Web Squad ISP

[Seeyou]

Can confirm this as well, during the day i get put on London/Amsterdam/Frankfurt servers and in the evenings i end up on Belgium or Finland (falls under Belgium region now) and the game is horrible to play.

From CT to Finland with Google transit is 230ms, i find when playing on NA it is also smoother.

You can notice the difference in the evening when you get tossed onto a Frankfurt or Amsterdam server.

I'm not a fan of WS's upstream's routes / latencies past London. In some cases certain countries have 200ms or more latency when they're a short hop from London. I've found using a service like ExitLag or VPNGame actually gives me between 140-170ms ping to pretty much any Apex server in EU constantly. It also gives 130-140ms ping to Singapore, though GCE servers seem to be extremely unstable / prone to packet loss for some reason, or I'd play there all the time.

 

[CrypticZA]

I'm not a fan of WS's upstream's routes / latencies past London. In some cases certain countries have 200ms or more latency when they're a short hop from London. I've found using a service like ExitLag or VPNGame actually gives me between 140-170ms ping to pretty much any Apex server in EU constantly. It also gives 130-140ms ping to Singapore, though GCE servers seem to be extremely unstable / prone to packet loss for some reason, or I'd play there all the time.

I trialed exitlag twice now and on both occasions it has been super unstable from CT, from CT last week they were getting me 220ms to Singapore. My connection with another ISP is generally fine its just Google picks up traffic in JHB then sends it down to CT to go via WACS, so i'm picking up an extra 34 to 40ms ping so suddenly Belgium which is 155ms from CT is now 180 and Finland is 220-230. But yea Google servers in Apex are beyond trash.

 

[SFW007]

yup same here.
am still trying to understand how a you-tuber playing fornite on EU with Telkom as ISP and vuma in CPT Southerns managers to get no packet loss and no ping spikes.

 

[Seeyou]

I trialed exitlag twice now and on both occasions it has been super unstable from CT, from CT last week they were getting me 220ms to Singapore. My connection with another ISP is generally fine its just Google picks up traffic in JHB then sends it down to CT to go via WACS, so i'm picking up an extra 34 to 40ms ping so suddenly Belgium which is 155ms from CT is now 180 and Finland is 220-230. But yea Google servers in Apex are beyond trash.

That's odd - I've never gotten above 130-140 to Singapore from CPT. Maybe ISP differences?

Also if ExitLag's estimated ping shows you 130, try it in-game and check, even if the Apex main menu ping is higher. I've had situations where the initial server pings were huge but turned out up to 100ms less when actually playing.

 

[HowTo]

@websquadza hope we can sort this ipv6 issue out I'm having in 10 days time. Taking a break. Let's try for the 16th. Waited over the weekend and no reply from the team.

 

[SFW007]

https://chubsc.co.za/ hows he able to circumvent the ping to Middle East by keeping to basically low when AWS f..ks with the interweb

 

[CrypticZA]

https://chubsc.co.za/ hows he able to circumvent the ping to Middle East by keeping to basically low when AWS f..ks with the interweb

So ISP's use an Amazon service which part of that service is them (Amazon) carrying traffic to MEA, they don't own the route that gives 120ms to MEA, they just have capacity, there are other providers that can be used.

If you use something like Exitlag they provide other routes to MEA, Exitlag was giving me 127ms to MEA, where local ISP's give me 140 from CT so they had a faster route than Amazon.

Amazon whenever their is a flap on a certain route they change it to ensure stability because in their world stability > latency.

 

[websquadza]

I'm not a fan of WS's upstream's routes / latencies past London. In some cases certain countries have 200ms or more latency when they're a short hop from London. I've found using a service like ExitLag or VPNGame actually gives me between 140-170ms ping to pretty much any Apex server in EU constantly. It also gives 130-140ms ping to Singapore, though GCE servers seem to be extremely unstable / prone to packet loss for some reason, or I'd play there all the time.

