I'd welcome feedback on an email I finally got someone in NTL/Virgin (whilst I was on the phone to them) to look at regarding my problems with World of Warcraft. Perhaps I could have improved it to be clearer, more helpful:
Re: Fault ref: 1399144
Hello
As requested - sending details of broadband fault.
When playing the online game "World of Warcraft", I experience intermittent problems due to packet loss. This may cause 10-20 seconds of lag whilst playing, or resulting in becoming disconnected from the game. This has a very negative impact on playing this particular game affecting myself and other players I play the game with from all over Europe.
I have been having this problem over the last few weeks, although most of that time I beliveve was a national Virgin/NTL WAN fault which I would expect to have been reported by many customers all of the country (involving telc-ic-1-so-700-0.inet.ntl.com (62.253.185.74)).
The current cause of my connection problems would appear to be different,
In the last few days, there is intermittent packet loss to this router, and hence I loss connection to "World of Warcraft". I have attached a graph of these links when the problems are occuring - in the attached example the red bars affecting multiple links (ignoring the destination hop at the bottom) indicate times when I lost connectivity. During times gameplay was disrupted (causing a few of my fellow player's characters to die!). It also shows that a number of WAN routing changes were taking place all evening.
As requested - traceroute's:
NORMAL OPERATION:
traceroute to 80.239.233.52 (80.239.233.52), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 10.98.216.1 (10.98.216.1) 7.182 ms 7.059 ms 5.708 ms
2 nrth-t2cam1-a-v105.inet.ntl.com (213.104.142.33) 7.414 ms 7.422 ms 7.385 ms
3 nrth-t2core-a-ge-wan62.inet.ntl.com (195.182.176.133) 7.098 ms 6.421 ms 7.262 ms
4 nth-bb-a-so-230-0.inet.ntl.com (62.253.185.109) 7.356 ms 7.877 ms 11.158 ms
MPLS Label=299489 CoS=5 TTL=1 S=0
5 nth-bb-b-so-200-0.inet.ntl.com (213.105.172.194) 8.150 ms 12.585 ms 8.191 ms
MPLS Label=337793 CoS=5 TTL=1 S=0
6 lee-bb-a-so-010-0.inet.ntl.com (62.253.185.102) 11.709 ms 9.660 ms 9.978 ms
MPLS Label=328385 CoS=5 TTL=1 S=0
7 bre-bb-b-so-200-0.inet.ntl.com (213.105.175.26) 15.556 ms 17.157 ms 16.676 ms
MPLS Label=342913 CoS=5 TTL=1 S=0
8 telc-ic-1-so-700-0.inet.ntl.com (62.253.185.74) 15.955 ms 31.123 ms 16.714 ms
9 ldn-b2-link.telia.net (213.248.100.97) 17.265 ms 17.364 ms 18.668 ms
10 ldn-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.250.225) 17.634 ms 24.976 ms 16.341 ms
11 prs-bb1-pos6-0-0.telia.net (213.248.64.9) 24.056 ms 24.286 ms 23.999 ms
12 ffm-bb1-pos6-0-0.telia.net (213.248.64.109) 33.084 ms 32.674 ms 34.064 ms
13 ffm-b4-link.telia.net (80.91.249.237) 34.164 ms 32.930 ms 32.510 ms
14 * * *
(The above route changes often).
Note that the 14th hop above is where the game provider blocks icmp and this is expected behaviour during normal operation.
