Packet loss to riot servers

[Jayden3]

Hi, 

I'm experiencing packet loss while playing Valorant by Riot Games. The packet loss happens on all riot servers. I've run multiple traceroutes to riots servers in London (104.160.141.3) and Paris (162.249.72.1).
The traces show that the connection starts to time out from hop 6 onwards and the packet loss persists all the way to the destination.

Other services like BBC, Google, Fortnite and Steam work fine with no packet loss. This clearly indicates a routing issue. If there's any fix for this please let me know or escalate it to your network engineering or routing team please. Below is the trace route to Riot London server.

Tracing route to 104.160.141.3 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms (Home Router)
2 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms (My BT IP Address)
3 * * * Request timed out.
4 3 ms 3 ms 3 ms 62.6.204.188
5 14 ms 19 ms 16 ms 62.6.204.125
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 * * * Request timed out.
9 * * * Request timed out.
10 * * * Request timed out.
11 * * * Request timed out.
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * * Request timed out.
26 * * * Request timed out.
27 * * * Request timed out.
28 * * * Request timed out.
29 * * * Request timed out.
30 * * * Request timed out.

[Crimliar]

Unfortunately, what you've posted shows that intermediate servers - between you and your target - do not respond to ping requests.  This is not the same as packet loss!

[Jayden3]

You’re right that not all timeouts in a traceroute indicate packet loss, especially if it’s just a single hop that doesn’t respond to ICMP requests.

However, in my case the timeouts happen consistently across multiple hops and are only present when I’m actively experiencing issues in Valorant (like rubberbanding and delayed shots). On other days when the game is smooth, the same traceroute doesn’t show those timeouts.

[Crimliar]

At the moment, everything that I can see suggests there are no active servers at the two addresses you listed. The IP addresses, while owned by Riot Games, are hosted by third parties (Akami). The most logical explanations are either that the hosting company does not want users to tracert through their network, or even possibly that the servers are "on demand" and not currently running.

I had a little play in Valorant, and the server I connected to (using 3rd party router logs) is not at the IP you listed.  A tracert to the French server generates a couple of extra hops on the route to the French server, or where it would be if it were active.  At this moment I'm not inclined to go poking harder at an adress that may not even be currently active.

[Jayden3]

I see, well I shall try using WinMTR while I’m playing the game next time and try to find out the cause. Thank you for explaining.