Hey folks! Since we're getting ready for Dawntrail, I figure I'd put together a toolkit you can use to see if you're having network related issues when trying to log into FFXIV. It's worthwhile to note that while this can be helpful, it's not a foolproof test to know whether you're having issues connecting to FFXIV. That said, this can be helpful, especially if you're having ISP related issues, and need to send hard data to the ISP.
Note
This document was written for Ping Tracer v1.18. Depending on when you read this document, this may or may not be the latest version. The link above should link you to the latest released version of Ping Tracer. Please let me know if the documentation changes, so I can update it!
To test our connection between us and FFXIV, we need a tool that can help us understand what's going on. You may be familiar with ping, which is a tool you can use to test if you can reach another computer on a network, including over the internet.
C:\Users\belthesar>ping -4 google.com
Pinging google.com [172.253.122.113] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 172.253.122.113: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=103
Reply from 172.253.122.113: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=103
Reply from 172.253.122.113: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=103
Reply from 172.253.122.113: bytes=32 time=105ms TTL=103
Ping statistics for 172.253.122.113:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 12ms, Maximum = 105ms, Average = 35msYou also might be familiar with traceroute, another tool that can be used to discover the path on a network / the internet between you and another computer.
C:\Users\belthesar>tracert -4 4.2.2.1
Tracing route to a.resolvers.level3.net [4.2.2.1]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 10.13.22.1
2 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms xx-xx-xx-xx.sanitized-output [xx.xx.xx.xx]
3 * * * Request timed out.
4 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms 99.173.76.192
5 * * * Request timed out.
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 11 ms * * 32.130.89.1
8 28 ms 28 ms 29 ms 192.205.37.46
9 * 260 ms 29 ms ae1.3501.ear1.washington12.level3.net [4.69.148.41]
10 29 ms 28 ms 28 ms a.resolvers.level3.net [4.2.2.1]We're going to use a tool called Ping Tracer. This uses the same technology as ping, as well as traceroute, and combines them together to monitor the computer/server we are concerned about and every connection in between. This will allow us to see if the issues are with our connection,
In order for us to know where to test, you'll need an IP address for a server in your datacenter. While you could test individual servers in your "datacenter" (FFXIV uses Logical Datacenters, with all servers in a region (IE: North America, Europe, etc) hosted in a single area), we can get close enough by testing the login server for your Datacenter. Here's a list of all of the login servers for each Logical Datacenter in each region:
| Name | Region | Hostname | IP Address |
|---|---|---|---|
| Light | Europe | neolobby07.ffxiv.com | 80.239.145.7 |
| Chaos | Europe | neolobby06.ffxiv.com | 80.239.145.6 |
| Meteor | Japan | neolobby10.ffxiv.com | 119.252.36.9 |
| Mana | Japan | neolobby05.ffxiv.com | 119.252.36.8 |
| Gaia | Japan | neolobby03.ffxiv.com | 119.252.36.7 |
| Elemental | Japan | neolobby01.ffxiv.com | 119.252.36.6 |
| Primal | North America | neolobby04.ffxiv.com | 204.2.29.7 |
| Crystal | North America | neolobby08.ffxiv.com | 204.2.29.8 |
| Aether | North America | neolobby02.ffxiv.com | 204.2.29.6 |
| Materia | Oceania | neolobby09.ffxiv.com | 153.254.80.103 |
Once you have your Datacenter IP, we can open up Ping Tracer, adjust some settings, and start testing!
Your Ping Tracer window should look similar to the above. In order to collect as much information as we can to diagnose an issue, we'll want to turn on these Graph Options:
Make sure all the options in this box are checked.
Note
Ping Tracer will keep track of this information regardless of whether we have these boxes checked. You can check them after you've started your tests in case you forgot!
Tip
The "Bad Threshold" and "Worse Threshold" numbers are pretty sane defaults, but may not be accurate, especially if you are playing in a FFXIV data center far away from you (for instance, if you are playing on a JP server in the US, or on a Euro datacenter in Oceania). Adjusting these will not change the results, only the points in which the graphs consider your ping "bad" or "worse".