DURING FAULT:
Examples include:
traceroute to 80.239.233.52 (80.239.233.52), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 10.98.216.1 (10.98.216.1) 6.266 ms 6.752 ms 5.725 ms
2 nrth-t2cam1-a-v105.inet.ntl.com (213.104.142.33) 6.151 ms 6.470 ms 5.952 ms
3 * * *
4 * * *
5 nth-bb-b-so-200-0.inet.ntl.com (213.105.172.194) 7.966 ms 26.296 ms 6.006 ms
6 213.152.245.53 (213.152.245.53) 10.441 ms 8.259 ms 9.914 ms
7 ldn-b1-link.telia.net (213.248.75.1) 11.079 ms 8.212 ms 8.298 ms
8 ldn-bb1-pos1-1-0.telia.net (213.248.64.97) 10.508 ms 11.690 ms 9.939 ms
9 prs-bb1-pos6-0-0.telia.net (213.248.64.9) 16.753 ms 16.526 ms 16.067 ms
10 ffm-bb1-pos6-0-0.telia.net (213.248.64.109) 26.341 ms 25.626 ms 25.930 ms
11 ffm-b4-link.telia.net (80.91.249.237) 26.226 ms 30.381 ms 23.783 ms
12 * ffm-bb1-pos6-0-0.telia.net (213.248.64.109) 27.396 ms 27.015 ms
13 ffm-b4-link.telia.net (80.91.249.237) 28.634 ms 28.114 ms 28.210 ms
14 * * *
and
traceroute to 80.239.233.52 (80.239.233.52), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 10.98.216.1 (10.98.216.1) 6.999 ms 5.088 ms 6.184 ms
2 nrth-t2cam1-a-v105.inet.ntl.com (213.104.142.33) 6.819 ms 7.754 ms 8.267 ms
3 nrth-t2core-a-ge-wan62.inet.ntl.com (195.182.176.133) 16.847 ms 82.983 ms 116.990 ms
4 * nth-bb-a-so-230-0.inet.ntl.com (62.253.185.109) 7.988 ms 6.623 ms
5 193.251.251.161 (193.251.251.161) 12.397 ms 11.766 ms 12.138 ms
6 ge-1-1-0-0.loncr5.london.opentransit.net (193.251.242.217) 26.275 ms ge-1-3-0-0.loncr5.london.opentransit.net (193.251.242.181) 11.378 ms ge-1-1-0-0.loncr5.london.opentransit.net (193.251.242.217) 10.838 ms
7 ldn-b3-link.telia.net (213.248.104.17) 10.492 ms 9.772 ms 9.679 ms
8 ldn-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.251.18) 10.514 ms 11.993 ms 9.964 ms
9 ffm-bb1-link.telia.net (80.91.249.9) 25.896 ms 26.766 ms 26.374 ms
10 ffm-b4-link.telia.net (80.91.249.237) 25.466 ms 26.512 ms 28.555 ms
11 * prs-bb1-pos6-0-0.telia.net (213.248.64.9) 19.961 ms 20.848 ms
12 ffm-bb1-pos6-0-0.telia.net (213.248.64.109) 28.319 ms 29.224 ms 29.234 ms
13 ffm-b4-link.telia.net (80.91.249.237) 27.958 ms 33.977 ms 29.361 ms
14 * * *
If it is helpful I can send further information, including the raw pingplotter data captured.
I appreciate that this is likely a difficult time due to integration of Virgin and NTL infrastructure, but I would be very grateful if someone could look into this, and get back to me with some information about the fault and expected resolution time. If contacting me via email - please send to this address rather than the ntlworld.com one.
Many thanks
<name removed>
The attached graph can be seen at
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/pure-sk...arrier.com.png
I was told within a minute or so that this was due to telia.se - had I contacted them? Well no, because:
- the problem can graphically be seen to be on NTL's infrastrucutre
- the destination timeout/red bars is because they filter icmp - this is normal.
- the sheer number NTL specific WAN routing changes clearly indicate an issue
So I sent a follow up - which may or may not be looked at:
Re: Fault ref: 1399144
Hello
I recently sent the below to help diagnose a problem with NTL infrastructure routing issues causing problems with online gaming.
I have been told by the customer representative I was on the phone to, that from my traceroutes, telia.se (the game hosters) are the cause. This is not the correct conclusion - the timeout on the last hop is normal, it is due to icmp being filtered. In the graph and traceroutes, this is why the destination is unavailable - this happens even when there is no problem and the game can be played fine.
The problem can be seen in the graph - take note of the disruption to me at 9:53 for example (the red blocks - the line graphs higher up are nearer to me, the bottom graph is the final destination).
If someone could take another look at this, and take note of the problems which occur within NTL's network and give me some feedback, I would be grateful.
Many thanks
<name removed>
<mobile number removed>
So what do I do now? Just fighting up to the point of actually being able to send an email took alot of phone holding, explaining etc. Do I have any other options but to just wait and hope this gets looked at or change ISP? Do others agree with my conclusions? Is there anything I can constructively do to move this forward?
PS
Appologies if this should have gone within the existing World of Warcraft thread - im not sure if it warrented a diffferent one due to it's focus on fault submission best practices.
---------- Post added at 12:16 ---------- Previous post was at 10:58 ----------
In fairness to Virgin Tech Support, I did receive a constructive reply from them to the second email after about 30 minutes. If I receive permission to post the response minus name/email details I shall do.
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