Playonline Suddenly Very Slow

Hello

Decided to get back to ffxi for awhile, haven't played since february.
So yesterday when I quit work I stayed with my laptop to update all that needed to update.
I could log on on all of my 3 characters with no problem at all.

But when I got home and wanted to log back on, playonline started to act weird. Right when I choose my account and type my password to login, playonline gets super slow and I can't really get anywhere.
Shouldn't be anything wrong with my internet connection, have been playing without any trouble before.

Have been searching for clues online, but no luck! Trying my luck here before I reinstall the entire game since I dont have unlimited traffic on my internet for the update at this time.

Cheers!

I'm having this same issue. I'll try to log in and after I put my info in it will take forever until it times out with error code: POL-1363. After multiple attempts I'll be to the play screen and log in. In-game I have random lag spikes all the time and its unbearable. Some reason its SE only stuff, like the official forums takes ages to load the page (XIV and XI OF.) Anything else I do is unaffected, I can watch HD video on youtube or download something np but FFXI and anything SE related seems to be effected. What could cause that?

I don't know! I haven't got an error code yet.
It's playonline that simply doesn't stop loading. I can hover the mouse over buttons and it shines up, but it takes forever before anything happens.
I haven't had any problems with SE webpages.

Going to post on their forum, if I get a reply I'll write here!

Never posted to the official forum.

But there seems to be a problem with my mobile broadband.

Connected trough my phone instead, and now everything seems to be normal, haven't tried my mobile broadband again tho. Guess I'll have to make some calls tomorrow!

They won't help you on OF, I've never seen them respond to any tech issues there. I can't even explain this, how is it only FFXI / Official forum that does it? Make no sense to me.

Sounds like a network issues with your ISP, not a local issue in your system & co.
Can file a complaint maybe, not sure how things work over there, but from my experience usually these type of issue solve themselves in around a week.

As I explained to you, they are all part of the same company's infrastructure, it's much likely all those websites are phisically placed in the same server farm.
It does make a lot of sense.

It wouldn't have made sense if you had issues in completely unrelated websites/services, maybe (and even then, there could be plentiful of meaningful explanations)

I'm aware they are on the same server or area but what I found confusing was WHY my internet is lagging when its attempting to connect to them. I don't have any firewall options blocking them etc. It's only FFXI and the official forums (and XIV's when I checked) that are lagging and not loading for me. Everything else does, it kinda seems something is blocking it or idk. They load but take forever and in-game I constantly R0. It's been going on for three days so far.

Unless you're claiming that you're experiencing these issues from PC1 but not from PC2 or that if you make a straight modem connection there's no problem but if you connect behind a router you experience it, then it's not a problem of "your Local Area Network (LAN)".
It's a problem of your "internet connection", which is not "yours" but it's what your Internet Service Provider (ISP) give you.
If the ISP is having temporary issues with backbone networking (wether or a centralized level, i.e. all the users of the same provider regardless of their physical location, or a localized level i.e. all the users of that specific provider within a very specific geographic position) then you're gonna have lag/delays/issues with all the Servers which are normally accesses by that backbone.


I won't go into too many networking details because in the end I'm not an international expert and because it would be too complicated.
I was just saying that while this might not be the cause, it could totally be and it would make a lot of sense. I was trying to explain to you that from a networking point of view it does make a lot of sense and it's not so absurd.


I don't know how the situation is over there in the US, but here in Europe and especially in Italy it's quite a common situation alas. I've experienced it multiple times over the past 15+ years with multiple ISPs.



Let me try to give you a simpler example. Please pardon my extreme simplification of things, it's for the sake of making an example.
Every website you see has a physical location somewhere, and a physical IP address. Most likely it's hosted in a "virtual machine" (VM). A VM is a "virtual computer" inside a super server, that too is of course physically located somewhere in the physical world.
What allows translation this physical IPv4 number (example: 192.168.212.175) into a "readable" address (example: http://www.playonline.com) is what is commonly called the "DNS". Every ISP has its own DNS servers, and you can use any DNS in the world, not necessarily the ones provided by your ISP. The sole purpose of DNS servers is to allow this "conversion", is to allow you to type a web address in "letters" and have it automatically converted into the real physical IP (it would be quite inconvenient if for every website you wanna surf you had to type the physical IP address, no?)

Now, next step.
To reach a certain Server, i.e. a certain IP, i.e. a certain physical location in the world, there are several "routes", not only one.
When you type a certain address you do not get instant access to that physical PC, there is a "route" that your request follows. You don't see it and it's usually very fast (we're talking about milliseconds), but all your request and all the data you exchange between you and the server follows this route.
As I said there are many possible ones, some faster and some slower.
Which one gets used when you make an access request tipically depends on two factors:
1) The DNS you're using
2) The backbone infrastructure of your ISP

You can change 1) easily by editing the DNS values of your connection and try different ones, but there's nothing you can do about 2).
If your ISP has a contract to use/prioritize a certain backbone channel (a "route" for the data of their customers) and if that ISP is having temporary issues with that certain backbone, then until their problems are resolved, all your "requests" that are supposed to circulate through that "route", are gonna be slow and clunky.

