Hello Cary,
I hope life is treating you well. First I was remiss in not getting back with you sooner for two reasons: first rl has been hectic and second I wanted to monitor things for a bit before responding to the ticket further. Let me begin by saying thank for going to such efforts to resolve it.
It appears the complaints for the most part on latency have subsided, this maybe due to there was some positive effect which is my hope, or they are being obstificated by some pretty brutual packet loss issues which appear to be increasing in occurence, duration, and time span.
Ive idled quietly in the game lobby trying to catch someone experiencing them while it occurs off and on for a number of weeks. The game has a feature under the esc key that allows you to see your ping and packet losses, both a help and bane to my existence atm. So as I would note the issue occuring with a particular player, I would then pm the person while still in game to please take a moment run the traceroute and then email it to the
Solaptraces@yahoo.com account.
The level of response was underwhelming to say the least with many so absorbed in game play they wouldn't take the time to do it. It was a bit like catching a fart, in a bottle, during a windstorm. However I think we have a number of winners including happily, myself which was occuring within the last hour.
The troubling thing is these packet loses are more sustained, at least it seems to me, as the weeks have gone on.
Observations:
1. The packet loss issue occured about the time they "moved" the server several help tickets ago. Only after that did we begin to notice the issue.
2. The packet drop seems to jump from player to player, but not all of them and not the same person every time it occurs. I can hear you quietly weeping all the way over here Cary.
3. It seems to effect mostly those in the US but I could be full of hot air since the country of origin of the players is something you pick up via chatting with them and the forums rather info in game.
4. Not everyone is experiences it but those that do are getting packet losses as low as 7% and high as 100% all long enough for me to manually and randomly hit the esc key and p key to observe everyone's ping and packet losses.
5. They seem to be time based as in the occurence is worst during primetime US hours and seems non-existent other times. Again I may be wrong since I do sleep and work. The last point is what has been passed along by others.
Here are my trace routes from today taken with the last few hours:
10/25/09 12:25-12:30 CST HAPPENING TO MY ACCOUNT
*snipped them out do to the length of the posts, they were showing problems at the last two hops to Solap*
There should be some more interesting traceroutes in the email addy too.
On another note Ive decided to make things more official in the forum given the longevity of these issues and the lessons learned while doing it. So if there is a set format you would like to receive the data please by all means speak up. Location, and time including zone pops to my mind with of course the ever mentioned trace routes. My own corner of the help desk forum where we can filter and send the traceroutes that make sense to do so. And I thought being an owner was going to be easy, silly me.
I seems to me that there was an addenum to the last reports. If so by all means please put it here, I will continue to post them in the forums to show progress is being made on the issue.
David
