On lags…

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Hello everyone,

there is a lot of information going on around the forums about the EU server lag, but it’s scattered all over the place. I did a little investigation of my own, asked around in Russia – didn’t uncover much, but the following is known:

- it is now confirmed that the EU1 server was moved to Amsterdam
- this movement was not caused by the current issues! It was in the making for quite some time, as indicated by the fact it was done practically instantly, where the physical moving of the EU server would require days of downtime, while Wargaming simply switched to ID
- currently, EU1 is running on something that was previously “EU3″ and was prepared for this move, Russian sever RU3 is running on something that was unofficially designated EU4 (it was also moved from Munich)
- the reason both servers were moved from Munich to Amsterdam is unknown
- apparently, Wargaming servers are not the source of the lag issue, the routing is – a new route via Cogent (SS: whatever that is) was created and is in use. My contact’s words: “I suspect they’ve screwed up the BGP or the balancing on the new route” (I better quote it, I have no idea what that means)
- there is currently a massive DDOS attack going on, based on something called “NTP MONLIST”, Wargaming is not the target specifically, but this attack might be clogging the routes
- at this moment, WG RU in Minsk is directly involved in the situation, there is pretty much a gag order for the WG EU employees about it: even if they know, they aren’t allowed to tell you anything, that hasn’t been officially approved. Which takes time.

58 thoughts on “On lags…”

    • Lol :D ping 50 is massive lag for most people, I for one play between 6 & 12 ms, never higher than 15, if I reach 50+ because of server problem you can feel the big difference, you just aren’t used to fast internet that’s all.

      • if that is truly your ping it has NOTHING to do with the speed of your internet, you’re just close to the servers.

        my 100/100 mbit fibre optic gives me about 30-50 ping. (30 in EU2 and 50 in EU1 previously)

      • I can only dream of 12ms ping, it’ll always be 50+ ms even if there’s no problems due to distance. Wish they would add EU3 server in Sweden to cater nordic players.

      • talk about spoilt people… I have to play with 300ms ping from Pakistan, with lot of packet losses, microfreezes, disconnects and ping spikes to 999ms. I have still managed a decent wn7 of 1700+.

        WOT is quite fine to play with on higher ping, but packet losses and disconnections during battle make it impossible to perform or enjoy the game.

    • if the BGP is fucked up, it’s not because of Cogent, it’s because of ISPs

      funny thing is my ISP has no issues with Cogent route

      • Also the Cogentco route to EU2 is not new and was causing issues before EU1 was moved.

        Telia route seems to cause even more problems.

          • This is from about 3 weeks ago.

            Tracing route to login.p2.worldoftanks.eu [185.12.240.140]
            over a maximum of 30 hops:

            1 <1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.0.1
            2 4 ms 4 ms 3 ms 172.16.13.132
            3 * 4 ms 4 ms 217.41.217.110
            4 4 ms 4 ms 4 ms 217.41.217.109
            5 6 ms 6 ms 5 ms 212.140.235.226
            6 6 ms 5 ms 5 ms 217.41.169.185
            7 7 ms 6 ms 7 ms 217.41.169.107
            8 9 ms 5 ms 6 ms acc1-xe-5-0-3.sf.21cn-ipp.bt.net [109.159.251.11
            3]
            9 15 ms 9 ms 15 ms core1-te-0-13-0-10.ealing.ukcore.bt.net [109.159
            .251.171]
            10 10 ms 15 ms 13 ms peer2-xe0-0-0.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net [109.159.2
            54.102]
            11 13 ms 13 ms 13 ms t2c3-xe-0-1-2-0.uk-lon1.eu.bt.net [166.49.211.16
            6]
            12 15 ms 15 ms 13 ms be3035.ccr21.lon01.atlas.cogentco.com [130.117.1
            4.169]
            13 15 ms 15 ms 15 ms be2316.mpd21.lon13.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.73
            .113]
            14 23 ms 22 ms 19 ms be2277.mpd21.ams03.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.62
            .146]
            15 143 ms 209 ms 207 ms te3-1.ccr01.ams07.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.74.
            173]
            16 24 ms 31 ms 27 ms 149.6.60.206
            17 21 ms 18 ms 18 ms eu3-slave-140.worldoftanks.eu [185.12.240.140]

            Oh, hang on I'm supposed to be a lag denier. Silly me. Ignore the above there is no lag it's all your antivirus or cough medicine or something.