From here, in the Host box, we'll type the IP of our FFXIV Datacenter, and Click the Click to Start button.
Warning
It takes a little while for the test to begin as it completes some preliminary data gathering. Give Ping Tracer about 1-2 minutes for it to warm up and collect some data.
After Ping Tracer has been running for several minutes, you should see some output like this:
Note
Image redacted for some semblance of confidentiality.
We're now looking at most (but not all, and that's okay) of the routers that you travel through in order to reach your FFXIV server. From here, we can pick out a few different spots in the route that are important:
The first hop in this chain is your router. In the sample screenshot above, you see my router, which has an IP address of 10.13.22.1.
There should be very little, if any green in this section, and you should see the first two numbers be between 0 and 1 if you are on an Ethernet or LAN connection, or between 1 and 10 if you are on WiFi.
If you see high latencies here, your best bet is to restart your router.
[!NOTE] On WiFi connections WiFi is susceptible to interference both from other WiFi networks, as well as other things that may communicate wirelessly, as WiFi networks uses the same radio frequency (RF) spectrum as wireless cameras, cordless telephones, Bluetooth, and pretty much any wireless consumer device. This can cause inconsistent latencies. If you are using WiFi, doing what you can to have the best WiFi experience will make your gaming experience better. Improving your WiFi setup is beyond the scope of this document.
The next hop in this chain is (usually) the first router inside of your ISP's network. If you have cable or DSL internet, seeing a lot of high latencies here usually indicates that you have an issue with your cable / DSL modem, or the cable / phone connection between you and your ISP.
If you have fiber internet, you have a lower likelihood of seeing problems here.
If you see problems here, first, restart your ISP's equipment in your house, then test again. If you continue to see issues, contact your ISP. You are likely also having general internet issues, and your ISP will likely need to send a technician to assist.
At some point, your connection will leave your ISP's network and connect to the ISP network that hosts the FFXIV servers you connect to. There are a couple of networks you could see.
NTT is the ISP that FFXIV uses in North America, Oceania, and Japan. You can identify the first router belonging to NTT by looking at the name of the address and find the first one that ends with ntt.net.
Twelve99 is the ISP that FFXIV uses in Europe. You can identify the first router belonging to Twelve99 by looking at the name of the address in Ping Tracer and finding the first one that ends with twelve99.net.
These interconnects between ISPs can be choke points (AT&T East Coast US players will remember... "fondly" the issues between AT&T and NTT that lasted for weeks.)
If you see problems here, you are likely experiencing an issue at this interconnect, and this is an issue between your ISP and FFXIV's ISP. This kind of problem is sometimes worse during peak usage hours, such as just after normal business hours or on weekends. Collecting the information from Ping Tracer and providing it to your ISP can help in resolving this.
Sometimes, there are networking issues inside of FFXIV's ISP. To identify this, you'll see a large spike in ping in between routers inside of FFXIVs' ISP's (NTT's or twelve99's) network. Unfortunately, you are likely not a customer of FFXIV's ISP, and as a result, you can not reasonably send a support request to them to resolve the issue. Sending a support request to your ISP will also not resolve the issue, as it is outside of their control.
Usually, these kinds of issues are quickly identified and resolved by the ISP, as they have monitoring to look for issues inside of their own network. If they persist for a long time, however, you may have luck sending a support request through FFXIV.
If you see problems here, your best bet is to wait a little bit, and see if they resolve. If they do persist, you can collect and send data to FFXIV support.
If you see high latencies at the last hop, or perhaps the last hop and the one before it, then you are seeing latency specifically at FFXIV's servers. The IP should be relatively similar to the IP address of the Datacenter IP that you specified if it's the second to last hop.
Unfortunately, if this is where you're seeing issues, this usually means that FFXIV is experiencing some sort of issue, the most common recently being a Denial of Service attack. If this is happening there, they know, and they're working on it.
If you see problems here, all you can do is wait it out as FFXIV's team works to restore service.
Hopefully this helps you identify and resolve some issues, or at least, know which cloud to shake your fist at when things aren't working quite right. If you notice any issues in this document, please feel free to reach out.
