Can someone from Shaw look into routes to blizzard?

[0mirage]

I've been unable to play blizzard games for the better part of 2 years if not more now due to packet loss on your modems, and once I fixed that, there were issues with the routing to blizzard servers. With your routing to blizzard I get 70-80 ping with double animations in game constantly (testing was done in overwatch). With a VPN I had 50 ping with very rare double animations which implies the routing is at fault. Blizzard has acknowledged this issue and pointed me in the direction of Shaw routing being the cause. So I guess what I'm asking is if its possible for you guys to fix the route my connection is taking to blizzard servers. I can't run a VPN all the time just to play games, and we all know VPNs are unstable as well. The difference is quite massive, and I was hoping you guys would consider helping me out as I do enjoy playing blizzard games almost exclusively.

TEST ON SHAW ROUTING (NO VPN):

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| WinMTR statistics |
| Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
| DD-WRT - 0 | 206 | 206 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 96.52.128.1 - 0 | 206 | 206 | 7 | 10 | 15 | 9 |
| rh9we-cmts.ed.shawcable.net - 0 | 206 | 206 | 7 | 12 | 72 | 8 |
| 66.163.70.129 - 0 | 206 | 206 | 8 | 14 | 89 | 12 |
| rc3no-be6.cg.shawcable.net - 0 | 206 | 206 | 12 | 15 | 38 | 17 |
| rc2wt-be100.wa.shawcable.net - 0 | 206 | 206 | 26 | 29 | 34 | 27 |
| rc6wt-tge0-10-0-11.wa.shawcable.net - 0 | 206 | 206 | 27 | 31 | 64 | 30 |
| ae1-br01-eqse2.as57976.net - 0 | 205 | 205 | 52 | 71 | 1473 | 53 |
| xe-0-0-0-1-br01-eqsv5.as57976.net - 0 | 205 | 205 | 51 | 73 | 1334 | 53 |
| xe-0-0-1-1-br02-eqla1.as57976.net - 2 | 183 | 180 | 51 | 166 | 4618 | 53 |
| be2-pe02-eqla1.as57976.net - 0 | 206 | 206 | 52 | 55 | 61 | 53 |
| lax-eqla1-ia-bons-03.as57976.net - 0 | 206 | 206 | 52 | 56 | 61 | 55 |
| 24.105.30.129 - 0 | 206 | 206 | 53 | 56 | 61 | 54 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|
WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider

TEST USING A VPN TO CHICAGO (BYPASSING SHAW ROUTING):

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| WinMTR statistics |
| Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
| 172.21.36.1 - 0 | 134 | 134 | 38 | 40 | 45 | 38 |
| 151.139.44.25 - 0 | 134 | 134 | 37 | 40 | 47 | 38 |
| 151.139.44.9 - 0 | 134 | 134 | 38 | 41 | 45 | 42 |
| eqix-ix-ch1.blizzard.com - 0 | 134 | 134 | 38 | 42 | 66 | 42 |
| ae1-br01-eqch2.as57976.net - 0 | 134 | 134 | 38 | 46 | 144 | 43 |
| be1-pe01-eqch2.as57976.net - 0 | 134 | 134 | 38 | 42 | 48 | 41 |
| chi-eqch2-ia-bons-02.as57976.net - 0 | 134 | 134 | 39 | 41 | 49 | 41 |
| 24.105.62.129 - 0 | 134 | 134 | 39 | 43 | 52 | 43 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|
WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider

Look forward to hearing from you guys!

[#2]

24.105.30.129 - 0 | 206 | 206 | 53 | 56 | 61 | 54 |

24.105.62.129 - 0 | 134 | 134 | 39 | 43 | 52 | 43 |

I don't see an issue with either of the tests..  One first (Shaw) is going to a West coast server, the second (VPN) is going to an East coast server, but really there is nothing wrong with either result.

Best  53/39

Average 56/43

Worst 61/52

Shaw appears to have better jitter, but both tests look really good.

[0mirage]

'No issues' aren't the way I would describe the result in-game. The non-vpn test I ran had 20ms-30ms higher ping and double animations in game every 2nd shot. The VPN test had double animations maybe every 15 shots and 20-30ms lower ping. That's a drastic difference if you ask me, especially in a competitive game.

Also out of curiosity if you think both tests are fine where would the double animations be stemming from? I haven't been able to isolate the source as my testing comes across as clean and the only hop with packet loss on the non-vpn test (worth noting I've tested 3 separate PCs and they all do the same thing all hardwired). The only thing I can think of is without a VPN, the connection is jittering more frequently but other than that I have no clue.

And in-game:

82ms max, 70ms avg (non-vpn),

61ms max 50ms avg (vpn)

I shouldn't be getting better results routing through a VPN at all to begin with, so that's why I have some concerns about it.

Someone on the blizzard forums posted similar results but they were on Teksavvy (still using shaw lines) and described identical issues to me. They said using a VPN had the same result as I did, mitigated the issues for the most part. Keep in mind this isn't the only blizzard game I'm having issues with, I've troubles like this with World of Warcraft and more recently Black Ops 4.

Are there any other types of tests I can or should be running? Kinda out of ideas at this point.

[shaw-tony]

Hey 0mirage,

Thank you for reaching out! I can understand the frustrations of added latency when it comes to FPS games. I haven't heard of any reports of issues with routing to Blizzard servers. 

