WoW Latency - New Internode Hardware

[Wrathlon]

Short version, node have some hardware that can drop WoW pings by as much as 50% and has also identified a problem with WoW's internal network code and are pushing for blizz to fix it.

:: Blizzplanet :: Australia - Internode WoW Gateway Trial

[Evil]

LOWERPING.COM - lower ping for gamers

Can't read you url but guess it's something like that?

oh and this.

Internode Games Network :: View topic - Internode WoW Gateway - Lower WoW pings, for free, for Internode Customers

[poonda]

It's actually this one Internode WoW Gateway Trial - Internode - Whirlpool Broadband Forums

Edit: Beaten

Some status information so far:

- We think we're on to something (and the feedback from many of you indicates the same)

- We've been putting a lot of high level staff effort into this, for all sorts of mutually reinforcing reasons, and its nice to see some results

- What you see right now is a *trial* server/service, and its performance is not guaranteed, and deeper, its not currently in the right city to provide optimal results for all players (specifically, as some have observed, east cost traffic is folding back via Adelaide right now). Thats ok, we have PoP's all over the country, and in production we'll put hardware in the best spots they can be in.

- The trial service (and by implication the production one) is configured to be accessible to Internode customers only. Thats logical, because we're not charging anything for it, so obviously this is something (like many other offerings at Internode) that is in the package as part of our thanking you for choosing us.

This also means that if you want to access it from outside of Internode, you just need to churn to Internode first (which you can do online).

- What we believe, based on a lot of analysis so far (and that analysis is ongoing, by the way) is that we're seeing a protocol bug in the Blizzard WoW code - a faulty interaction between the WoW client and the WoW server clusters. We've found a way to work around that faulty interaction. Its actually still happening, but with the configurations we're trying, it happens in a way that no longer impacts latency during game play.

- Because we do have active network PoP's all over Australia and in the USA, we can perfectly positioned (in a production version of this service) to generate pretty much ideal results for customers.

- The whole thing, again, appears to be working around a protocol bug. As such, we are using our contacts into Blizzard (which we have, obviously, due to our extensive game server efforts over time), to see if they're able to address and (we hope) fix the issue. Because fixing the issue would then solve it globally - not just for people who become aware by whatever means that a workaround exists.

Meantime, what we might do for our own paying customers won't actually have a lot of impact on people who might choose to charge money to do the same thing for customers of other ISPs (other than saving Internode customers' money) - at least until the underlying bug gets fixed, when the whole thing, for everyone, would become un-necessary.

This remains a work in progress, but your (constructive) feedback is welcome.

Regards,
Simon

[Wrathlon]

Hmm not sure why my link didnt work but yeah that.

[NewbiTLorD]

I didnt particularly try Internodes one because Im with Bigpond, but I tried a Trial of Lowerping.coms version...

Before: 500-700ms on a US server.
After: 250-320ms on a US server

Also sitting at 150ms on Oceanic servers. Quite amazing imo

[morge]

going to try and set up the node one tonight.

[Milenko]

Ive been using it for a day or so.
Has more than halved my ping

[ZeReaper]

I'm sorry but wow's just lost it's shine for me, I haven't logged on in quite a while and once I move to darwin will probably just give away my account. Relying on 24 other people to raid is a pain in the ass, too many stupid people, and the rewards just aren't that great.

Having this sort of thing earlier in my wow career would have made pvp as my rogue alot more fun but imo too little too late.

[NewbiTLorD]

About this Lowerping thing to, Apparently reading their Forums, some people have been Suspended for 72hrs and asked for identification from using a Proxxy server, Blizzard apparently doesnt allow them

Edit: Its actualy more because of the IP styles and addresses, Blizzard thinks its a Power-leveling company

[Milenko]

Yeah, the IP it logs is all of a sudden based in the US, where-as previously it was Aus (for arguments sake).

There's been a few posts on their forums that they should expect a ****tonne of people's IP's to magically start appearing as local US.

They should fix their side of things, before banning people trying to use a workaround, imo.

[NewbiTLorD]

From some things I have been reading up on, I've just tried this alternation in the Windows Registry, and somewhat dropped my MS from 600-700 on a US server Alexstrasza down to a constant 500-560 from what I see, somewhat a slight improvement

My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlS et\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces

Find the folder with your Internet IP in it, or w/e too tired for a big explanation

Create a new DWORD and name it "TcpAckFrequency" and set its value to 1

Some people may need a hotfix for this, and may not work in Vista yet but Im seeing slight improvements for wow Latency, this may affect other TCP programs though, still not, people on the WoW forums are talkin about it in some of the "Lowerping" QQ'ing threads