            • BT is a notorious bad ISP

              just look at the difference:

              Tracing route to eu3-slave-140.worldoftanks.eu [185.12.240.140]
              over a maximum of 30 hops:

              1 5 ms * <1 ms 192.168.1.1
              2 2 ms * 2 ms 10.0.0.1
              3 7 ms * 7 ms 10.180.20.65
              4 2 ms * 2 ms bb01.buzau.rdsnet.ro [213.154.112.81]
              5 5 ms * 4 ms cr01.bucuresti.rdsnet.ro [213.154.128.92]
              6 4 ms * 4 ms br01.bucuresti.rdsnet.ro [213.154.124.94]
              7 29 ms * 26 ms buca-b1-link.telia.net [213.248.83.169]
              8 29 ms * 29 ms prag-bb1-link.telia.net [80.91.246.152]
              9 43 ms * 43 ms hbg-bb1-link.telia.net [213.155.130.204]
              10 48 ms * 49 ms adm-bb3-link.telia.net [62.115.136.44]
              11 49 ms 49 ms 51 ms adm-b4-link.telia.net [213.155.137.193]
              12 48 ms * 47 ms wargaming-ic-301588-adm-b4.c.telia.net [62.115.13.94]
              13 46 ms * 47 ms eu3-slave-140.worldoftanks.eu [185.12.240.140]

              Trace complete.

              • Yeah, BT is bad but they were the best of the ones offering me 80Mb (probably still are) and they have an 18 month tie in.

                At least they fixed their routing problems the other year. ;)

                • I wouldn’t touch BT with a 100ft bargepole….

                  Offered me the new “Superfast”..

                  My current ISP gives me higher speeds, better line quality and more consistency, even though half of it goes thru the BT network…

                  My father-in-law has BT superfast dogs doo-dahs (he lives 500 metres away)… he’s always on the phone to the helpdesk complaining about speeds and dropouts

                  ….and don’t mention BT sport… ever… :trollface:

              • Seems like no problem here :)

                C:\Users\ph0enX>tracert login.p2.worldoftanks.eu

                Routenverfolgung zu login.p2.worldoftanks.eu [185.12.240.100]
                über maximal 30 Hops:

                1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 10.0.0.138
                2 21 ms 16 ms 17 ms 188-23-239-254.adsl.highway.telekom.at [188.23.239.254]
                3 16 ms 16 ms 15 ms 195.3.77.13
                4 16 ms 16 ms 17 ms INX2-SAX1.highway.telekom.at [195.3.68.153]
                5 17 ms 17 ms 17 ms 195.3.70.210
                6 38 ms 39 ms 39 ms 195.69.146.152
                7 39 ms 38 ms 39 ms eu3-slave-100.worldoftanks.eu [185.12.240.100]

                Ablaufverfolgung beendet.

                C:\Users\ph0enX>tracert login.p1.worldoftanks.eu

                Routenverfolgung zu login.p1.worldoftanks.eu [185.12.241.63]
                über maximal 30 Hops:

                1 1 ms 1 ms <1 ms 10.0.0.138
                2 16 ms 22 ms 17 ms 188-23-239-254.adsl.highway.telekom.at [188.23.239.254]
                3 16 ms 15 ms 15 ms 195.3.77.13
                4 17 ms 16 ms 17 ms 195.3.118.149
                5 17 ms 17 ms 17 ms 195.3.70.210
                6 40 ms 44 ms 41 ms 195.69.146.152
                7 38 ms 38 ms 38 ms eu4-slave-63.worldoftanks.eu [185.12.241.63]

                Ablaufverfolgung beendet.

    • We still don’t know why the sudden shutdown of Munich, maybe a fire or flood shut the datacentre down and we will get EU3 and possibly 4 when it comes back online.

  7. Iscending closed the forum thread “pingplotter request/ latency update” with the comment that the problem has been solved. No word about compensation, but that was expected.

    After 2 years of playing and loving this game, that issue and the handling of it really is a game breaker for me.

    • An article on a danish tech news site had the multiplier at around 500 with the info sourced from a network security company.

  9. told you so.,,

    the BGP is the big intra ISP routers protocols, whats make your packet optimally routed form your ISP point to target ISP via all other networks

    yes security firms got hold of impending DDOS attack against certain countries, a very long list of sites was given to hacker groups and they coordinate attack mainly for today.

