Weird WoW latency issue

[Faldrath]

Hey guys,

I've already asked this question in WoW's tech support forums, but given RPSers' general tech-savviness, I thought I'd ask it here as well.

Here's my issue. I'm in Brazil. I play WoW on American servers, since 2007. Last year, I moved and switched ISPs, and the service had actually been quite good until this week.

But now my latency (usually around 170-200ms) has jumped to 4000+. I did the usual things, modem reset, computer reset, called my ISP, they did their tests and said everything is normal. And it does seem to be - downloads, other online games, etc., are all ok.

Two things I've noticed, though:

1) It happens only on certain servers, not others. I have characters in 3 servers, and the latency issues only happen in one of them (unfortunately, the one where my main toon is);

2) It gets really bad during primetime (8-11p EST) but goes back to almost normal in the rest of the day (right now, 11a EST, it's around 500ms).

Any ideas as to what could be happening here? All help is appreciated.

Here are my pathping results, if it helps:

1 14ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% bd79e001.virtua.com.br [189.121.224.1]
0/ 100 = 0% |
2 12ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% spovsortd01.virtua.com.br [201.6.0.90]
0/ 100 = 0% |
3 13ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% spotvtrtd06.virtua.com.br [201.6.0.6]
0/ 100 = 0% |
4 14ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% embratel-T0-5-4-0-tacc01.spo.embratel.net.br [189.86.58.25]
0/ 100 = 0% |
5 20ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% ebt-T0-2-0-5-tcore01.spo.embratel.net.br [200.230.158.222]
0/ 100 = 0% |
6 251ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% ebt-Bundle-POS1114-intl04.mianap.embratel.net.br [200.230.220.66]
0/ 100 = 0% |
7 1144ms 20/ 100 = 20% 20/ 100 = 20% sl-st30-mia-.sprintlink.net [144.223.64.221]
0/ 100 = 0% |
8 130ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% sl-crs1-mia-0-2-0-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.28.76]
0/ 100 = 0% |
9 316ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 192.205.32.141
100/ 100 =100% |
10 --- 100/ 100 =100% 0/ 100 = 0% 12.122.155.170
0/ 100 = 0% |
11 --- 100/ 100 =100% 0/ 100 = 0% cr2.ormfl.ip.att.net [12.122.1.45]
0/ 100 = 0% |
12 --- 100/ 100 =100% 0/ 100 = 0% cr1.attga.ip.att.net [12.122.5.142]
0/ 100 = 0% |
13 --- 100/ 100 =100% 0/ 100 = 0% cr2.wswdc.ip.att.net [12.122.1.174]
0/ 100 = 0% |
14 --- 100/ 100 =100% 0/ 100 = 0% cr2.n54ny.ip.att.net [12.122.3.37]
0/ 100 = 0% |
15 --- 100/ 100 =100% 0/ 100 = 0% gar1.nw2nj.ip.att.net [12.122.130.93]
0/ 100 = 0% |
16 --- 100/ 100 =100% 0/ 100 = 0% 12.122.251.10
0/ 100 = 0% |
17 --- 100/ 100 =100% 0/ 100 = 0% mdf001c7613r0004-gig-10-1.nyc3.attens.net [63.240.65.18]

[Boris]

Is this a cable or DSL line? Or fiber? Are you 100% sure it's not on other servers as well, but intermittent? Do you have housemates who like to download stuff/watch tv streams or otherwise use a lot of data? Do you or someone else run torrents?

[Faldrath]

Cable line, wired, no router. And I spent hours idling on other servers, had no issues. Nothing else being downloaded/torrented, etc.

That being said, the issue seems to have disappeared on its own today. I'll wait until primetime to be sure.

[trjp]

Big increases in latency are usually routing problems/capacity issues - esp if they relate only to certain internet addresses.

They usually resolve themselves but we had a few cases, back in my raiding days, of guild members wouldn't couldn't even login - often for weeks-on-end. Most of then ended-up changing ISP to get back in the serverfirst mobile :)

Generally speaking tho - if you get OK latency to SOME servers - the issue isn't at your end.

[Faldrath]

Yeah, now that it's primetime it's up to 350-450ms, which is playable, but not ideal. Guess I'll just keep on hoping it sorts itself out.

[jrodman]

If everything you've stated is correct deductions (it's easy to make mistakes troubleshooting) then it sounds like it's a capacity overload in some major pipe somewhere between you and some servers. Ie, nothing to do with you nor to do with the wow server.

Careful ping testing might show up a problem like this, but if it's intermittent, good luck. Hopefully some backbone re-provisioned something or fixed some dying equipment.

[Faldrath]

Yeah, that's what it looks like from the pathping. Up to jump 5 everything is ok, but jumps 6 and 7 are bad - I assume that's when the data leaves Brazil and arrives at the USA. The trouble, of course, is that I don't think there's any way of contacting those "sprintlink.net" servers to see what's up.