I've heard that people connecting from other countries can do so just fine, but I've experienced very consistent lag from the UK.

Here's the tracert I did to Carrion Fields:


tracert 66.85.154.235

Tracing route to riverwind.thirdhosting.com <66.85.154.235>
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 54 ms 98 ms 99 ms dsldevice.lan <192.168.1.254>
2 27 ms 35 ms 28 ms lo0-central1.ptn-ag01.plus.net <195.166.128.202>

3 27 ms 26 ms 27 ms gi2-6-111.ptn-gw01.plus.net <84.92.3.137>
4 27 ms 26 ms 26 ms po4.ptn-gw02.plus.net <212.159.1.139>
5 26 ms 26 ms 26 ms po6.thn-gw1.plus.net <212.159.1.136>
6 27 ms 26 ms 27 ms po4.thn-gw2.plus.net <212.159.1.135>
7 37 ms 26 ms 26 ms 1-2.r1.lo.hwng.net <195.66.224.227>
8 106 ms 100 ms 98 ms 4-1.r1.ny.hwng.net <69.16.190.209>
9 110 ms 99 ms 99 ms 1-3.r2.ny.hwng.net <69.16.191.94>
10 127 ms 135 ms 126 ms unknown.hwng.net <209.197.0.37>
11 181 ms 181 ms 190 ms e4-1.r1.la.hwng.net <209.197.0.25>
12 187 ms 186 ms 188 ms e2-1.r1.ph.hwng.net <209.197.0.22>
13 188 ms 176 ms 178 ms unknown.hwng.net <209.197.5.154>
14 180 ms 176 ms 176 ms po5.bb2.cwie.10.2.phx0.cwie.net <64.38.200.5>
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 172 ms 172 ms 172 ms 66.85.154.234
17 175 ms 174 ms 175 ms riverwind.thirdhosting.com <66.85.154.235>

Trace complete.


It doesn't seem like the problem is on my ISP side, and I've been able to use other websites without any problems.

Anyone else from the UK getting the same problems?

Thanks.

No problem when I played from Canada during the Christmas period though.

From the UK, I freeze up without any warning whatsoever. I've just been lucky that I haven't been attacked or mob died as a result yet. It is putting me off playing a bit though.

That traceroute may not actually be indicative of a problem. The final number to cf was 174-175. That one host at 15 probably just doesn't respond to ICMP, which is the type of packet traceroute uses. Do you get lots of dropped packets (or extremely large latency spikes) when you ping cf?

I get 100% packet loss trying to ping cf. When I'm not lagged up, it's fine.

When you're getting 100% packet loss try a traceroute. Unlike the one he posted, which looks like this:

good host #1
good host #2
* * * (bad host #3)
good host #4
good host #5
carrion fields

Yours should look like:

good host #1
good host #2
* * * (bad host #3)
* * * (bad host #3)
* * * (bad host #3)

At that point the problem is either with #2 or #3, so you'd want to contact whoever is in charge of them.

Especially terrible given that I MUD, but I don't know what's ICMP, dropped packets, etc. The thing about the lag is that it strikes periodically, like once every 15 seconds, for about 5 to 10 seconds (sometimes worse), so I guess (if my intuition about how the technology works is right) pinging it during a time when it's not suffering a lag spike won't show a problem.

How do I tell if traceroute shows a problem? (i.e. what on the command prompt will tell me that there are dropped packets or latency spikes?)

If Daurwyn and I both have the same problem (we're in different cities) then maybe others in the UK have the same..?