NYC4.ALTER.NET Requested Time Out, Complete packet loss?!

[chadxoxo]

Hello forums, hopefully someone can shed some light on this issue because it is becoming almost frustrating to the point of crying.

I have an online game I play, and I get logged out very frequently to the point where I pretty much can't play anymore and am counting down till my disconnect. Found out about tracers and did a bunch of tests, and I found out that I am getting a 100% packet loss at NYC4.ALTER.NET every single time. I contacted Verizon and a technical support agent forwarded my dillema after looking at my tracer info through my computer, and am supposed to hear back from one of them in a few days.

Hopefully they will be able to solve my problem, but if they don't/can't/won't, I am wondering if there is any other advise anyone can give me to fix this, or if anyone is having the same issue?! It's really really frustrating and seems to be happening in other websites, like youtube. Thanks so much in advance!

[smith6612]

While I cannot see your screenshot at the moment, does the traceroute proceed to reach points beyond the NYC4.ALTER.NET point? If you're not seeing loss or extreme latency beyond this point you might be seeing ICMP De-prioritization within Verizon's backbone. That's not to say there cannot be packet loss counted out, we'd require a more sophisticated tool to be run along the path you travel to the game server and back to measure the loss rate.

Which game are you having trouble with? League of Legends and World of Warcraft seem to be amongst the more troublesome ones based on some forum posts I see.

[msansnom]

Don't worry, you are not alone. I was wondering the same thing as you trying to diagnose random timeouts and retransmits/dup acks.... Turns out there is a peering issue between Fios NY server and Alter.net (even though Verizon actually owns Alter.net). This isn't the first time this has happened. Hopefully it gets fixed soon.... Otherwise what you can do is find a VPN that does not peer through alter.net and use that until Verizon gets it fixed :).

[Hubrisnxs]

It's not timing out or losing packets. 

If it were, it would never reach 5-7 more hops.  Packets can't recreate themselves from nothing.

That router is simply not answering when your test is calling it.  

Here's a quick walk through on how to properly analyze your MTR and Traceroute results.

[Hubrisnxs]

---

@chadxoxo wrote:

Hopefully they will be able to solve my problem, but if they don't/can't/won't, I am wondering if there is any other advise anyone can give me to fix this, or if anyone is having the same issue?! It's really really frustrating and seems to be happening in other websites, like youtube. Thanks so much in advance!

---

Also your trace or ping plotter shows no problems in network and out of network, so your problem lies somewhere else.  Either at your end with your equipment, meaning pc's video card router etc....  or at the game server end.  You'd have to visit their forums to see if they are getting any other reports of issues.  Almost all the time when someone is having trouble with a game from blizzard or something, we go to their forums, and almost always find a bunch of other people having problems too, and that they are aware, etc....   So double check both things, if you don't know how to check your end, try to let us know what you're using in ome, and we can try to help.

Useful things to think about:

1. Is anyone at the house streaming tv or movies when your problem happens
2. are you doing any large downloads
3. are you doing any torrents

[chadxoxo]

Hello Smith, thanks for your reply!

No, once it slows down, gives star symbols and and then says 100% requested time out at 4 and 5(but it mostly happens at 5), it then proceeds to go smoothly and successfully through the rest, which another member told me that is not complete packet loss. Regardless it seems to be the issue with me and the reason why I keep getting random disconnects from my server.

Also, I couldn't copy the information and post it here for some reason it's not letting me, but this is what my tracert looks like whenever I test it to my server(I also tested other N/A servers and get the same results).

3     8ms      7ms       10ms         G101-0-0-0.NYCMNY-LCR-21.verizon-gni.net

4        *             *               *              Request timed out.

5        8ms      9ms       9ms         0.ae1.BR2.NYC4.ALTER.NET

3     8ms      7ms       10ms         G101-0-0-0.NYCMNY-LCR-21.verizon-gni.net

4     7ms      7ms        82ms        ae3-0.NY325-BB-RTR2.verizon-gni.net

5       *              *               *             Request times out.

[chadxoxo]

It's nice to know I am not the only person having this problem, and thanks for your reply. I have done pings, tracerts from my cdm box, and used this program that I posted in my picture to figure out where it keeps happening, and it's almost always 5(sometimes 4 which a tech representative actually told me that is within verizon) which is alter.net.

By peering issue, do you mean congestion? Or like a business dispute causing sharing/peering problems?

Also, I know nothing about VPN's but I have heard about them, what are they and how can I set one up? Thanks again in advance for your time and advice!

