[Networking / Server Routing] Game-Breaking Latency (105–110ms) Across Entire Spanish Squads (Málaga, Madrid, Barcelona)
Subject: [Networking / Server Routing] Game-Breaking Latency (105–110ms) Across Entire Spanish Squads (Málaga, Madrid, Barcelona) — Making Extraction Unplayable
Category: Matchmaking Infrastructure / Server Peering
Platform: PC (Steam)
Region Affected: Spain (Iberian Peninsula)
Issue Summary
For the past month, latency in Marathon has degraded to a state where the game has become completely unplayable for our squad in Spain.
We are consistently matched with a persistent baseline ping of 105ms to 110ms. In a high-stakes tactical extraction shooter, this latency creates critical desync and hit-registration failures: shots cleanly landing on target do not register, rendering PvP encounters impossible to win.
Our squad has put dozens of hours into the game, but this month-long latency barrier is forcing dedicated players to abandon it entirely.
Geographic & Cross-Region Diagnostic Evidence
This is not a localized incident or an isolated home network fault. Our core fireteam consists of three players located in different major cities across Spain:
-
Player 1 (Host/Report): Málaga (Southern Spain) — 1 Gbps Symmetrical FTTH (Movistar) | Latency: ~110ms
-
Player 2: Madrid (Central Spain) | Latency: ~107ms (consistent with Player 1, only 2–3ms difference)
-
Player 3: Barcelona (North-East Spain) | Latency: ~107ms (consistent with Player 1, only 2–3ms difference)
Why this confirms a server-side / routing issue:
-
Expected baseline: Over symmetric fiber infrastructure, routing from anywhere in mainland Spain to Western/Central European clusters (Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Paris) averages 32ms to 45ms.
-
Symptom: A uniform 105–110ms across Málaga, Madrid, and Barcelona indicates our traffic is either:
-
Being routed to distant fallback data centers (such as US-East or Eastern/Northern European relays) instead of local EU clusters.
-
Suffering from a broken transit/peering exchange between major Spanish telecom backbones (Telefónica/Movistar AS3352) and Bungie’s server relay infrastructure.
-
Client Hardware & Local Network (Reporting Rig)
Local network bottlenecks and bufferbloat are strictly ruled out:
-
Rig: Intel Core i9-14900K | NVIDIA RTX 4080 Super | 32 GB DDR5 @ 7200 MHz | WD_BLACK NVMe
-
Network Hardware: Ubiquiti UniFi Cloud Gateway Max | 2.5 GbE wired Ethernet (Cat 6a)
-
Line: Movistar 1 Gbps symmetric fiber (0% packet loss, A+ bufferbloat rating, Open NAT)
-
Cross-Check: All other competitive titles running on European servers yield stable latencies of 35–40ms. The 110ms spike is isolated strictly to Marathon.
Request to Engineering
Please review:
-
The regional server pool and matchmaking constraints for Iberian/Southern European matchmaking instances in Marathon.
-
The BGP routing/peering paths between Spanish Tier-1 transit providers and Bungie’s regional game server relays.
Comments
Hi there,
Thank you for reaching out to us about this! We've raised this to the team for investigation.
Thank you for the quick follow-up.
Please let us know if the networking team needs any additional telemetry, exact in-game timestamps, session IDs, or WinMTR traceroutes from our squad's matches in Spain. We are ready to provide any logs that can help resolve this peering issue.
Hello again! Checking in to provide an update on the situation.
Please note that the team will soon be introducing a new setting called "Ping Priority." With that setting, players will be able to choose from the following options:
If the current matchmaking and/or latency isn't to your liking, we recommend switching to another Ping Priority setting from among the options listed. Based on what you've described, Prefer Local Matches will likely produce the results you're seeking.
Please sign in to leave a comment.