1999 04 27

April 27, 1999

Hello All,

I waited until it was 7:30pm pst tonight to write this update. I wanted to make sure things were stable before I wrote this. Lately every time I give an update something bad happened right after I sent it.

Here's a summary of what was done in the last 2 days

  1. We did a major hardware upgrade to our primary router here in San Diego.
  2. We worked with CERFnet to do a router upgrade to their facility here in San Diego.
  3. We moved Karana over to CERFnet
  4. We brought up Rodcet Nife

I think you will find now that the packet loss should be basically gone... at least on our end. We were definetely causing some of the loss before (only when we hit major numbers) but now things are very, very clean running and that is with 23,582 people on just as I write this (a new record).

Does this mean that EVERYONE'S Packet Loss is gone? Absolutely not. BUT, I did some surveys in most of the worlds and about 750f the people told me their Packet Loss was great. If you are having problems now, do a traceroute to chat.everquest.com and send it to the email address traceroute@verant.com and we will take a look. We take our customers connections very seriously, and if a whole lot of people on one network are having a problem we will do our best to look into it. It doesn't mean we can always get the reaction we want (some networks are just plain bad) but many times we can help find a legitimate problem and help correct it.

Some of you may also not realize what the network statistics we have in game actually are for:

The left hand number is your ping to the server in milliseconds.

The left-middle number (percentage) is your packet loss to the server. The right-middle number (percentage) is your packet loss from the server. The right hand number is the data rate. THIS IS NOT THE PING. - I love hearing about the "terrible" pings in game of 3000. It is my strong belief (forgive me for this rant) that EVERY online game should have this type of meter so that you are getting real feedback about the network status.

John Smedley

Thanks!

------------------------------
April 27, 1999
------------------------------
Hello All,



I waited until it was 7:30pm pst tonight to write this update. I wanted to make sure things were stable before I wrote this. Lately every time I give an update something bad happened right after I sent it.



Here's a summary of what was done in the last 2 days



1) We did a major hardware upgrade to our primary router here in San 
Diego.
2) We worked with CERFnet to do a router upgrade to their facility here 
in San Diego.
3) We moved Karana over to CERFnet
4) We brought up Rodcet Nife



I think you will find now that the packet loss should be basically 
gone... at least on our end. We were definetely causing some of the 
loss before (only when we hit major numbers) but now things are very, 
very clean running and that is with 23,582 people on just as I write 
this (a new record).



Does this mean that EVERYONE'S Packet Loss is gone? Absolutely not. 
BUT, I did some surveys in most of the worlds and about 750f the people 
told me their Packet Loss was great. If you are having problems now, do 
a traceroute to chat.everquest.com and send it to the email address 
traceroute@verant.com and we will take a look. We take our customers 
connections very seriously, and if a whole lot of people on one network 
are having a problem we will do our best to look into it. It doesn't 
mean we can always get the reaction we want (some networks are just 
plain bad) but many times we can help find a legitimate problem and 
help correct it.



Some of you may also not realize what the network statistics we have in game actually are for:



The left hand number is your ping to the server in milliseconds.



The left-middle number (percentage) is your packet loss to the server.
The right-middle number (percentage) is your packet loss from the server.
The right hand number is the data rate. THIS IS NOT THE PING. - I love hearing about the "terrible" pings in game of 3000.
It is my strong belief (forgive me for this rant) that EVERY online game should have this type of meter so that you are getting real feedback about the network status.



John Smedley



Thanks!
Patches in 1999