Possible routing issue affecting League of Legends BR match connections (VPN routing works)

[Pedro92]

From Canada, I can launch the League of Legends client normally, but I’m unable to connect to matches on the Brazilian server. When a match starts, the game transitions to a black screen and never completes the connection. This happens consistently, at all times, and has been ongoing for over six months.

The key observation is that the issue is immediately resolved when I route traffic through a Canadian VPN endpoint (NordVPN). With the VPN enabled, matches load and play normally. Without the VPN, match connections consistently fail.

Additional context:

• In the past, traceroutes showed traffic being routed through the United States and India before failing

• Riot Games appears to host its match infrastructure on AWS, which uses dynamic IP addressing and load balancing, so destination IPs change per session

• Because of this, I’m unable to provide fixed destination IPs or consistent traceroute results

Based on the consistent behavior and the VPN workaround, this appears to be a routing or peering issue affecting the path from Bell’s network to Riot Games’ AWS-hosted Brazilian match servers, rather than a client-side issue.

I’d appreciate any insight from the Bell team on:

• Whether this could be related to Bell’s international routing or upstream providers

• If there is a recommended escalation path for review by a network or peering team

• Any additional information that would help with investigation

Thank you for your time and assistance.

[BellPatricia]

Hey there @Pedro92 

Welcome to the Bell community and thank you for reaching out 🙂

Can you share a screen shot of your trace route results and which modem you are using? Are you using any third party equipment? Have you also connected with Riot Games directly to report and troubleshoot the issue with them?

Looking forward to your reply,

@BellPatricia 

[Pedro92]

Modem is a Bell Giga Hub. I am unsure if this is the correct tracert since each match uses either different addresses or ports.

No third party equipment and Riot Games told me to ask my Internet Provider since its AWS connection, which is a pretty common service.

[Pedro92]

Also, while I am based in Toronto, a friend of mine is based in Quebec (he has been using McAfee VPN to be able to play) and has the same issue with Bell service on the same game (League of Legends)

[Pedro92]

https://forum.bell.ca/t5/Internet/Packet-loss-due-to-bad-routing-to-Valorant-servers/td-p/2967/page/... Also, the problem is related to the same as here, probably. Since it's also a Riot Games server.

[Pcoelho]

I'm having the same issue, literally the same

[dks]

With the high pings, you are likely seeing network congestion. Not exactly unexpected with popular online games. 

[BellPatricia]

Hey there @Pedro92 & @Pcoelho 

We would like to explore this a bit further and will reach out to each of you via private message soon. 

Please check your Messages within your profile avatar in the top right corner.

Unsure how to check or send a private message? See How to send a private message

@BellPatricia 

[Pedro92]

Fact that this is constant and just with this service specifically is strange. Considering that just matches are the issue but not the client, makes even less sense since everyone is always connected to the client, but not necessarily to the same match address, so shouldnt that one also have this congestion?

And that should happen to all huge games, no? This isn't a case of random disconnects, it's literally unable to join, all times, anytime, never solves.

[Pedro92]

Thanks @BellPatricia! Already replied to you!

[dks]

Not being able to connect to a game server is a challenge, but has always been an issue with online gaming. While I no longer engage in serious gaming, I was a game server admin for a while. We had ping limits, for example. If a user's ping was over X ms they could not join at all as their ping affected the ping of everyone on the server. The issue wasn't fibre but the connections in between. Some games will not allow the use of a VPN. Some may have geolocation limits.  All of us are subject to routing issues from time to time, though, even today. 

[Vanadiel]

108.166.240.40 is an AWS destination, anything past that would be AWS routing.

If you do a traceroute to 108.166.240.40, you will see a different route then when you tracer to 100.22.178.223

It's the second direct traceroute that might show you the issue. I tried from a different provider and it looks fine to me packet wise and timing wise.

Tracing route to ec2-100-22-178-223.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com [100.22.178.223]

over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  192.168.0.1

  2    14 ms    13 ms    12 ms  70.76.32.1

  3    13 ms    12 ms    12 ms  rd4he-be101-1.su.shawcable.net [24.244.8.141]

  4    12 ms    13 ms    12 ms  rd3he-be3.su.shawcable.net [66.163.66.61]

  5    29 ms    28 ms    27 ms  rc2nr-be2.wp.shawcable.net [66.163.73.213]

  6    92 ms    48 ms    47 ms  rc1no-be7-1.cg.shawcable.net [66.163.76.57]

  7     *        *        *     Request timed out.

  8    68 ms    67 ms    67 ms  108.166.240.40

  9     *        *        *     Request timed out.

 10     *        *        *     Request timed out.

Tracing route to 108.166.240.40 over a maximum of 30 hops

  1     2 ms     1 ms     1 ms  192.168.0.1

  2    13 ms    11 ms    11 ms  70.76.32.1

  3    14 ms    14 ms    12 ms  rd4he-be101-1.su.shawcable.net [24.244.8.141]

  4    23 ms    20 ms    21 ms  rc2fs-be2.mt.shawcable.net [66.163.75.170]

  5    32 ms    31 ms    34 ms  rc3ec-be10.il.shawcable.net [66.163.65.6]

  6    32 ms    32 ms    32 ms  chi-b23-link.ip.twelve99.net [80.239.128.180]

  7    33 ms    31 ms    32 ms  chi-bb1-link.ip.twelve99.net [62.115.140.108]

  8    51 ms    47 ms    46 ms  nyk-bb5-link.ip.twelve99.net [62.115.139.32]

  9     *        *        *     Request timed out.

 10     *        *        *     Request timed out.

[Pedro92]

Yes, this has always been the case.

I do engage in serious gaming, both as a player and as a game developer. Ping limits and network protections are very common in online games, and in fact many services enforce much stricter limits than simple latency thresholds, especially for DDoS mitigation (for example, limiting the number of packets within a given time window).

While some games do impose hard ping caps, this has never been the case for Riot Games’ services. As long as the server receives valid responses, Riot games typically allow very high latency connections. I have personally seen pings exceeding 500–1000 ms still connect successfully. From Canada, it is also common for players to connect to Brazilian servers at around 130–150 ms, which is considered normal.

It’s also important to note that VPN usage is not something I want or intend to rely on. In fact, some games explicitly prohibit VPN usage. In this case, the VPN is simply a workaround that makes the service usable, not a preferred solution.

Regarding regional restrictions, while some services use geolocation, many modern game platforms instead rely on account identifiers (or legal identity requirements) rather than IP location. This accommodates players who travel or temporarily reside in other countries. For example:

• Several Brazilian game services require a national ID

• Korea now commonly requires phone number verification (previously national ID)

These mechanisms are used to enforce local regulations, not latency or geography alone.

Finally, I’d like to point out that the Valorant thread I previously linked (another Riot Games title) shows similar connectivity issues being reported since 2022, and those reports involve players connecting to the NA server, not cross-region servers. Many of those issues are still ongoing. This further suggests that a simple “ping over X ms” limitation is unlikely to be the root cause of the problem here.

[Vanadiel]

If it's only the Brazilian server then it's likely an issue related to the server.

Does it work on non-Brazilian servers properly?

[Pedro92]

so, I dont play on other servers to let you know, but, according to this: https://forum.bell.ca/t5/Internet/Packet-loss-due-to-bad-routing-to-Valorant-servers/td-p/2967/page/... it seems more people have the same problem with their services playing on NA version.