Internet Help - Online Gaming

K3NA

K3NA

Midfield
Just throwing this out there to see if anyone has any advice or help.
My son has a purpose built gaming PC that we built last year. Asus B550f MB, RX 6800 XT Graphics Card, Ryzen 9 5950X CPU, 64 GB Ram, 2 x 1TB mv.2 SSD plus a 4TB Samsung SSD so I don't think this is causing the issues he is facing but could be wrong.
He plays Guildwars 2 online a lot logging into servers in North America. He has played this over the last 7 or 8 years with no problems, and spent a small fortune on DLC content, until about 6 weeks ago when he started to notice quite a bit of lag in the game making it unplayable at times. Whilst on these servers he has asked other players if they are having problems and it seems he is the only one. He has logged into European servers and the game is fine with no lag.
We have Virgin 1 gigabit cable broadband and speed tests show the speed is averaging over 900 Mbps and 1150 Mbps at the router/Virgin Hub 5.
I have contacted Virgin and they sent a technician out who tested everything and couldn't find any problems. He said the speeds were what they should be.
My son contacted the Arenanet Help who run the Guildwars servers and they ran tests at their end and said the problem was with Virgin.
I have done a trace route test but don't really understand the results. It looks as if there is a problem between Virgin and the Arenanet North American servers.
Does anyone on here understand these trace route results ??
At the moment Virgin are blaming Arenanet and Arenanet are blaming Virgin.
I am thinking of a VPN (Nord VPN), would this help him ??
Any advice appreciated, he's driving me nuts !!!!
TIA
 


What's you mobile data like near the computer? Could always USB tether a phone, disconnect the ethernet cable and try using mobile data.
It could be worth turning virgin web safe off in the router settings temporarily, but yes a VPN could also help if it's actually an issue between virgin and those north American servers
 
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A trace route won’t tell you to much mate, just where the issue may be. I would pretty much guarantee it’s not the machine itself.

Try what is suggested above and let us know what happens. Can you log the account from another isp? Does he have a mate in another area that can log into his account?
 
sometimes you will get random issues like that between data centres. I had it happened years ago when I was on AOL and had allot of issues connecting to steam.

It complicates it more with him using the VPN though. I was using a VPN to play COD on NA servers to avoid the chinese cheaters. On mine you can select which servers you connect to. IE west coast or east coast or by city. He could try changing that.

I went with PIA for my VPN because they have a setting that is better for gaming over a VPN known as wireguard. You could see if theres a option for that in his.
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Or maybe even try another VPN.

Not sure if PIA do a free trial but you can get 95% cashback through topcashback so its only a fiver for 2 years.
 
K3NA said:
I am thinking of a VPN (Nord VPN), would this help him ??
Click to expand...

Its certainly worth a try as it definitely could make a difference.

That said, you are always going to get extra latency on USA servers compared to European ones, and a VPN will introduce even more latency, but it could also bypass any bottlenecks.

I use Surfshark, and I know they do a 30 day moneyback trial, so no risk, and I am sure some of the other providers offer similar.
 
RTGAdmin said:
Its certainly worth a try as it definitely could make a difference.

That said, you are always going to get extra latency on USA servers compared to European ones, and a VPN will introduce even more latency, but it could also bypass any bottlenecks.

I use Surfshark, and I know they do a 30 day moneyback trial, so no risk, and I am sure some of the other providers offer similar.
Click to expand...

Depends where the servers are located. Nowadays with today's internet you don't feel if anything if it's on east coast. West coast is like 0.5 sec delay.

To diagnose the problem is easier than you think as it's pretty common for European players to play on American servers in all MMO's so its a case of finding a British player who's also on VM and see if he has the same problem
 
K3NA said:
Thanks for all the replies. I'll let my son have a look and try the suggestions.
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just a idea , i've been streaming dodgy footy streams and streams have been crap and mod of site say's they are fine and need to change our dns as virgins dns is sometimes crap., changing dns and stream worked fine

maybe nothing

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Post the tracrt here and ping results.

Maybe try a different dns service like 8888? To bypass virgin routing.
 
A simple google search suggests the problem is not uncommon. Shit like DNS servers and VPN will do absolutely fuck all.

It's a case of the ISP and the server connecting to each other and then timing out.
It's 99% likely the fault on Virgin's side. You will have to show them proof otherwise they'll carry on playing innocent

Blizzard have historically had beef with Virgin for having faulty connections to their World of Warcraft servers but have complained on behalf of the customer but ArenaNet isn't doing the same thing it would appear.
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The short term temporary fix is to tether your phone and use your phone as personal hotspot, assuming you've got the phone data to do it, a good 4G signal will you get you a good ping on US servers, a 5G signal will defintely get you a good ping.
The long term fix is to download the ping logs and tell Virgin they're the problem
 
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coyneeee said:
A simple google search suggests the problem is not uncommon. Shit like DNS servers and VPN will do absolutely fuck all.

It's a case of the ISP and the server connecting to each other and then timing out.
It's 99% likely the fault on Virgin's side. You will have to show them proof otherwise they'll carry on playing innocent

Blizzard have historically had beef with Virgin for having faulty connections to their World of Warcraft servers but have complained on behalf of the customer but ArenaNet isn't doing the same thing it would appear.
.
The short term temporary fix is to tether your phone and use your phone as personal hotspot, assuming you've got the phone data to do it, a good 4G signal will you get you a good ping on US servers, a 5G signal will defintely get you a good ping.
The long term fix is to download the ping logs and tell Virgin they're the problem
Click to expand...

Granted there are known historic issues but that statement in bold is a load of shite tbh. Changing DNS and using VPN with/without their DNS can absolutely make a difference when it comes to routing.
 
Sleepy said:
Granted there are known historic issues but that statement in bold is a load of shite tbh. Changing DNS and using VPN with/without their DNS can absolutely make a difference when it comes to routing.
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Well firstly, it doesn't make a difference. It's like trying to fit a 3 pin plug into a European 2 plug socket.

And the most important factor has been forgotten - All MMO's carry anti-bot software which bans accounts logged in from multiple locations so doing that is gonna get the poor fucker banned so it's a moot point anyways. I believe it's only EVE Online which allowed account sharing.
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In a genre where player boosting and real money for ingame currency boosting is rife using a VPN is a bit like holding a bag of cocaine to a police station's door and saying look what ive got.
 
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coyneeee said:
Well firstly, it doesn't make a difference. It's like trying to fit a 3 pin plug into a European 2 plug socket.

And the most important factor has been forgotten - All MMO's carry anti-bot software which bans accounts logged in from multiple locations so doing that is gonna get the poor fucker banned so it's a moot point anyways. I believe it's only EVE Online which allowed account sharing.
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In a genre where player boosting and real money for ingame currency boosting is rife using a VPN is a bit like holding a bag of cocaine to a police station's door and saying look what ive got.
Click to expand...

Doesn't matter if you try and be funny, it's a load of shite.

VPN's don't all have shared IP's.....DNS servers can make a difference....but apart from that, you are bang on 🤣
 
I had a similar issue with my (absolutely shite) isp, onestream.

My issue was across all games & servers mind

I had an issue with big ping spikes. The only way I could get them to settle was by turning on QoS in the router settings and allocating each 'ping sensitive' machine on the network it's own bandwidth.

I reckon onestream's infrastructure is shite and doesn't handle QoS very well at their end, so users are forced to do it themselves.

Might be worth a look, but probably isn't your issue
 
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