Recent Lag

X

Xalsturi

Dalayan Adventurer
Starting about a week ago I started to see some strange lag spikes. In the past few days it's become near constant. I have no idea where it's coming from. I haven't changed any firewall settings and, as far as I can tell, my virus protection doesn't seem to be the problem. I'll see some lag even just sitting in an empty zone, but it definitely ramps up when I start casting spells or go into combat.

I tried pinging the server 100 times. The majority of pings took a normal 22ms or so, but every so often I'd see a spike to 200ms or even 500ms and 1 packet was dropped. I even downloaded wireshark and ran a few captures while playing to take a look at the network traffic. I can isolate the UDP traffic between me and the server but to be honest I'm pretty much a novice and not really sure how to analyze a wireshark capture to troubleshoot.

Any ideas what might be causing it or how I might address it?
 
is it during AEs or /who all? When that was happening to me, it was windows security essentials causing it.
 
I have seen the lag spikes during /who commands in the past, but don't recall it being an issue recently. This lag seems to be an entirely different animal though, not really connected to /who or ae's per se (although when I cast spells of any sort it does ramp up).

I run Windows 7 and I haven't touched the firewall or security setting recently. It's possible there was an automatic update that messed with things, but as far as I can tell I have the setting set to ignore SoD traffic.
 
Here is an easy thing to check first, but beyond this I'm not a network guy:
I had this problem when I installed on a new OS. The solution is to change windows security essentials/windows defender and exclude your SoD folder. (This was the same issue for me as lag during AEing, and lag with all text filters turned to off for logging.)
You an go to windows defender settings, then exclude files and locations, and exclude you SoD folder. (I've also excluded Gamparse and EQPlaynice for good measure.)
Click to expand...
 
I saw that thread and I've made sure to exclude my SoD folder in Windows Defender. I still seem to be getting frequent breaks in the lag meter unfortunately. Thanks for the suggestions Daffie.
 
Still a lot to narrow down, like if it's computer or connection related. Does the F11 bar spike like crazy during the lag (indicating a connection issue)? Is your packet loss % constantly more than 0%?
 
F11 will show small 2-5% breaks if I'm just standing around (not constant, maybe 1-2 times a minute). If I start casting or during a fight spikes go higher, 10-20% breaks and sometimes up into yellow/red ranges for packet loss. Left number stays fairly low, right number ranges hugely from low numbers up into the several thousands.
 
People are playing without issue right now, so it is clearly not an issue with the SoD servers.

What has changed for you in the last week? Something has changed. New hardware on your network, windows updates, updated nic card or router drivers/firmware, maybe you started torrenting like crazy a week ago, or changed the location you play in, etc. Are you using wireless or hard line, and do you play from home or school?

One of the simplest things to try is a modem and router reboot. Believe it or not, this can fix issues if you are having network related issues... I would then hard wire to the router (or modem if possible) to bypass wireless. See if any of this helps. Try to get to the simplest setup possible to make trouble shooting easier. Turn in game EQ logs off (there is no reason to have them on while you are trouble shooting lag issues.)
 
So it's definitely network related. Definitely restart modem & router. Always a good start.

You never know what kind of patches firewall and virus protection software do. So try temporarily completely disable them, 1 by 1 and try running the game. I know I've gotten too fed up with firewalls/virus protections and just live wildly.
 
Last edited:
Do this while you are logged in to game:

Tab out of game.

Right click your task bar, click Task Manager, click the performance tab, click Resource Monitor, click the network tab, expand the window, expand the Network Bar, find the .exe that runs EQ/ NO! click the receive bar to sort the images use of your network receive bandwidth.

You should see EQ.exe, or whatever it is. Watch it. Does it drop to zero sometimes for a second or 2? You can check the send on it too.

There is a good place to start as well.
 