    AS isp are ready themselfs they change routing configurations and protocol optimization (also routing) and such to limit DDOS effectiveness, it can possible effect the latency of MMO style UDP burst protocols as they are by design flooding their systems.

  12. It’s not just EU or RU, there is horrible lag and micro freezes on NA East and West servers too.

    Besides the terrible new glitches and nerfs of 8.11 the game is pretty unplayable itself.

    8.11 is officially the worst patch to ever come out for WoT.

    • Yah NA is getting hit hard by stutter and lag, the controls are really sluggish and unresponsive now

    • Yeah, me along with some of my friends have been getting horrible ping spikes on the East and West servers as well. East is almost unplayable most of the time, West is a bit better, but also gets unplayable at times.

      • Assumed it was my system being a toaster, bought new GPU, no change.
        Watching some streamers, and they too were having the same problems.

        What’s funny is I saw none of these problems in test. Makes me wonder what the change was.

  13. Here in Paris we are using 2 ISPs (we are a hoster, Public Cloud Provider) and one of these is Cogent…let me tell you that Cogent is only used when NOTHING (you read it well, NOTHING) else is possible. Cogent have AWFUL service and terrible support…We are in the process of chosing another as a backup connection but since we have to migrate to another place anyway, this will be done.

    Problem is about routing, this is for sure since many ppl playing in platoon from the exact same place don’t have the same lag issues in the same game…the only reason for this to happen is the route used for each connection (you change of route with every new connection). To summarize this to its maximum, each time you enter a new game you open a new connection with a server (EU1 and EU2 are both only entry points to clusters of servers), each game is hosted by another physical server so each time you enter a new game, you open a new tcp/ip connection with this server. This new connection may use (and is VERY likely to use) a new route, different of the previous one…thus, different behaviour despite you play from the same point and on the same “server”.

    WG can’t do anything but changing his provider and even here, we may use another ISP that have issues so lag and PL may still happen.

    BGP stands for Border Gateway Protocol, it is a routing protocol that is mostly used between internet operators. Route calculation for the whole internet may be VERY long depending on the level of the ISP (for us, as we are an ISP as well, it may takes days before the whole table is calculated). If the problem is with BGP tables, it could take months before it will get fixed…

    The NTP DDOS attack is common, we suffered it as well, easy to avoid through…

    • They aren’t really directly on Cogent. My friends with different ISPs are routed through Cogent from the same city as me, while I’m not touching even a single hop through Cogent. Same story was previously with Tinet (Telia) with the exception that a single final hop was through Tinet as well for me.

      My route starts and ends on Level3, the last hop before the EU1 server entry being WARGAMING-I.edge5.Amsterdam1.Level3.net
      The question is why so few ISPs use Level3 which is just superbly quick from eastern-most to western-most parts of Europe.

      • Cost…. They don’t want to have to pay Level3 the premium cost they charge for having decent lines… Same thing by me in NA; I live in Toronto where there’s a direct route through NY down to DC for the NA server, but my ISP routes me up through Montreal because it’s cheaper for them. Doesn’t make a big difference since I’m so close, but Montreal gets clogged sometimes because everyone uses it (since it’s cheaper). TBH ISPs need to start providing route based service (i.e. you request connections to IP x go through route y, for say $5 a month); going through the third party VPNs is a huge hassle and doesn’t always work..

        • I don’t pay any extra and my ISP is just a common type of ISP that serves a certain area of the city along with cable TV etc. It’s a surprise they are plugged right into Level3, but certainly a nice one :)
          I let some ppl VPN through my place (just the WoT traffic) and the difference is night and day. Very easy to do, certainly wouldn’t call that a hassle.

  14. after some ping tracking , Koreans suffer this red indicator lag (packet lost) too.
    trying to get more info now

      • Desynchronization between client and server + client interpolation.

        Client receives server ack commands “set your hull Y axis rotation to 10 degrees”, you press D cause you want to rotate right, client does not receive that command’s acknowledgment – keeps resending “D” command, after which client receives ACK “set your hull Y axis rotation to 100 degrees” so the client does just that, interpolating between those two data points – if there was no interpolation, the tank would just instantly jump to that position, instead of rotating smoothly (albeit quickly).