Which routes in particular here? It would depend on where the traffic is transiting; so you would need to be more specific. If it's AWS or Google, there isn't much we can do as these networks peer locally; and sadly neither optimises their networks or server hardware for gaming. Game specific VPNs do a little more traffic engineering and transit traffic between the VPN egress points, hence the specific latency improvements.

 

[Seeyou]

Which routes in particular here? It would depend on where the traffic is transiting; so you would need to be more specific. If it's AWS or Google, there isn't much we can do as these networks peer locally; and sadly neither optimises their networks or server hardware for gaming. Game specific VPNs do a little more traffic engineering and transit traffic between the VPN egress points, hence the specific latency improvements.

Tough to be more specific because I'd have to go capturing IPs again, but I have a buddy I play with regularly who's on Cool Ideas. When I don't use ExitLag etc, and we get put on random EU servers, say Frankfurt or Belgium for example, I'll be sitting with anywhere from 180-210ms and he'll usually tell me he's got 160-170ms on his side.

It is AWS I believe and I know you've said there's not much you can do in the past, hence I don't mind shelling out extra for the VPN as the rest of the experience on WS is great.

 

[websquadza]

https://chubsc.co.za/ hows he able to circumvent the ping to Middle East by keeping to basically low when AWS f..ks with the interweb

It all comes down to peering. Most, if not all local ISPs peer with AWS locally - this is necessary for a bunch of reasons, including optimal routing to the local AWS services and CDNs. Unfortunately, Amazon also have no communities to allow for us to selectively pick up regions based on regional performance or our user preference - it's more of an all or nothing deal; and as I mentioned above, don't see themselves as a latency sensitive network. We could try de-peer them, this is a monumental task as we also need to ask our upstreams to filter and not advertise us locally; but this would mean losing local access to AWS's local infrastructure at local latencies, which will anger pretty much every power user/dev on our network. In addition, all access to their extensive CDNs would be lost, making everything that little bit more sluggish. This is why no local networks have de-peered them.

 

[SFW007]

It all comes down to peering. Most, if not all local ISPs peer with AWS locally - this is necessary for a bunch of reasons, including optimal routing to the local AWS services and CDNs. Unfortunately, Amazon also have no communities to allow for us to selectively pick up regions based on regional performance or our user preference - it's more of an all or nothing deal; and as I mentioned above, don't see themselves as a latency sensitive network. We could try de-peer them, this is a monumental task as we also need to ask our upstreams to filter and not advertise us locally; but this would mean losing local access to AWS's local infrastructure at local latencies, which will anger pretty much every power user/dev on our network. In addition, all access to their extensive CDNs would be lost, making everything that little bit more sluggish. This is why no local networks have de-peered them.

Is it possible for you to setup a VPN service ?
Something similar to chubs service am happy to pay, I had torgaurd but cancelled them,

O and I completely understand the above as always

 

[CrypticZA]

Tough to be more specific because I'd have to go capturing IPs again, but I have a buddy I play with regularly who's on Cool Ideas. When I don't use ExitLag etc, and we get put on random EU servers, say Frankfurt or Belgium for example, I'll be sitting with anywhere from 180-210ms and he'll usually tell me he's got 160-170ms on his side.

It is AWS I believe and I know you've said there's not much you can do in the past, hence I don't mind shelling out extra for the VPN as the rest of the experience on WS is great.

So CISP CT user here.

London is 140 flat its a CT to UK connection host is in London.

Amsterdam is a straight to Amsterdam as well, might peer in London ping sits anywhere from 148 to 160 I've noticed this one changes a bit.

Frankfurt 155 to 160 AWS picked up in CT we all use the same service. Cisp actually got AWS to change this route to go correctly via WACS instead of ESSY.

Belgium 180ms Google service all the same picked up in JHB brought back down to CT via WACS to Belgium.

210 to 230 ping is new servers Google Finland, not much you can do about that same as Belgium Google sucks.

NA pings should be more or less the same 210+ on all.

So your pings should be the same to EU servers

 

[Seeyou]

So CISP CT user here.

London is 140 flat its a CT to UK connection host is in London.

Amsterdam is a straight to Amsterdam as well, might peer in London ping sits anywhere from 148 to 160 I've noticed this one changes a bit.

