Ok, I’ve made a few posts about this and exhausted all possible connection problems there could be. Basically there are none. It’s not the network, hardware or router settings. 4 routers now (including a Cisco small business one). 4 ISPs on Fibre to the premises. My network is all Cat6e from the Fibre connection to the router.

This is what happens.

When I’m standing still my ping is pretty stable and sits around 214-220ms (normal for us). When I move around or fight, the ping spikes 260-400ms and stays high until I stop.

It happens on one PC worse than the other. ie, it only pings up to 290ms and doesn’t happen for as long or as many times.

We’ve even tried doing it at the same times and sometimes we both spike and other times it’s only one of us. (Made me think it was router related. So I setup QOS etc. it’s not the router).

There is no reason for this unless it’s caused by a game setting, Windows setting or at the most extreme, Bioware throttling bandwidth (highly unlikely, like 1/100000 chance)

I’m 99.99% sure it has something to do with my movement in the game.

I’ve tested the graphics setting and run at the lowest and highest settings

My FPS is around 211 FPS and never drop below 180ms

So apart from all the network trouble shooting and in game testing. This is what I’ve done on just one PC to try and isolate the problem.

Updated all drivers on both PCs. One uses an Nvidia 1080 and the other uses AMD 580.

Both Machines are Windows 10. Both Machines have 16GB RAM, Both only have SSDs. Both use Intel CPUs at 4.2 GHz and 4.6GHZ. Power set to 100%.

So far I’ve disabled all non essential Windows. I’ve edited the registery to make sure all Xbox services are disabled. I noticed game presence still actived after I started the game. So I’ve gone into winsys32 files, taken owner ship of the files, moved them to thumb drive (backup) and deleted them under winsys32.

I’ve totally disabled windows update in settings, services, gpedit and task scheduler.

I’ve disable shadow copy.

Disable windows security and Norton (just to test).

I’m now out of ideas and options. The game is nearly unplayable.

Are there any swtor ini files I can try and change to test or more Windows things I can do?

This problem only started about 3-4 weeks ago. That coincidentally coincides with the last 2 patches (doesn’t mean it’s them).

I need help or we’ll have to stop playing

Few things to check

Have you tried deleting the cache files when the game isn't running ?

Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\BioWare\Star Wars-The Old Republic\swtor and delete diskcachearena

press the windows key and type paste %LOCALAPPDATA%\SWTOR\swtor\

delete diskcachestatic and diskcachestream if they exist when the game is not running.

Have you installed as non streaming and taken the system to a full clean boot ?

Ran a pathping -n to the servers to check for actual packet loss at all the hops? https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/pathping

Few things to check

 

Have you tried deleting the cache files when the game isn't running ?

 

Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\BioWare\Star Wars-The Old Republic\swtor and delete diskcachearena

 

press the windows key and type paste %LOCALAPPDATA%\SWTOR\swtor\

delete diskcachestatic and diskcachestream if they exist when the game is not running.

 

Have you installed as non streaming and taken the system to a full clean boot ?

 

Ran a pathping -n to the servers to check for actual packet loss at all the hops? https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/pathping

I’ve done all of the above and zero packet loss to the servers.

Swtor was a clean install without bit raider.

I guess the next step is a clean windows install and clean swtor install.

I wondered this last week.. but did not post it.....

.....is there a chance that for some reason... somewhere.. your internet is being throttled?

I ask.. and encourage effort to find out.. because we lost net neutrality in the US recently.. and backbone providers in the US do have deals with particular ISPs and content providers to either accelerate or hinder traffic.

Netflix for example has been notorious in the US for throttling customers streams if they are using an ISP that does not have an agreement with them. It's some sort of fair access agreement, where providers and ISPs give each other preferential treatment, or in fact hinder if no agreement is in place.

Since your connection routes through a particular service provider for the Pacific cable leg to the US.. I think this is worth at least exploring.

I wondered this last week.. but did not post it.....

 

.....is there a chance that for some reason... somewhere.. your internet is being throttled?

 

I ask.. and encourage effort to find out.. because we lost net neutrality in the US recently.. and backbone providers in the US do have deals with particular ISPs and content providers to either accelerate or hinder traffic.