I ran a WinMTR to the same server and see there is a spike at xe-0-0-1-1-br02-eqla1.as57976.net which is likely a firewall to prevent DDOS attacks. Otherwise, the average is about 30-32 ms with no packet loss. I don't have a VPN personally to test those routes. 

It may be signal related if you haven't tried some troubleshooting steps yet. Keep me posted on how it goes.

Cheers,

Tony | Community Mod.

[0mirage]

Hey shaw-tony I recently had 2 senior techs come to my house to troubleshoot some issues. The first one replaced my Arris XB6 with a Technicolor XB6 and added a MoCA filter. The other tech added an attenuator since I was having significant signal issues to the modem. After he added the attenuator he told me there were still some issues with the signal (they were still yellow on his test), but he had gotten rid of thousands of errors that were coming up and most of the signal numbers were green. He also told me it may be node related and he was going to get a team to look into it, but I haven't heard anything since. Is it possible for me to check my own signal values with the XB6 or do I need someone on your end to do that for me?

And yes I've done those troubleshooting steps multiple times over, so we're good on that.

[shaw-tony]

0mirage thank you for the context. Unfortunately, without any account information, I will not be able to check to see if there is an active ticket for a node issue or what your current signal values look like. Your best bet is to touch base with technical support for those details. Our technical support members will also be able to help send up a ticket regarding your routing issues for our network engineers to investigate.

[#7]

The MTR tests show no issues..

15-20 ms won't cause that, 150 ms won't cause that..  Jitter, packet loss, and server load can cause that.  Remember you are using different servers when you connect with the VPN.  What times are you playing?  Evening on the west coast connecting to a server in the West, the server will be busy.  At the same time the East coast servers will have less load being later in the evening/night.

If your game is at 60 FPS (frames per second) 16 ms is the time it takes for each frame to be displayed on your screen.  Your game won't change 30-60-90 FPS.  Neither will small differences in latency.

[0mirage]

I agree I never implied it was solely ping causing the issue. If the game was sitting at 150ms and that was the only issue I wouldn't have any double animations whatsoever and the game would actually be playable, I understand that. Its not going to exclusively be server load causing an issue like that...plenty of people play at peak times without a single issue. However I did run more testing if you're curious, I recorded a video of the problem and while the issue is infrequent in the video just imagine it happening every 3rd shot in the game as it usually does for me:

The issue

Look at these times in the video

0:40 is the first double animation
0:50 is the second/third example of a double animation
3:30 is another example

 These double animations happen constantly and my shots are delayed as well though it wont come across in a video.

After making that video I spoke to blizzard and they reminded me that I could test my connection while tethered to my phone, and the results were very clear right away. Despite an LTE phone connection being a waking nightmare of instability the double animations were completely gone and shot delay was gone as well. So i guess it cant just be something associated with blizzard after all. I truly believe my node in my area is at fault, and hysterically my connection is acting up right now as soon as I typed that. Here's my MTR to google from just 1 second ago:

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

|                                      WinMTR statistics                                   |

|                       Host              -   %  | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |

|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|

|                             192.168.1.1 -    0 |   94 |   94 |    0 |    0 |    2 |    0 |

|                             96.52.128.1 -    3 |   87 |   85 |    7 |   11 |   85 |    7 |

|                           64.59.186.165 -    0 |   94 |   94 |    8 |   12 |   59 |    8 |

|              rc3no-be6.cg.shawcable.net -    0 |   94 |   94 |   12 |   19 |   60 |   17 |

|            rc2wt-be100.wa.shawcable.net -    2 |   91 |   90 |   28 |   33 |   38 |   34 |

|                            72.14.242.90 -    2 |   91 |   90 |   27 |   32 |   37 |   34 |

|                   No response from host -  100 |   20 |    0 |    0 |    0 |    0 |    0 |

|                           74.125.253.60 -    2 |   91 |   90 |   29 |   34 |   38 |   35 |

|                         108.170.245.107 -    2 |   91 |   90 |   27 |   34 |   74 |   33 |

|                           216.239.50.39 -    0 |   94 |   94 |   27 |   34 |   80 |   32 |

|                          108.170.226.97 -    2 |   91 |   90 |   28 |   33 |   38 |   35 |

|                          74.125.243.193 -    2 |   91 |   90 |   27 |   32 |   37 |   28 |

|                          209.85.254.237 -    2 |   91 |   90 |   28 |   40 |  609 |   35 |

|                sea30s01-in-f3.1e100.net -    2 |   91 |   90 |   27 |   33 |   37 |   34 |

|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|

   WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider

This test alone implicates the node would it not? I'm running the technicolor XB6 so the Puma chipset is no longer a factor. I've tested my connection without my personal router connected, and the ip 96.52.128.1 has packet loss seemingly at random in WinMTR in every configuration I've tested. Another thing I've noticed is the packets on that IP will sometimes 'fall behind' in packets and catch up back and forth until it finally reports it as loss. Any insights on this recent test?

I already had two Senior techs tell me the connection in my house was perfect, so that's why I'm assuming the node is at fault. And they had told me it was what they suspected was the problem.

[#9]

96.52.128.1 -    3 |   87 |   85 |    7 |   11 |   85 |    7 |

Yep, that is packet loss, which can/will cause that.

[0mirage]

kevinds shaw-tony And just to be clear based on that test it could be the node causing issues if its coming from that IP? To be honest I might get another connection like Telus DSL to compare and contrast the two and test to see if the double animations are still happening on that connection.