[chadxoxo]

Hi Hub, thanks for your reply! I really don't think it's my equipment or router because, I have been playing the game perfectly fine for a year, and my own latency issue seems to be with alter.net at #5 on my list in the picture I posted up. I have done ping tests, tracerts, and then the software I posted in my picture which every 5-10 seconds runs a test and it's constantly been #5 and sometimes #4(which is within Verizon surprisingly). Also, I do have other members and computer within my household, however when I ran these tests they weren't home except for 2 and the 2 were sleeping and no computers were accessing the internet, downloading, streaming movies/shows, etc. And also I don't download torrents!

[ilvtrance]

this has been happening for me for thas last FEW months im {word filter avoidance} tired of the latency!!! they need to fix their services.

C:\Windows\System32>tracert 63.251.20.60

Tracing route to c-63-251-20-60.internap-nyc.nfoservers.com [63.251.20.60]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  Wireless_Broadband_Router.home [192.168.1.1]
  2     6 ms     6 ms     7 ms  L100.NYCMNY-VFTTP-179.verizon-gni.net [173.52.21
7.1]
  3    12 ms    14 ms    12 ms  G101-0-0-22.NYCMNY-LCR-21.verizon-gni.net [100.4
1.217.104]
  4    11 ms     8 ms    10 ms  ae3-0.NY325-BB-RTR2.verizon-gni.net [130.81.199.
154]
  5    43 ms    53 ms    56 ms  0.so-4-0-1.XT2.NYC4.ALTER.NET [152.63.10.29]
  6     9 ms    11 ms     9 ms  GigabitEthernet7-0-0.GW18.NYC4.ALTER.NET [152.63
.22.229]
  7    10 ms     9 ms    10 ms  internap-gw.customer.alter.net [65.217.199.202]

  8   148 ms   241 ms   237 ms  border1.pc1-bbnet1.ext1.nym.pnap.net [216.52.95.
14]
  9    12 ms    10 ms     9 ms  c-63-251-20-60.internap-nyc.nfoservers.com [63.2
51.20.60]

Trace complete.

C:\Windows\System32>tracert 63.251.20.60

Tracing route to c-63-251-20-60.internap-nyc.nfoservers.com [63.251.20.60]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  Wireless_Broadband_Router.home [192.168.1.1]
  2     7 ms     7 ms     6 ms  L100.NYCMNY-VFTTP-179.verizon-gni.net [173.52.21
7.1]
  3    12 ms    15 ms    10 ms  G101-0-0-22.NYCMNY-LCR-21.verizon-gni.net [100.4
1.217.104]
  4     9 ms     9 ms     9 ms  ae3-0.NY325-BB-RTR2.verizon-gni.net [130.81.199.
154]
  5    30 ms    31 ms    89 ms  0.so-4-0-1.XT2.NYC4.ALTER.NET [152.63.10.29]
  6    11 ms    11 ms     9 ms  GigabitEthernet7-0-0.GW18.NYC4.ALTER.NET [152.63
.22.229]
  7    12 ms    11 ms     9 ms  internap-gw.customer.alter.net [65.217.199.202]

  8     8 ms    10 ms     9 ms  border1.pc1-bbnet1.ext1.nym.pnap.net [216.52.95.
14]
  9    12 ms     9 ms     9 ms  c-63-251-20-60.internap-nyc.nfoservers.com [63.2
51.20.60]

Trace complete.

C:\Windows\System32>tracert 63.251.20.60

Tracing route to c-63-251-20-60.internap-nyc.nfoservers.com [63.251.20.60]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms     *     Wireless_Broadband_Router.home [192.168.1.1]
  2     7 ms     7 ms     8 ms  L100.NYCMNY-VFTTP-179.verizon-gni.net [173.52.21
7.1]
  3    14 ms    11 ms    10 ms  G101-0-0-22.NYCMNY-LCR-21.verizon-gni.net [100.4
1.217.104]
  4    11 ms    10 ms    12 ms  ae3-0.NY325-BB-RTR2.verizon-gni.net [130.81.199.
154]
  5    64 ms    26 ms    57 ms  0.so-4-0-1.XT2.NYC4.ALTER.NET [152.63.10.29]
  6     9 ms    10 ms     9 ms  GigabitEthernet7-0-0.GW18.NYC4.ALTER.NET [152.63
.22.229]
  7    10 ms     9 ms    12 ms  internap-gw.customer.alter.net [65.217.199.202]

  8    11 ms     9 ms     9 ms  border1.pc1-bbnet1.ext1.nym.pnap.net [216.52.95.
14]
  9    11 ms    12 ms    12 ms  c-63-251-20-60.internap-nyc.nfoservers.com [63.2
51.20.60]

Trace complete.

[tns2]

Nothing wrong being shown in your trace routes.  If there were a problem at nyc4.alter.net, then the problem would continue to be shown at hops after that or the next hop wouldn't even be reched.  The server is probably just set to respond at a low priority to the tracert.