Frankfurt 155 to 160 AWS picked up in CT we all use the same service. Cisp actually got AWS to change this route to go correctly via WACS instead of ESSY.

Belgium 180ms Google service all the same picked up in JHB brought back down to CT via WACS to Belgium.

210 to 230 ping is new servers Google Finland, not much you can do about that same as Belgium Google sucks.

NA pings should be more or less the same 210+ on all.

So your pings should be the same to EU servers

I'll check with him again next time I see a higher latency in a game when I'm not on the VPN, but I definitely recall a few times his ping was was anywhere up to 40ms lower when it happened. At the end of the day though, the higher latencies wouldn't be as big of a deal if the Apex servers weren't such a trash heap in the first place

 

[SFW007]

I'll check with him again next time I see a higher latency in a game when I'm not on the VPN, but I definitely recall a few times his ping was was anywhere up to 40ms lower when it happened. At the end of the day though, the higher latencies wouldn't be as big of a deal if the Apex servers weren't such a trash heap in the first place

Cool Ideas VPN Server(s)

As previously mentioned we've setup a free VPN server for Cool Ideas customers to connect directly to the UK, should there be a need to avoid local peering arrangements and increased LAG/Ping, such as can happen with gameservers hosted on AWS, or Google cloud. The server has our best path to...

mybroadband.co.za

this is probably why

can this be done here though ?

 

[CrypticZA]

Cool Ideas VPN Server(s)

As previously mentioned we've setup a free VPN server for Cool Ideas customers to connect directly to the UK, should there be a need to avoid local peering arrangements and increased LAG/Ping, such as can happen with gameservers hosted on AWS, or Google cloud. The server has our best path to...

mybroadband.co.za

this is probably why

can this be done here though ?

The VPN was made when AWS routed us very badly to Frankfurt, to be honest their main network is better than this VPN now I don't even use it anymore.

 

[SFW007]

The VPN was made when AWS routed us very badly to Frankfurt, to be honest their main network is better than this VPN now I don't even use it anymore.

Am still getting 200 + ping I have to quit the game 3 times to get to the low ping server

 

[Seeyou]

Welp, this bullsh*t is starting again after a small break:

 

[Seeyou]

Besides the downtime above, I tried Apex without a VPN this morning out of curiosity (was not having timeout issues) and found it borderline unplayable. Every game I got into connected to the London server was 180ms or higher. Think I'll stick to the VPN.

 

[CrypticZA]

Besides the downtime above, I tried Apex without a VPN this morning out of curiosity (was not having timeout issues) and found it borderline unplayable. Every game I got into connected to the London server was 180ms or higher. Think I'll stick to the VPN.

Apex doesn't work like that anymore the game expanded so fast all EU regions fall under EU meaning whenever you connect to any of them you get thrown on any of them. 180 means you were being put on Belgium. Its the same way dpr everyone, I choose London as my data centre but I'm never on it, if you do arenas it will throw you onto the server generally with lowest latency. The games matchmaker now classifies regions together so if you choose Singapore you will be put on any of the three Singapore servers, if you choose East Coast NA you will get assigned one of the NA East Coast servers. They now just try put people on servers as fast as possible and it's annoying AF since we generally get Google servers which are beyond trash

 

[Seeyou]

Apex doesn't work like that anymore the game expanded so fast all EU regions fall under EU meaning whenever you connect to any of them you get thrown on any of them. 180 means you were being put on Belgium. Its the same way dpr everyone, I choose London as my data centre but I'm never on it, if you do arenas it will throw you onto the server generally with lowest latency. The games matchmaker now classifies regions together so if you choose Singapore you will be put on any of the three Singapore servers, if you choose East Coast NA you will get assigned one of the NA East Coast servers. They now just try put people on servers as fast as possible and it's annoying AF since we generally get Google servers which are beyond trash

Yeah I see this. Subjectively though, the experience is better when using ExitLag. I never see pings above ~170ms and hitreg definitely feels more immediate. Upstream or Google servers, just seems to be the way to go for me at the moment.