Very slow DCS site and shop (SPI specific routing problem/colt.net packet loss)

[virgo47]

EDIT: Not a site problem, probably a routing one.

Original post:

I experience very slow site www.digitalcombatsimulator.com. Forum is fine, it's probably the fastest thing around DCS. But the main site, shop, filtering there - it's not a second or a few seconds. It's regularly ten seconds or more. I know we have to wait - and you know we probably will wait. But please, make it faster somehow.

I can only assume this is also what causes random 500 errors (not the long term ones) or infinite "radar" waiting thing in the Game Files section of the Launcher - or perhaps occasional never ending server load? I don't know, I can only guess. It is quite frustrating. Please, try to make something with your infrastructure, because it is not easy to figure out what is not working - sometimes it's a bug, then it's an unresponsive infrastructure and when it all combines it makes things unnecessarily frustrating.

Edited August 13, 2024 by virgo47

[silverdevil]

16 hours ago, virgo47 said:

I experience very slow site www.digitalcombatsimulator.com. Forum is fine, it's probably the fastest thing around DCS. But the main site, shop, filtering there - it's not a second or a few seconds. It's regularly ten seconds or more. I know we have to wait - and you know we probably will wait. But please, make it faster somehow.

I can only assume this is also what causes random 500 errors (not the long term ones) or infinite "radar" waiting thing in the Game Files section of the Launcher - or perhaps occasional never ending server load? I don't know, I can only guess. It is quite frustrating. Please, try to make something with your infrastructure, because it is not easy to figure out what is not working - sometimes it's a bug, then it's an unresponsive infrastructure and when it all combines it makes things unnecessarily frustrating.

hello. you may be seeing an influx of traffic because of patch. i have no delay with the three major servers.

results of NSLOOKUP

FORUM IP

Name:    forum.dcs.world
Addresses:  2a01:4f8:212:3b43::2
          136.243.139.132

WEBSITE IP

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    digitalcombatsimulator.com
Address:  93.115.211.146
Aliases:  www.digitalcombatsimulator.com

CONTENT DELIVERY IP

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    1231349722.rsc.cdn77.org
Addresses:  109.61.91.247
          109.61.91.245
          109.61.91.244
Aliases:  cdn.digitalcombatsimulator.com

as you can see the IPs are all different. meaning different servers.

i suggest restarting your computer. test.

restart your network equipment. test.

complain to your IP. wait.

[virgo47]

2 hours ago, silverdevil said:

hello. you may be seeing an influx of traffic because of patch. i have no delay with the three major servers.

...

as you can see the IPs are all different. meaning different servers.

i suggest restarting your computer. test.

restart your network equipment. test.

complain to your IP. wait.

I assumed forums and www.digitalcombatsimulator.com are different servers, or even multiple servers on the backend. The funny thing is that I have no problem with forums, this is snappy server and always works fine.

The main DCS site and everything related (e.g. shop) is hit and miss. Sometimes it times out, rarely it appears fast. Most of the time it's just slow. Slower around patch times, I totally understand that. Timeouts are annoying because they are not always obvious, e.g. when I change shop filter the site just does not respond ever (does not show the "show" link, buttons stay disabled, etc.).

The ways of the internet are mysterious and it may be ISP problem as well, but it is very selective then. I have virtually no problem with other sites I regularly visit.

I made some ping tests - the first one is google.com, the other one is digitalcombatsimulator.com:

> ping -n 100 google.com
...
Ping statistics for 142.251.36.78:
    Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 100, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 6ms, Maximum = 9ms, Average = 7ms

> ping -n 100 digitalcombatsimulator.com
...
Ping statistics for 93.115.211.146:
    Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 64, Lost = 36 (36% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 14ms, Maximum = 15ms, Average = 14ms

The ping time isn't bad - but 36% ping lost is crazy. I actually didn't expect such a loss when starting this post.

The clue may be in the traceroute result:

Tracing route to digitalcombatsimulator.com [93.115.211.146]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  sagemcom [192.168.1.1]
  2     2 ms     2 ms     2 ms  st-static-bckb-198.213-81-232.telecom.sk [213.81.232.198]
  3     3 ms     3 ms     8 ms  10.69.253.125
  4     4 ms     4 ms     4 ms  80.156.161.128
  5     4 ms     4 ms     4 ms  62.159.61.127
  6     *       24 ms    24 ms  ae2.7.ear1.zur2.neo.colt.net [171.75.8.1]
  7    25 ms    25 ms    25 ms  GREEN.CH-AG.ear1.Zurich3.Level3.net [213.242.82.42]
  8     *       14 ms    15 ms  146.228.55.4
  9    44 ms    29 ms    28 ms  109-106-19-250.static.xelon.ch [109.106.19.250]
 10     *       14 ms    14 ms  www.digitalcombatsimulator.com [93.115.211.146]


Tracing route to google.com [142.251.36.142]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  sagemcom [192.168.1.1]
  2     2 ms     2 ms     2 ms  st-static-bckb-198.213-81-232.telecom.sk [213.81.232.198]
  3    57 ms     8 ms     7 ms  89-24-28-19.customers.tmcz.cz [89.24.28.19]
  4     7 ms     7 ms     8 ms  192.178.98.175
  5     7 ms     7 ms     7 ms  142.251.224.127
  6     7 ms     8 ms     7 ms  prg03s12-in-f14.1e100.net [142.251.36.142]

It is clear that Google is routed differently on the third hop already, but that doesn't need to be the problem. For DCS, it seems to go through some Swiss nodes, 6th of them introducing some packet loss, which only continues on hops 8 and 10.

