :D

Then the pre open opened and I was there again, with the occasional lag and such from the servers, the pre open ended and still the game played smoothly, so the Final Version came out, I was there again, played like hell with my friends on ship 2, lobby 20 or 21 (and still play), one time the lobby 20 even crashed for a few minutes because of so much players trying to enter it but it still played fine with merely no noticeable lag.

So my brother finally decides to join in (WHY U NO JOIN SOONER :-D), and the problems started for him, loadings of more than 3 minutes, constant disconnects, he even changed the port where my LAN cable was connected and connected his instead and still the same, so first we ran Spybot S&D, found some stuff but nothing serious, still the same, lag, lag, lag, we installed ESET Smart Security 5 on his computer just like mine, scanned for virus and found out the computer BSOD because the HDD had bad sectors, so we fixed the bad sectors, we scanned for virus and nothing, so he buy's a brand new HDD, did a ghost of the HDD partition to the new HDD, and still the same, lastly we installed a HDD Defrager since the one from windows is stupid enough to say its not fragmented, but even after defragmenting it's the same, also we updated every single driver to the most recent one and still the same.

I searched the web for some answers about the lag, disconnect, multi-party area lag and did find some but they dated from the closed-beta and was closed-beta servers related, the same on pre open, so I excluded them, no one that I can find has reported having at least lag issues on multi-party areas.

I ruled all that stuff out and can only see two possible problems now, or it's the onboard LAN adapter that is not working has it should or its OS related, but hes afraid of formatting because like me he always forgets about something important, anyways it might be the ultimate answer and it might not even work.

If it's of any importance here are my machine specs:

PSU: Cooler Master Real Power M1000
MB: ASUS Crosshair II Formula
CPU: AMD Phenom x4 9950 Black Edition (water cooled)
RAM: 6GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800Mhz
GPU: ASUS nVidia GeForce GTX 460 DirectCU 1GB
SOUND: Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty
HDD: 6 HDD (3x 1TB, 3x 500GB)
OS: Windows 7 x64 Ultimate
ISP: The same xD

Well if someone has any ideas we sure will appreciate it and thank you all in advance for you help! ^^

[Chik'Tikka]

C:\Users\ChikTikka Quick>tracert pso2.jp

Tracing route to pso2.jp [210.129.153.233]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 15 ms 11 ms 11 ms crr01stptwi-tge-0-4-0-9.stpt.wi.charter.com [96.34.22.84]
4 13 ms 11 ms 11 ms crr02euclwi-tge-0-5-0-0.eucl.wi.charter.com [96.34.17.228]
5 14 ms 14 ms 15 ms bbr02euclwi-tge-0-1-0-0.eucl.wi.charter.com [96.34.2.146]
6 32 ms 35 ms 35 ms bbr01chcgil-bue-1.chcg.il.charter.com [96.34.0.9]
7 29 ms 26 ms 30 ms prr01chcgil-tge-0-1-0-0.chcg.il.charter.com [96.34.3.44]
8 30 ms 38 ms 26 ms v201.core1.chi1.he.net [216.66.73.241]
9 60 ms 50 ms 50 ms 10gigabitethernet3-2.core1.den1.he.net [184.105.213.86]
10 80 ms 74 ms 77 ms 10gigabitethernet1-4.core1.lax2.he.net [72.52.92.38]
11 77 ms 74 ms * 10gigabitethernet2-1.core1.lax1.he.net [72.52.92.121]
12 70 ms 73 ms 73 ms pacnet.10gigabitethernet2-3.core1.lax1.he.net [216.218.223.206]
13 170 ms 167 ms 167 ms gi6-0-0.cr1.nrt1.asianetcom.net [202.147.61.166]
14 168 ms 168 ms 169 ms gi1-0-0.gw1.nrt5.asianetcom.net [202.147.0.178]
15 176 ms 177 ms 228 ms YHJ-0001.gw1.nrt5.asianetcom.net [203.192.150.178]
16 172 ms 191 ms 170 ms 203.141.47.226
17 181 ms 169 ms 169 ms ae2.tnhcr01.idc.jp [158.205.134.18]
18 178 ms 177 ms 178 ms po14.ta1ag01.idc.jp [158.205.192.102]
19 171 ms 174 ms 171 ms ge2-20.l303.ta1.eg.idc.jp [158.205.188.250]
20 170 ms 168 ms 169 ms 158.205.104.60
21 173 ms 170 ms 171 ms 210.129.153.233
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * * Request timed out.
26 * * * Request timed out.
27 * * * Request timed out.
28 * * * Request timed out.
29 * * * Request timed out.
30 * * * Request timed out.

Trace complete.

completed in 21 hops at a distance of 6,100 miles (9817 Kilometers) and average ping around 170 ms +^_^+ what a difference 700 miles makes when compared to atrofiated_one+^_^+

[atrofiated_one]

Yeah, I just get doomed when I arrive at Osaka... also, I have uninstalled and fully reinstalled the game, I have yet to test it to see if it's better... but I will not get my hopes up.

[kaitokamina]

Yeah, I just get doomed when I arrive at Osaka... also, I have uninstalled and fully reinstalled the game, I have yet to test it to see if it's better... but I will not get my hopes up.

The routing is highly dependent on your ISP, however ( as I mentioned before ) there may very well be a routing setting in your home networking equipment that needs to be adjusted.

[Ana-Chan]

Yeah, I just get doomed when I arrive at Osaka... also, I have uninstalled and fully reinstalled the game, I have yet to test it to see if it's better... but I will not get my hopes up.

The thing is, if your brother is having no issues, then it isn't your external routing.
Since I assume you are using the same ISP and same router/modem.
It will always use the same set of servers regardless of who is playing.

[Revolted]

The thing is, if your brother is having no issues, then it isn't your external routing.
Since I assume you are using the same ISP and same router/modem.
It will always use the same set of servers regardless of who is playing.

Yup, and found the direct IP of the PSO2 server today if anyone is interested, 210.129.209.23, the port though changes from time to time.

[atrofiated_one]

Okay, I have tried everything I could so far, the only things I need to check now are the network card's health, with will be hard since I have no free PCI slots, the motherboard itself, or reinstall the OS, which would be really annoying, since I always forget important stuff every time I format this thing.

Thank you everyone for your help, I will try and fix this problem when it gets convenient.

[Revolted]

Yesterday we stumbled upon a Japanese player that also was killing the air because of the lag, I guess there is more people out there with the same problem.

[Inchoroi]

I have identical problems to the OP, myself. Only in multi-party areas. Its very odd, because frame-rate doesn't drop at all. But, every second, there's about a quarter of a second slow down, which adds up over the course of a 20 minute city mission, so, at the end, I'm five minutes behind my wife, who's sitting right next to me, on the same internet. Can't be the ISP, so its either my computer, or the game itself. I'm going to attempt to take care of Gameguard once and for all, and see if that helps--although I do not have my hopes up.

Edit:

Also, Necro'd.

While playing around, I had this thought; "You know, Windows Firewall has always sucked. What if its just that?" So, I went spelunking, and found that the troll Windows Firewall was set to block part of the connection from PSO2 by default...for some ungodly reason. Set an exception, and bam. Things were 10x better. I have yet to test it on a City mission, though, so I reserve the right to change my mind about the fix.