Server Lag increasing exponentially [ Edited ]

[IDwastakenbefore]

I've been getting some pretty serious lag problems and I'm 100% sure it's not me because every other game runs just fine. 

So I can play sometimes, but some days(or at some time of the day) it won't let me play the game and it's getting frustrating.

It's happening more and more frequently, when I log into the game it will either start at an unstable 100-900ms, wich is already unbearable, but 30 seconds later it jumps from 1000ms to 2000ms and 3000ms and so on, until the game freezes completely and I'm forced to disconnect. 

this morning it was perfectly stable, but when I logged in this afternoon it happened again.

My server is The Progenitor, tried quickly creating another character on The Red Eclipse right after it happened and it was stable, when I came back to The Progenitor it was still horrible. I

honestly don't know what to do anymore, this is killing my already hard love/hate relationship with this game lol

[EA_Kipling]

@IDwastakenbefore  (edit: I removed the second thread you created as it was a duplicate)

The best way to look into this is to dive right into a connection test, I think. Now, it's important that you complete the connection test while you're experiencing the lag and high latency so we can tell where any potential throttling is happening. I'll put the connection test instructions in a spoiler tag:

Spoiler

1. Find the "Windows Key" on the keyboard, hold it down and press R.
2. Type CMD and click OK (a Command Console window should appear)
3. Type the following into the Command Window that appears and press Enter:
pathping 159.153.72.252 > C:\pathping.txt
This creates a file called “pathping.txt” on your C: drive when the command has finished.
4. Once that has completed, type the following into the Command Window and press Enter:
tracert 159.153.72.252 > C:\traceroute.txt
This creates a file called “traceroute.txt” on your C: drive when the command has finished.

These may take up to 10 minutes so please wait whilst they complete. Once you have returned to the blinking cursor at the command line (after it says "Trace Complete") and you're able to type again, this signifies that the command is finished.

Once you have the two files, attach them here to a reply, and I'll take a look.

[IDwastakenbefore]

Here's the pathping and traceroute I ran while the in-game server lag meter displayed around 500000ms 

[proxos666]

@IDwastakenbefore

The lag does not appear to be connection related 

Initially I would be looking at the antivirus and firewall exceptions for both launcher.exe and swtor.exe , try removing and re-adding 

have you tried playing on a different PC at all on that connection ? just want to try and see if it is system specific or possibly related to a firewall or flood control enabled on the router/modem 

The only other possibility is the routing to the exact IP range is funky but this will involve further testing as will need to establish the exact server IP address which can be done through netstat command.

When the game is running , open a command prompt as administrator and run the following command 

Netstat -n -p tcp -b | more

(can copy and paste this command) look for swtor.exe and a port range of around 20000 this should be the exact server IP address and look close to the original IP used

once you have that exact IP address the tracert and pathping tests can be re-run again

[IDwastakenbefore]

I ran the netstat command and got this IP: 159.153.77.140:20064

here's the tests I ran with that IP

[EA_Kipling]

 13   76ms    51/ 100 = 51%    51/ 100 = 51%  213.242.106.234 

 14   72ms    58/ 100 = 58%    58/ 100 = 58%  213.242.106.234 

@IDwastakenbefore This hop (Level 3 exchange) seems to be the cause possibly, but as it's not you or your ISP, nor us, it might be tricky to address. 

You can try this, it might make the connection take a different route:

1. Find the "Windows Key" on the keyboard, hold it down and press R.
2. Type CMD and click OK (a Command Console window should appear)
3. Type the following into the Command Window that appears and press Enter:
ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew
ipconfig /flushdns

If done correctly you should see "Successfully flushed the DNS resolver cache". Once this has been completed please restart your router or modem. I doubt your issue has anything to do with DNS but it's worth a shot.

If that doesn't resolve the lag, you mentioned not experiencing any lag on The Red Eclipse, so it might be related to your local settings files. We can rename them to test it:

1. Press Windows Key + R
2. In the run box that appears, paste the following line:
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\
3. Click OK. A folder called 'Local' should open.
Find the folder named 'SWTOR' and rename it to something else, for example 'SWTOR-old'. The SWTOR folder will get automatically re-created when the game next launches.

Then, delete the DiskCacheArena file located here by default:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\BioWare\Star Wars - The Old Republic\swtor\

Once that's all done, restart the game and see if you still get lag on The Progenitor.

[IDwastakenbefore]

I followed all the steps and I must say that it got better than before, but in the afternoon the server lag starts to wiggle again, but sometimes it just kicks me out of the server and when I come back it's all fine. On evenings I can play for a while after I log in and out before it starts dropping again. Basically the game is only playable on mornings for what I can tell. Normally it's a gradual thing, when the ms shows around 100-200 I can tell that it's gonna drop in a few minutes, otherwise it will be fine with 70 ms

[EA_Kipling]

@IDwastakenbefore

I believe you've gone through all the usual and even more advanced troubleshooting we have at our disposal, so if you're still getting the lag spikes, there likely won't be anything we can do to address it. The packet loss I mentioned in my previous post is likely the main cause of the lag spikes, but as it isn't controlled by us or even your ISP, there isn't much we can do.

[proxos666]

@EA_Kipling

That sort of packet loss is to the router through is showing 0%

What I have noticed is that it appears a path routing change exists between the internal announcement between the 2 subnets below , hence why the ping is double.

BGP announcement between those 2 subnets should be checked as the return path is likely different.

15 74ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 159.153.72.46
0/ 100 = 0% |
16 140ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 159.153.77.140

This shouldnt be a cause of lag spikes though just a cause of a double ping timing between these 2 hops, in theory the 159.153.77.140 should be in the 70 - 80 ms range as this appears to be inside the server farm, however given @IDwastakenbefore says if 70ms is good and if not bad it maybe related to what he is seeing.