 

Netflix for example has been notorious in the US for throttling customers streams if they are using an ISP that does not have an agreement with them. It's some sort of fair access agreement, where providers and ISPs give each other preferential treatment, or in fact hinder if no agreement is in place.

 

Since your connection routes through a particular service provider for the Pacific cable leg to the US.. I think this is worth at least exploring.

Thanks for replying. I also thought the same thing. But we don’t have anything like net neutrality here. I’ve tried 4 ISPs now and 2 of them use different backhauls across the pacific to California.

The main ISP I’m with is excellent and give you really good service to fix any problem. They participate in an Australian tech forum too. We currently have thread to do with online gaming and you can see how they go out of their way to help gamers get the best speeds and lowest latency they can. It helps that they are also gamers (one even plays swtor).

They did have a speed issue with a back haul for a few days, but that was a seperate matter and we got that fixed. In doing so they also investigated my problem to check for throttling and couldn’t find any,

I’m still wondering if one of the back hauls in the US is throttling data going through one of the EA ISP ports. It would seem unlikely, but I don’t fully understand the implications of the net neutrality law in the US. I couldn’t imagine they would specifically throttle EA traffic just for a few of us and not other people going through the same hops.

There seems to only be one thing left for me to try. I’m about to start a build on another PC, so when it’s finished I’ll only install swtor and test it. If it still happens, I honestly don’t know what else to do.

Thanks for replying. I also thought the same thing. But we don’t have anything like net neutrality here. I’ve tried 4 ISPs now and 2 of them use different backhauls across the pacific to California.

 

The main ISP I’m with is excellent and give you really good service to fix any problem. They participate in an Australian tech forum too. We currently have thread to do with online gaming and you can see how they go out of their way to help gamers get the best speeds and lowest latency they can. It helps that they are also gamers (one even plays swtor).

 

They did have a speed issue with a back haul for a few days, but that was a seperate matter and we got that fixed. In doing so they also investigated my problem to check for throttling and couldn’t find any,

 

I’m still wondering if one of the back hauls in the US is throttling data going through one of the EA ISP ports. It would seem unlikely, but I don’t fully understand the implications of the net neutrality law in the US. I couldn’t imagine they would specifically throttle EA traffic just for a few of us and not other people going through the same hops.

 

There seems to only be one thing left for me to try. I’m about to start a build on another PC, so when it’s finished I’ll only install swtor and test it. If it still happens, I honestly don’t know what else to do.

I'm not concerned about throttling inside your national boundary.. more like possible throttling having to do with the Pacific cable provider VS some backbone in the US that sees your backbone route/AuS-ISP as "non-preferred". I'm not exactly sure how you can confirm this... but it may very well be a cause because if there is traffic congestion on a backbone somewhere in the US... it can and will cause automated systems to start giving preference to some, at the detriment of others.

This "preferred" "non-preferred" crap that some US ISPs and backbone owners are guitely running on consumers really needs to get beat down with a huge stick. It is being largely driven by the major wireless carriers trying to taunt/tease more people to do all their internet on mobile devices... and while they "promise" unlimted data.. if you read the fine print (or more likely listen to 30 seconds of fine print read to you in their radio ads) .. yeah.. it's without limit in terms of total data, but they have steps in the data usage and as you move up the steps they automatically throttle you... sometimes absurdly so. While this is meant to prevent unlimited streaming of HD on mobile devices... it does in fact cause unintended consequences all over the internet in the US these days. Of course in the US here... in many cases you can pay a surcharge on your account to bypass throttling... so you can see this is really about extracting more revenue from the consumer.

Don't give up... you have pretty clear and stable symptoms.. which should provide somebody somewhere with information as to cause.

Maybe disable nagle's algorithm. You can do it manually in registry or with TCPOptimizer. You can actually experiment with a lot of stuff with TCPOptimizer which may or may not help with the issues you see.

Other things to watch :

Windows power plan must be set to maximum performance.

Disable full screen optimization for swtor.exe.

Close as many windows telemetry services as you can. Again you can do it manually or there is a little progrram called spybot (dont let the name scare you).