This is pretty common in here for instance, where we have a very complex network infrastructure. When one of those "big channels" is having issues, then part of the web (and only part of it, the part that would normally circulate through that "channel") becomes very slow for you.


Once more: I'm not sure if this is the problem you two guys are experiencing, and I have no clue if this type of issues (which are not that uncommon over here in the old continent) ever happen there in the US where you have quite a different network infrastructure.
My intent was only to say that while I don't know what is the real source of your problem, it COULD totally be an ISP issue, and it would make totally sense.

The only things you guys can do are:
1) Wait for the ISP to solve the issue (in case it's on their end)
2) Temporarily or permanently change your DNS and see if it makes any difference


P.S.
Note that DNSs are used exclusively in web browsing software like Chrome, IE, Firefox etc. For Software like "Playonline" it makes no difference whatever you set in your DNS field under your network properties.

Thank you for the replies!

Still find it weird that I can log on playonline with my phones internet and not my usb-modem. They are from the same ISP.

Mine fixed itself today... so weird to me but whatever.

The NSA wrapped up their investigation on you, Draylo.

They're still staking out Careman, though. ;_;

Is your mobile provider Verizon by chance? I have verified this issue with certain Verizon LTE modems and POL.

I think there is definately something fishy going on in regards to EU -> JP server stability.

I have 3 accounts, one of them is my original Japanese account back from when i bought the game when it was only released in japan.

Lately my japanese account will loose connection to the servers for a few minutes and be disconnected from the game every so often while i can continue to play without any problems on my other 2 EU accounts.

Its very very strange and to me it seems like its some sort of routing problem between EU and Japan to wherever japanese account data is stored.

Problem has been going on, on and off every day for the past few weeks now.

Very very very likely (altough not necessarily) your phone uses different tunneling protocols and routes compared to what your router connection does.

It's quite common for mobile communications to use slightly different stuff in that regard, wether or not they're the same ISP.

Again, not saying this demonstrates anything, just that it's totally plausible.

Colour me surprised!
Not like I didn't tell you that issues like these are tipically on the ISP's end and solve themselves within a few work days :P

¨
Congrats :) Hopefully mine will work when I get home!


I'm from Sweden so I'm with a company here called 3!




Thank you Sechs, I'll have to call my ISP and ask them these questions if it doesn't work it self out.

You might be using the same problematic modem, though. This one:

http://www.verizonwireless.com/support/4g-lte-usb-modem-uml295/

Will not work with POL, for instance. It causes the same symptoms that you are experiencing. Other Verizon modems do work, so it's not an ISP backend issue.

Okey.

I have a 3g modem. Can't remember the name tho. But if my problem continues I'll see if they have something else.

Think it's this one. Sorry, swedish website.
http://www.elgiganten.se/product/datorer-tillbehor/router-och-natverk/HUAWEIE3131/huawei-hilink-e3131-3g-mobilt-bredband-usb

Been in contact with SE too. They seem to be throwing the problem at the ISP. And suggesting I try a new dongle.

When I get a new one I'll let you know if it works or not.

I've been having issues like these in the past as well (I live in Italy, issues like these here are very common because we don't have many international carrier through which data flows from Italy to the outside, so basically once one of these has issues, a large part of the population will experience problems).

Once the problem lasted over 2 weeks.
Most of the times it's just slowdowns towards very specific parts of the web.
Once I had some zones/websites/services *completely unaccessible*.


Not sure about the professionalism there in Sweden, but here in Italy the people you call to file complaints are just normal guys who tipically are not the "expert engineers in the button room", so basically they have no *** clue about what you're saying and they just give you generic answers.
Maybe the situation in Sweden is better, I sure hope so for you.


One simple thing you can try on your own before calling them, altough I wouldn't get my hopes too high, is to go into the connection properties of your PC and change the DNS values.
Takes a few mins to do it, worth trying before you call them.

Okey.

Nah, the customer service here in sweden isn't all that good. Once in a while you get a really good person that really tries to help you. I haven't had to call customer support that often tho. Mostly I can get help from google hehe.

I'll look into it when I get home thanks!

Tried a different dongle, no luck! Exactly the same problem.

Did the customer service say anything to you meanwhile?

Not really, they sounded like they blamed playonline. At least I got to try the other dongle without paying.

Going to see if I know anyone with a dongle from an other ISP.

So I disabled QoS and now I can actually get into the game. But it is very unplayable.

"unplayable"?
Laggy? Slow? How was it unplayable?
QoS should produce no difference at all (in theory...) unless you have some specific QoS or DMZ or similar settings in your router.

Did you try the DNS test I suggested? If so which DNSs did you test it with? Have you tried with OpenDNS ones?

It is super laggy. My character sort of "jumps" forward. Every command takes a few seconds.

Yeah, that's what I read on the website I found it on. That QoS shouldn't do anything, but for some people it helps to uncheck it anyhow. And it helped a little for me apparently.

I don't have a router, just my usb stick.

I tried googles DNS. Haven't heard about OpenDNS, but I will look into that when I get home.

Google's DNSs should be more than enough of a test.
Since you tested a different dongle too, did you try that different dongle with QoS turned off as well? Is it laggy with that alternative dongle too?

No, I didn't know about QoS when I tried that dongle.
I brought my laptop to the store and they let me test the dongle there.