Of course, if the problem is only on my end and page is snappy (or at least not slow) for everyone else, then I accept it and live with it.

[silverdevil]

19 minutes ago, virgo47 said:

I made some ping tests - the first one is google.com, the other one is digitalcombatsimulator.com:

hello. i tried your tests and got the following

Quote

ping -n 100 google.com

Pinging google.com [142.251.179.113] with 32 bytes of data:

...

Ping statistics for 142.251.179.113:
    Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 100, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 9ms, Maximum = 13ms, Average = 10ms

Quote

ping -n 100 digitalcombatsimulator.com

...

Pinging digitalcombatsimulator.com [93.115.211.146] with 32 bytes of data:

Ping statistics for 93.115.211.146:
    Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 100, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 112ms, Maximum = 116ms, Average = 114ms

Quote

tracert digitalcombatsimulator.com

Tracing route to digitalcombatsimulator.com [93.115.211.146]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  G3100.myfiosgateway.com [192.168.1.1]
  2     2 ms     4 ms     2 ms  lo0-100.NRFLVA-VFTTP-314.verizon-gni.net [96.225.167.1]
  3    10 ms     7 ms    13 ms  100.41.26.72
  4    10 ms    12 ms    11 ms  0.ae1.GW12.IAD8.ALTER.NET [140.222.234.27]
  5   364 ms    59 ms    13 ms  63.88.105.94
  6   121 ms   121 ms   121 ms  193.251.128.139
  7   120 ms   120 ms   119 ms  81.52.186.206
  8   127 ms   126 ms   126 ms  146.228.2.85
  9   114 ms   114 ms   113 ms  146.228.2.77
 10   118 ms   117 ms   116 ms  146.228.2.126
 11   115 ms   116 ms   116 ms  146.228.55.12
 12   132 ms   126 ms   119 ms  109-106-19-250.static.xelon.ch [109.106.19.250]
 13   112 ms   114 ms   113 ms  www.digitalcombatsimulator.com [93.115.211.146]

Trace complete.

i am in USA Eastern VA. though the ping time is longer to dcs, i get 0% packet loss. typically with updates i get between 90 and 100 MB/s

Edited August 11, 2024 by silverdevil

[virgo47]

Thanks @silverdevil, interesting info. If I get to more specific info I'll add it here.

For now, it seems it gets all wrong somewhere around Zurich which you're lucky to avoid somehow.

[MAXsenna]

Thanks @silverdevil, interesting info. If I get to more specific info I'll add it here.
For now, it seems it gets all wrong somewhere around Zurich which you're lucky to avoid somehow.

Have your ISP update the routing? They will probably be able to fix this if you make them aware.
Cheers!

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

[virgo47]

I contacted my ISP (Slovak Telekom) and now they responded that the problem is outside their network and they can't affect the routing. So their mother company Deutsche Telekom AG routes the packets to colt.net - which seems to be the problematic hop - and they don't care that a significant % of the traffic through there is wasted.

So I can try some VPN or ... contact Deutsche Telekom AG directly, or ask colt.net to "just work"... I thought big players could do better with WAN routing and would find an alternative to a route like this. I was wrong, as I often am.

Anyway, apologies to ED and their site - obviously, it works better than it seems from here.

EDIT 2024-08-20: ISP looked at the problem again, after I asked if they expect I'll talk to Deutsche Telekom or colt.net directly (which was a rhetorical question, of course), and voila, after a week they announced the problem is fixed. And indeed, while colt.net is still in the route, it does not throw away my packets and my favourite ED page works more reliably now!

Edited August 20, 2024 by virgo47

[MAXsenna]

What? They don't care? Any serious ISP in Norway would receive public flak if something like this happened.

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

[silverdevil]

6 hours ago, virgo47 said:

So I can try some VPN

this can help. i know there are other users that have same latency and connectivity problems and VPN helped.

2 hours ago, MAXsenna said:

What? They don't care? Any serious ISP in Norway would receive public flak if something like this happened.

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk
 

i agree with max though i get that the real problem is with Deutsche Telekom AG. sucks.

[virgo47]

31 minutes ago, silverdevil said:

i agree with max though i get that the real problem is with Deutsche Telekom AG. sucks.

It's probably with colt.net, really. But the result for me is the same.

Anyway, for more than two years I thought ED's main site kinda sucks and only after starting this thread and - in doing that - falling down the rabbit hole, I realized the problem is somewhere else. It's a bit of a slap on my face, as I often try to check stuff before jumping to conclusions - yet I often jump to conclusions anyway.

Somehow, before I start to write about the problem somewhere/anywhere, I don't get it. Oftentimes, I get it before I finish the post and send it. Oftentimes not. Stupid me, I could have tried traceroute and other stuff before starting this drama. But perhaps someone with a similar problem finds it before they do the same.

Let's move on...

Thanks guys.

[virgo47]

A dramatic turn of events here:

ISP looked at the problem again, after I asked if they expected I'd talk to Deutsche Telekom or colt.net directly (which was a rhetorical question, of course), and voila, after a week they announced the problem was fixed. And indeed, while colt.net is still in the route, it does not throw away my packets and my favourite ED page works more reliably now!

[silverdevil]

2 hours ago, virgo47 said:

A dramatic turn of events here:

ISP looked at the problem again, after I asked if they expected I'd talk to Deutsche Telekom or colt.net directly (which was a rhetorical question, of course), and voila, after a week they announced the problem was fixed. And indeed, while colt.net is still in the route, it does not throw away my packets and my favourite ED page works more reliably now!

good to hear!