Edit : Disabling HPET in BIOS helped me with microshuttering but that's a hit or miss. Some people see improvement while others don't. You can always enable it back anytime you want. I would also reccomend another programm callled timer resolution, see if that helps.

spybot (dont let the name scare you).

spybot & wise registry cleaner <3

Maybe disable nagle's algorithm. You can do it manually in registry or with TCPOptimizer. You can actually experiment with a lot of stuff with TCPOptimizer which may or may not help with the issues you see.

Other things to watch :

Windows power plan must be set to maximum performance.

Disable full screen optimization for swtor.exe.

Close as many windows telemetry services as you can. Again you can do it manually or there is a little progrram called spybot (dont let the name scare you).

 

Edit : Disabling HPET in BIOS helped me with microshuttering but that's a hit or miss. Some people see improvement while others don't. You can always enable it back anytime you want. I would also reccomend another programm callled timer resolution, see if that helps.

Yep, I’ve already tested or done all of these thing

disabling Nagle.

Power plan is also max

Disabled full screen

Closed all Telemetry and other un-needed services.

I’ve not tried the HPET, I will try it, but it seems a long shot seeing as it’s happening on both PCs and only started 3 weeks ago.

spybot & wise registry cleaner <3

Spybots an old friend.

Few things to check

 

Have you tried deleting the cache files when the game isn't running ?

 

Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\BioWare\Star Wars-The Old Republic\swtor and delete diskcachearena

 

press the windows key and type paste %LOCALAPPDATA%\SWTOR\swtor\

delete diskcachestatic and diskcachestream if they exist when the game is not running.

 

Have you installed as non streaming and taken the system to a full clean boot ?

 

Ran a pathping -n to the servers to check for actual packet loss at all the hops? https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/pathping

Hi Owen,

Do you know if swtor or the EA data Center have looking glass setup so I can do a reverse tracert?

Yep, I have the same problem and it started the same time as you. The only solution I've found is to log on during non peak hours, like from midnight to about 3pm pst on the weekdays. Forget weekends! It's a solid red dot the whole day, maybe from 3am to 7am I get lucky and the game is playable.

It's not a big deal for me. I have two more months and then I'm done with this game.

Yep, I have the same problem and it started the same time as you. The only solution I've found is to log on during non peak hours, like from midnight to about 3pm pst on the weekdays. Forget weekends! It's a solid red dot the whole day, maybe from 3am to 7am I get lucky and the game is playable.

 

It's not a big deal for me. I have two more months and then I'm done with this game.

Even at low population times it happens. Last night I was on the fleet with 23 people and it was happening.

My wife and I went to Yavin to farm some crystals. There were 2 of us on the planet and it was happening.

There is a slim possibility that my return routing from the servers is different to my path to the servers, that is why I’m trying to find out if Bioware have looking glass set up to do a reverse tracert. If I’m being routed back differently, then their is a good possibility that is why I see the spikes in the game, but not on Ping Plotter.

As I’ve investigated all other avenues I can think if, this is the last one I know of that might give me some answers. But if Bioware don’t have looking glass set up, I have no way to find out.

Even at low population times it happens. Last night I was on the fleet with 23 people and it was happening.

My wife and I went to Yavin to farm some crystals. There were 2 of us on the planet and it was happening.

While the cause remains a mystery.... ^^ this seems to indicate to me that it is not a server side issue. I would expect a server side issue to be very fluttery depending on active population (either on the server, or within the instance/planet you are playing on). If this is in fact true... then is points to an internet routing issue of some sort.

Genuinely weird, and I hope you are able to track down the culprit. I love a good electronics mystery, but the really elusive and flaky ones can drive one down the road to some real hair pulling sometimes.

Hi Owen,

 

Do you know if swtor or the EA data Center have looking glass setup so I can do a reverse tracert?

I'm not sure how often Owen revisits a thread like this.. so I would also PM him with this request, if you have not already done so.

I'm not sure how often Owen revisits a thread like this.. so I would also PM him with this request, if you have not already done so.

Not very often only just saw this thread again by chance.

Hi Owen,

 

Do you know if swtor or the EA data Center have looking glass setup so I can do a reverse tracert?

No Bioware does not have a looking glass, if you find a looking glass router in Virginia with above net or level 3 then that would be the closest to use i imagine.