I think I may have found the culprit. I got a western digital external hard drive over the holidays. For some reason one of the services from the backup software that the drive installed was running a relatively high amount of network traffic constantly and may have been crowding out other traffic. I uninstalled the software (stopping that particular service would just cause the software to restart it immediately). I've only had time for a short test, but my packet loss problems seem to be solved. If they show up again while that software is not on my machine, I'll let you folks know. Thanks to all those who suggested ways to help track this down!

-Draedan-
 
Funny you said that Draedan. If you have an external USB drive and IF you have any application, such as an anti-virus that does random scans upon a read or write to your HDD/SSD, then you WILL notice a slight if not significant general lag spike when it tries to access an external device that is not 'spun up' so to speak. And, during gaming it will only irritate you.

I suggest you unplug such devices until you are ready to use them. Of course if you are running a NAS/SAN you cannot do such things, but if it's a simple external drive, unplug it unless you are ready to use it. Treat it as you would a USB Mem stick. :D

EDIT: I believe Windows OS has an option for USB controllers. Something like sleep mode or energy saving mode. It might be built in to the power profile, but you might want to check that out too. Change that bad boy to UNLIMITED POWER!
 
Hesyous said:
Funny you said that Draedan. If you have an external USB drive and IF you have any application, such as an anti-virus that does random scans upon a read or write to your HDD/SSD, then you WILL notice a slight if not significant general lag spike when it tries to access an external device that is not 'spun up' so to speak. And, during gaming it will only irritate you.

I suggest you unplug such devices until you are ready to use them. Of course if you are running a NAS/SAN you cannot do such things, but if it's a simple external drive, unplug it unless you are ready to use it. Treat it as you would a USB Mem stick. :D

EDIT: I believe Windows OS has an option for USB controllers. Something like sleep mode or energy saving mode. It might be built in to the power profile, but you might want to check that out too. Change that bad boy to UNLIMITED POWER!
Click to expand...
All great advice. Unplugging and spinning down storage drives is usually best because it saves drive/nand life. That said, you will have performance issues during spin up. I leave all my internal drives spun up always, but I'm an ass hole.
 
Well, the semi-odd thing is that that was exactly what I was doing. I left the the drive unplugged, but the drive software was still running network traffic for some reason. I'm not sure if it was continually scanning the (wireless) network for western digital products or what, but it was constantly running traffic over the network even with the drive itself unplugged. In any case, removing the software solved my problem entirely. I can still use the external drive for back up purposes but I suppose I'll just have to re-install and uninstall the drive software when I want to update my back up files which is a hassle... but better than the constant lag I was having.
 
Daffie said:
All great advice. Unplugging and spinning down storage drives is usually best because it saves drive/nand life. That said, you will have performance issues during spin up. I leave all my internal drives spun up always, but I'm an ass hole.
Click to expand...

Negative Daffie. It's impossible for you to be an a-hole. :D
 
Daffie said:
Thank you, but I just lost around 500 720p-1080p movies when an internal drive failed about 2 or 3 weeks ago :(
Click to expand...

Next time around use RAID 1. BAM! Mechanical drives are finally dropping in price. You can get some inexpensive ones off of newegg deals every now and again.

EDIT:

Every now and then Asia has a 'flood' that seems to destroy all their HDD manufacturing LOCATED ON THE BEACH, because that's where they are obviously...pfft. They may be good at math but not so good at architecture and geography. Before the last increase in price about 3/4 years ago I bought a 1TB for like 70$. After the 'flood', it went up to 210$. No joke.

So anyway, prices are better now. :)
 
Hesyous said:
Next time around use RAID 1. BAM! Mechanical drives are finally dropping in price. You can get some inexpensive ones off of newegg deals every now and again.

EDIT:

Every now and then Asia has a 'flood' that seems to destroy all their HDD manufacturing LOCATED ON THE BEACH, because that's where they are obviously...pfft. They may be good at math but not so good at architecture and geography. Before the last increase in price about 3/4 years ago I bought a 1TB for like 70$. After the 'flood', it went up to 210$. No joke.

So anyway, prices are better now. :)
Click to expand...

I broke all my RAID1s when hard drive prices were way up. I'm constantly out of drive space lol.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom