QoS deprioritizing UDP packets?

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › QoS deprioritizing UDP packets?

bandert

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#20947 10-Apr-2008 20:52

So it seems that when gaming (Pirates of the Burning Sea - Invincible Server IP:66.150.169.117) between 6pm and 12AM all my game traffic (udp) is being shaped or possibly completely blocked, contacted orcon multiple times (even their tier2 team knows nothing about the systems they have in place), provided them with icmp echo's, traceroute logs, udp packet traces, 2 fraps'd video of metric's in-game (displays UDP messages sent/received) at different times to elaborate on the problem.. im assuming it's their QoS layer deprioritizing these UDP packets mistaking them for torrent or p2p traffic? TCP packets get through fine, all hours of the day and UDP is fine from 12 midnight - 6pm. If anyone else has some spare bandwidth and wants to give it a shot here's the link it's about 4gb all up, http://www.gamearena.com.au/pirates/download/ you don't need to subscribe just sign up for 7-day trial don't need to give out much info for it just name + e-mail.

Orcon's been good to me so far, but this is just really irritating, im 99.9% certain it's nothing on my end. I can play games that communicate over TCP fine no problems whatsoever. So if someone could download it and just try walking around, talking to people anywhere between 6PM and 12AM and gets the same problem (it'll take 20-30 seconds for anything to come through, if at all) then I have 100% certainty it's not my end. If they don't fix it or at least try to come up with some work-around (their website even says they PRIORITIZE gaming traffic - lol) then I guess i'll just have to switch ISP.

bandert

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#122672 10-Apr-2008 20:54

Forgot to mention the game operates over UDP ports 7000-7010.

muppet

2568 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#122680 10-Apr-2008 21:11

Keep in mind that TCP will retransmit packets that it doesn't get an ACK for. UDP is session-less, once a packet is sent that's it.

It's possible you are experiencing high congestion and the only reason your TCP based games are working is they're doing a lot of retransmits. If you know how to use it, Wireshark can be good for spotting this.

See if you can find someone outside the network where you can setup an IPerf session. That way you can do some throughput tests to it, IPerf supports both UDP and TCP.

For what it's worth, I doubt they're shaping/dropping UDP traffic. It's possible, but I feel it's unlikely.

Hope this helps.

bandert

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#122689 10-Apr-2008 21:39

Ran wireshark with EVE (TCP) running, everything is fine no re-transmissions yet running PotBS and it's having problems with UDP, the client recognizes this and forces some kind of TCP fallback, capturing that too and there's no re-transmissions..

muppet

2568 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#122693 10-Apr-2008 21:51

What does this test show you?

http://www.dslreports.com/voiptest

Monitor it via Wireshark, I'm fairly sure it's UDP based.

Aside from that, the only thing I can think of is to test with IPerf.

Sorry I can't be of more help.

Audiophiles are such twits! They buy such pointless stuff: Gold plated cables, $2000 power cords. Idiots.

OOOHHHH HYPERFIBRE!

bandert

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#122703 10-Apr-2008 22:04

Yes your correct it's UDP.

serverPacketsSent 242987
serverPacketsReceived 10496
clientPacketsSent 10496
clientPacketsReceived 1894
testDuration 30715

muppet

2568 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#122708 10-Apr-2008 22:13

So those figures would tend to indicate that there's no UDP packet loss, wouldn't they?

Audiophiles are such twits! They buy such pointless stuff: Gold plated cables, $2000 power cords. Idiots.

OOOHHHH HYPERFIBRE!

bandert

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#122710 10-Apr-2008 22:19

Correct, appears to be very minimal loss but this is over UDP port 41762. It's just strange that this only happens between peak traffic hours, which is what orignally made me thought that the packets were getting caught up in the QoS layer being mistaken for torrent/p2p traffic.

Sharesies

Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

muppet

2568 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#122715 10-Apr-2008 22:35

Well like I said, it's possible Orcon are doing something to your UDP traffic during those hours, but it would seem even more unlikely now that the test you've just run shows it's OK.

If you really believe it's a Port 7000-7010 problem I can setup a IPerf server listening on 7005 for you to test to. Only problem is it's local in NZ, so you wouldn't be testing "International" traffic.

Audiophiles are such twits! They buy such pointless stuff: Gold plated cables, $2000 power cords. Idiots.

OOOHHHH HYPERFIBRE!

bandert

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#122716 10-Apr-2008 22:39

Any help is appreciated, if you want to PM me i'll give it a shot.

muppet

2568 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#122720 10-Apr-2008 23:09

Audiophiles are such twits! They buy such pointless stuff: Gold plated cables, $2000 power cords. Idiots.

OOOHHHH HYPERFIBRE!

smileynz

63 posts

Master Geek

ID Verified

#125704 22-Apr-2008 21:49

i seem to be getting alot of packet loss when i'm playing Bf2 online. i have use pingoplotter and it showing up to 50% loss

iistudio

79 posts

Master Geek

#127663 1-May-2008 17:54

hi guys I am getting the exact same problem as stated above, during peak hours(after 5:30pm), i just cannot play online game at all, what is the deal here orcon? Anyone else posted above situation has changed?

thanks

Fraktul

836 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#127668 1-May-2008 18:26

So you're saying that you have tried trace routes with tcp, icmp and udp - with the udp results skewed in a statistically meaningful way during the hours you mention? If so at what point do they diverge?

mattosaur4

40 posts

Geek

#130145 12-May-2008 09:20

I'm having a similar problem. I generally only play during the hours of 6pm-12pm so can't confirm the timing of the problem.

I play World of Warcraft on a US realm and we use a US Ventrillo server. Ping times are acceptable in game 200-400ms but for the last 5 weeks I've been unable to use the Ventrillo voice server as well. I get connected voice starts to lag and stutter I end up minutes behind and then it disconnects me & this repeats over & over. Same happens even if WoW isn't running.

I'm also on the ZeroShock plan which has the filtering in place. Orcon Support passed it onto Tier 2 and I haven't heard back, we've also tried to get me online using there non-zeroshock test account but it hasn't worked. Last time I called I was told its still being looked at & there was still an International Bandwidth problem that was hopefully going to be fixed this week.

I will ring back again soon to see if I can get someone else to try and get the test account working.

Matt

d3viant

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#130308 12-May-2008 17:49

It's their lack of bandwidth during peak hours that's causing the packet loss (oversold adsl2 plans?), just run a wireshark session during normal play at peak and then at off-peak and you'll see the problem.. I followed this up with orcon, sent them all the logs I had collected and they turn around and ask me to do ICMP traceroutes and pings to THEIR servers. Bloody useless, i've switched to WxC and the problem disappeared overnight. You've lost a customer Orcon, and im sure more will follow.