        • but there was no such input. he was sniping. that’s what the author said (I know him). a desynchro is the typical problem caused by packet loss. no?
          and he was not alone, they call it 360 tank kick

          for now, I have 12 ppls ping plotter results and lag after patch, the average ping is about 10, min 2ms, max 24ms with 0 packet loss for all

          and for ping plotter of player of this video was
          Target Name: login.worldoftanks.kr
          IP: 121.78.67.21
          Date/Time: 2014-02-15 오후 10:35:18

          1 3 ms 3 ms
          2 0 ms 0 ms
          3 1 ms 1 ms [118.217.109.61]
          4 4 ms 1 ms [118.217.108.73]
          5 5 ms 8 ms [58.224.30.45]
          6 5 ms 5 ms [58.229.10.78]
          7 7 ms 6 ms [211.110.93.206]
          8 4 ms 5 ms [203.246.170.126]
          9 5 ms 5 ms kr1-slave-21.worldoftanks.kr [121.78.67.21]

          Ping statistics for login.worldoftanks.kr
          Packets: Sent = 2, Received = 2, Lost = 0 (0.0%)
          Round Trip Times: Minimum = 5ms, Maximum = 5ms, Average = 5ms

          he hid his IP (it was sort of anonymous collecting)

          • If you want analyse with me call me :)
            I just want to be certain of this cause I mean really

    • It;s always laggy on first days of new patch because so many people are downloading the patch. Then it stabilizes just like now. There’s also that big DDOS going, but its impact varies from ISP to ISP.

  16. Thanks for the info, SS. It’s still sad that WG refuses to make an official statement so far. But I would really like to know why EU1 and RU3 were moved from (good and stable) Munich to Amsterdam. I assume that the Munich servers were too expensive for WG.

    There is no logical reason to run both EU servers at the same location. Hopefully, WG solves this issue soon and chooses a different location for the second EU server than Amsterdam.

    • I miss the good ol’ days on EU1 when it was still in Munich. Perfect ping and no flashy red/green light. Game was so smooth and lag free.

      • There is a reason…

        Pricing structures…

        If you are paying for 2 physically remote connections (Munich and Amsterdam) you are probably paying more for a lower spec than paying at one location (2x Amsterdam) for a higher spec.

        “economies of scale” for want of a better phrase…

  17. Pingback: WoT 8.11 Lag issues

  18. I hope for a gold compensation bcause my premium days are running and it’s unplayable… Oh who am I kidding, they’ll say it’s our fault so they don’t need to give shit, lies are so easy told on the internet, because there are no gaming government or laws!! They do whatever they feel like.

  19. - it is now confirmed that the EU1 server was moved to Amsterdam

    This explains why my ping is now so “high”

  21. Just btw…
    I play on standard graphics, with only good quality textures, tree leaves, good view distance LOD, full AA etc…simply everything I dont need for gameplay reduced, even though I´m more of a casual player, I like smoothness before visual richness. I observed like 10FPS frop from max graphic settings but no special effects bothering me etc.
    What my point is, I encounter no lags, no microfreezes next to no packet loss after I switched to standard graphics. I hope it might help some of you, who just like me prefer smooth playing instead of nice visuals.
    If interested, I can post exact settings and by the way, my machine was bought when Xbox360 and PS3 released, only gfx upgraded. My specs are: core2duo 2,4ghz, 4gb 800MHz ram, Asus P5N32E-SLI MB, WD Caviar 750G HDD and NV GTX 460, nothing OC´d.
    BTW average ping 10-20 FPS 50-90, wifi connection. EU2 sever set as default

    • Great to hear it’s working for you, but some of us have gone from running smoothly with most settings maxed, to unable to play with all settings minimized.
      Switching to “standard” and killing all visuals did nothing to change the stutter, lag and packet loss. It’s something on their end that’s doing this.

  22. I have 23-30 ping usually and i live in sweden and use telia vdsl connection. How ever I get lag and high ping these days like all other people, which is a fucking joke.

  23. instead of just bitch*ng on the forums, I’ve created a ticket to support if they will give me some compensation for the lost premium days, as this game is close to unplayable, here is the lovely reply:
    My name is Antoine .. and I thank you for contacting us.

    “Our team has been investigating the source of the issue and I’m afraid that we are not going to give any kind of compensation as we are not the causes of such instability. We are deeply sorry for the inconvenience Commander and sincerely hope you will understand.

    Feel free to contact us if you need anything else.

    Kind regards,”

    So in summary – we know there is a problem, we are ‘investigating’ it (for a week now) but fck you paying customer, you won’t get anything from us.. got to love this

  24. After all of this shit.. i’m just happy i stopped paying for for premium a while ago.. bet there will be no compensation for lost prem days.