I would be interested in looking at any results from the pathping etc to be honest before during and after the ping ramps up in combat, as have not seen anything data wise. (tests should be run while the game is running)

I gather wireless is not being used and the ping to router is remains in normal range of 0 - 3 ms at all times.

I would open 3 command prompts and start a ping - t to the router, ping-t to the first ISP hop and a ping-t to the server IP all at the same time and look for changes when the ping ingame increases, this will provide real time data as the issue occurs.

if there is no spike in the ICMP packets it is unlikely to be a network issue per sey, however it is still possible something local can still be affecting packets, something not local would be unlikely to be just affecting swtor packets.

a pingplot to the actual server ip assigned when the game is running, any return path issue should also appear, you just dont know what the return path actually is.

 

No Bioware does not have a looking glass, if you find a looking glass router in Virginia with above net or level 3 then that would be the closest to use i imagine.

 

I would be interested in looking at any results from the pathping etc to be honest before during and after the ping ramps up in combat, as have not seen anything data wise. (tests should be run while the game is running)

 

I gather wireless is not being used and the ping to router is remains in normal range of 0 - 3 ms at all times.

 

I would open 3 command prompts and start a ping - t to the router, ping-t to the first ISP hop and a ping-t to the server IP all at the same time and look for changes when the ping ingame increases, this will provide real time data as the issue occurs.

 

if there is no spike in the ICMP packets it is unlikely to be a network issue per sey, however it is still possible something local can still be affecting packets, something not local would be unlikely to be just affecting swtor packets.

 

a pingplot to the actual server ip assigned when the game is running, any return path issue should also appear, you just dont know what the return path actually is.

Thanks for the reply. I’ll try and hunt down a looking glass router in that area. It’s a shame Bioware don’t do it like Blizzard does.

Yes, definitely not wireless.

I’ve been through the same trouble shooting you’ve suggested with the ISP the other day to make sure. They even changed my routing from Telstra to cogent. It made no difference to the spikes in the game.

The only thing we can both think of is the reverse routing maybe different.

I’ll see about posting the tracert to look at. But I’m currenlty using the iPad and I obviously can’t do one from here..

Out if interest. Is it possible to upload a picture image to you on the EA/support forum. Or do I need to upload it to imgur first and send you the link. I’ve actually got some screen shots of pingplotter and the tracerts from taking a pic of the monitor screen.

Edit:

I found a Looking Glass router in Virginia. But I can’t find an abovenet or lvl3. Anyway, the results from the tracert shows a cogent return and a Telstra path to the server.

The reverse tracert also showed no problems, if anything, it was a little quicker than Telstra.

I’ll talk to the ISP on Monday and see if they can route me to the server on cogent as well and see what happens. I know others in NSW are being routed to WoW on cogent.

While not as bad as what your describe, I was dealing with similar lag spikes the other day. Big jumps while moving or in combat. When I got tired of it, I remembered this thread and tried the deletion of the diskcachearena file that Owen mentioned.

I also did one other thing before starting the game again: I dug into my Windows settings and disabled the paging file (When going after the cache file I found that my SSD was lower on free space than I anticipated, and checked the paging file setting as I guessed that was what was taking up space).

When I started the game again, everything was fine. Ping was down where it usually was, no lag. I haven't had a problem since. Might just be coincidence and the clearing of the cache solved it but it couldn't hurt to try disabling the paging file. You can always turn it back on/

While not as bad as what your describe, I was dealing with similar lag spikes the other day. Big jumps while moving or in combat. When I got tired of it, I remembered this thread and tried the deletion of the diskcachearena file that Owen mentioned.

I also did one other thing before starting the game again: I dug into my Windows settings and disabled the paging file (When going after the cache file I found that my SSD was lower on free space than I anticipated, and checked the paging file setting as I guessed that was what was taking up space).

 

When I started the game again, everything was fine. Ping was down where it usually was, no lag. I haven't had a problem since. Might just be coincidence and the clearing of the cache solved it but it couldn't hurt to try disabling the paging file. You can always turn it back on/

I’ve done that. But thanks for the suggestion.

Out if interest. Is it possible to upload a picture image to you on the EA/support forum. .

Images can be inserted directly into the post at AHQ

The graphs in pingplotter can be saved as a jpg in the program itself