Can someone from Shaw look into routes to blizzard?

[#1]

It *could* be..  It likely is if the local techs have said there are node issues, but it is also possible it may be something else.

[0mirage]

kevinds‌ well they said everything in my house was checked over and determined to be perfect (lines, modem, etc.) so they told me that any more issues would be on Shaw's end, which they said was most likely the node, which is why they volunteered to get a team together to check it but sadly they haven't updated me as to its progress or when its taking place.

[0mirage]

Alright, so I have an update. Apparently they replaced some equipment at my node that was causing RF issues, though I don't know why I had to contact them to find out it was done. So any node issues that were there are now resolved and packet loss is no longer showing up at the end IP & I'm not dropping frames on my stream so far. However the issue with blizzard games is still not fixed -- maybe specifically overwatch.

I had someone contact me out of Calgary using Shaw as well and told me he has this exact issue after he watched the video I posted here (double animations). I contacted my friend that's on Telus DSL and he watched my stream and said he had the identical issue. So the only conclusion I can draw is its a routing issue with western Canada (or possibly Alberta specifically).

Since then I've played/tested other games with no issues whatsoever, it seems to only be blizzard titles/overwatch which I'm assuming has to do with the routing. If I force my route to Chicago my issues are significantly reduced and ping is more stable. I read some posts from last year on blizzard forums talking about this issue so I'm sure I'm not the only one experiencing it.

The main problem that keeps happening is when I talk to blizzard they blame shaw's routing and when I talk to shaw they blame blizzard. So I truly don't know what the cause of the problem is anymore which is more than a little frustrating since Overwatch has been the game I've wanted to stream for some time now.

[#4]

I'm in Calgary and I have the same high latency problem.  75-85 ms ... been told that's "fine", but I disagree vehemently.  There's an insane difference between other games where I get 40-50 ms vs the 75-85 ms I get playing overwatch or world of warcraft.

I too would appreciate Shaw looking at the routing to blizzard games.

[tolman33]

Hello,

Over the past couple months I have been experiencing packet loss to Blizzard games. From what I've read on this forum it seems like a somewhat common issue and the solution seems to be to change the routing. I understand Shaw changed the routing on their end recently which has caused some packet loss issues for certain areas.

Below are tracert/WinMTR - the latency spikes occur generally from the same 3 hops. Hops 7-10 all have shown higher spikes on different tracerts. They normally ping 38-40ms. Every now and then I'll get a random big spike from the 2nd hop here in my city seen below.

Could anyone please help with my routing?

Thank you!

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| WinMTR statistics |
| Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
| No response from host - 100 | 101 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| No response from host - 100 | 101 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| No response from host - 100 | 100 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| No response from host - 100 | 100 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| No response from host - 100 | 100 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| No response from host - 100 | 100 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| No response from host - 100 | 100 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| No response from host - 100 | 100 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| No response from host - 100 | 100 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| No response from host - 100 | 100 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 24.105.30.129 - 0 | 100 | 100 | 37 | 56 | 1539 | 39 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|

___________________________________________________

Tracing route to 24.105.30.129 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 1584 ms 16 ms 9 ms 174.7.0.1
3 10 ms 10 ms 11 ms rc1bb-tge0-9-0-20-1.vc.shawcable.net [64.59.148.65]
4 13 ms 14 ms 13 ms rc1wt-be90.wa.shawcable.net [66.163.76.66]
5 13 ms 12 ms 13 ms rc6wt-tge0-10-0-10.wa.shawcable.net [66.163.68.66]
6 37 ms 38 ms 37 ms ae1-br01-eqse2.as57976.net [137.221.73.33]
7 1333 ms 657 ms 657 ms xe-0-0-0-1-br01-eqsv5.as57976.net [137.221.65.40]
8 38 ms 37 ms 37 ms xe-0-0-1-1-br02-eqla1.as57976.net [137.221.65.6]
9 37 ms 38 ms 39 ms be2-pe01-eqla1.as57976.net [137.221.68.71]
10 39 ms 38 ms 38 ms lax-eqla1-ia-bons-02.as57976.net [137.221.66.3]
11 38 ms 38 ms 38 ms 24.105.30.129

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tracing route to 24.105.30.129 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 3 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 1488 ms 8 ms 7 ms 174.7.0.1
3 9 ms 10 ms 9 ms rc1bb-tge0-9-0-20-1.vc.shawcable.net [64.59.148.65]
4 12 ms 13 ms 13 ms rc1wt-be90.wa.shawcable.net [66.163.76.66]
5 12 ms 13 ms 13 ms rc6wt-tge0-10-0-10.wa.shawcable.net [66.163.68.66]
6 38 ms 37 ms 38 ms ae1-br01-eqse2.as57976.net [137.221.73.33]
7 38 ms 38 ms 37 ms xe-0-0-0-1-br01-eqsv5.as57976.net [137.221.65.40]
8 37 ms 38 ms 38 ms xe-0-0-1-1-br02-eqla1.as57976.net [137.221.65.6]
9 38 ms 38 ms 38 ms be2-pe01-eqla1.as57976.net [137.221.68.71]
10 38 ms 39 ms 38 ms lax-eqla1-ia-bons-02.as57976.net [137.221.66.3]
11 38 ms 38 ms 39 ms 24.105.30.129

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tracing route to 24.105.30.129 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 8 ms 8 ms 8 ms 174.7.0.1
3 11 ms 15 ms 11 ms rc1bb-tge0-9-0-20-1.vc.shawcable.net [64.59.148.65]
4 12 ms 13 ms 13 ms rc1wt-be90.wa.shawcable.net [66.163.76.66]
5 13 ms 13 ms 13 ms rc6wt-tge0-10-0-10.wa.shawcable.net [66.163.68.66]
6 38 ms 38 ms 38 ms ae1-br01-eqse2.as57976.net [137.221.73.33]
7 72 ms 71 ms 59 ms xe-0-0-0-1-br01-eqsv5.as57976.net [137.221.65.40]
8 37 ms 38 ms 38 ms xe-0-0-1-1-br02-eqla1.as57976.net [137.221.65.6]
9 38 ms 38 ms 38 ms be2-pe01-eqla1.as57976.net [137.221.68.71]
10 38 ms 40 ms 38 ms lax-eqla1-ia-bons-02.as57976.net [137.221.66.3]
11 38 ms 38 ms 38 ms 24.105.30.129

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tracing route to 24.105.30.129 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 8 ms 8 ms 8 ms 174.7.0.1
3 9 ms 10 ms 10 ms rc1bb-tge0-9-0-20-1.vc.shawcable.net [64.59.148.65]
4 13 ms 12 ms 12 ms rc1wt-be90.wa.shawcable.net [66.163.76.66]
5 13 ms 13 ms 12 ms rc6wt-tge0-10-0-10.wa.shawcable.net [66.163.68.66]
6 39 ms 54 ms 37 ms ae1-br01-eqse2.as57976.net [137.221.73.33]
7 162 ms 217 ms 438 ms xe-0-0-0-1-br01-eqsv5.as57976.net [137.221.65.40]
8 38 ms 37 ms 38 ms xe-0-0-1-1-br02-eqla1.as57976.net [137.221.65.6]
9 38 ms 38 ms 39 ms be2-pe01-eqla1.as57976.net [137.221.68.71]
10 38 ms 40 ms 38 ms lax-eqla1-ia-bons-02.as57976.net [137.221.66.3]
11 39 ms 42 ms 39 ms 24.105.30.129

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[#6]

So i can conclude that 60 to 70 ms is normal, for us now, i used to get 40ms ping and 60 ms rtt in overwatch. but guess what blizzard did without telling anyone properly. i mean its posted on the forums..........

Replacing Ping and RTT with Latency - Technical Support - Overwatch Forums 

You can expect this Latency number to be 10-20ms more than the ping value we previously displayed

so if you had 40 ms before. it should be around 60 to 70 ms

but that doesn't explain the packet loss. i'd assume its an issue on your end.

[0mirage]

For me personally I have no packet loss whatsoever. I've ran testing for hours with no sign of packet loss coming from my connection. The rubber banding for me in Overwatch was intolerable so I quit that entirely and moved on.

Now that Apex Legends is out I'm still seeing signs of rubber banding in that too in the same exact manner as I had in Overwatch. Reload animations in the game sometimes rubber band as well as other actions. Shots feel delayed in the same way that overwatch did. The movement itself never rubber bands for me but it seems anything relating to an 'action' like opening a door can rubber band the animation. Normally I would shrug that off as a server issue but it seems like this rubber banding is persisting between FPS games. My friends that are from the USA tell me they've never seen or had the issue whatsoever, and when I watch streams not once have I seen that happen.

I'm honestly curious where the issue is coming from when my connection to & from the server is showing up with 0 packet loss. Unfortunate part too is Apex Legends has no in-game ping display of any kind so its hard to isolate the problem for that game. I've debated getting a separate ISP (like Telus) for testing purposes to see if it suffers similar issues.

[kingtitan]

I have 1gbps fibre through Telus at work. I will try and see if there is improvement with Overwatch. I currently get 70ms with Shaw 300. Calgary.

[0mirage]

I spoke to Blizzard again as well as an impartial 'MVP tech support' person on their forums and its still believed that this is an issue with Shaw & Telus (probably specific to Alberta). From what I gather it's something on a provincial level as I actually went through Edmonton to my friend's houses as well as an gaming cafe and all computers and ISPs they were using had the same issue -- give or take 15 computers and 3 types of ISP connections (Telus DSL, Telus Fibre, Shaw Cable). The common opinion is that this is a 'provincial hub' issue, this is what the MVP tech support person said:

It does sound like a city or province level hub is the culprit, but Blizzard doesn't control those lines, hubs, or the routing they use -- the ISP does.

Does Shaw share some sort of 'hub' with Telus when routing? I'm no networking expert but is this something that can be looked into? 

[0mirage]

Quick update, I spoke with blizzard support over the phone and they told me to redirect anyone that has this issue here:

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/alberta-canada-double-animations-delayed-shots-in-game...

It seems like this issue is apparently at the very least city wide for Edmonton and possibly provincial wide for Alberta. They told me the only way to get this properly investigated is to have more people report the same issue that I'm having to get the ball rolling. That still doesn't mean it's blizzard related but that's just to get them to double check their end.

I talked to Shaw as well and they're investigating the issue from what I'm aware as this particular problem could possibly be larger than blizzard games. I've had some people suggest it could be a provincial node issue of sorts. I'm not sure how quickly Shaw will investigate it but I thought it was worth mentioning that its being looked at from both sides.