At the end of my rope, i need help please :(
| by Bounce | 19/03/2007 10:09:41 for the past month i have been getting DCed from all online games that i have every 20 or so minutes., WoW, CS, HL2deathmatch, fear online, COH online, etc. But just these games, i am still connected to the internet. Did a bunch of tracer routes er w.e in command prompt and everything was ok there. I run through two routers (and dont tell me thats bad because its not when u have them set up properly, a tech guy from Blizz and my ISP assured me) so we tried running thru one and then the other and the same thing happened. When we tried to go directly thru my modem i couldnt even connect to the internet. My ISP sent a tech guy over here and he installed a new line and fixed the lvls on my modem (after we bought a new one, cause they thought that might be a porblem - wasnt tho.) and the same thing happened. And again, when i tried to go directly to the modem i couldnt connect to the internet. does anyone have any ideas? has this happened to anyone before? My ISP stopped helping me cause "they can only guarantee there internet connection and nothing else." Its obviously not blizz, because its happening on all my online games. So please, help a poor ole boy out :( its been a month and if it doesnt get fixed soon it looks like im saying buy to all computer games :( - i dont want to do that. EDIT: when this happened i didnt download anything close to the time frame. And i was on wow for a few hours before it actually started to happen. then every 20 mins, boom boom boom. [ Post edited by Bounce ] its a weekend? PVP PVP PVP MUST PVP =D |
| by Petermn | 19/03/2007 22:56:21 Greetings Bounce, As a test, are you able to try the connection without any router at all, and connect the system straight to your modem for 20 minutes to see if the disconnects still happen? Some routers have a built in timeout feature that will kick in (or kick you off) after 20 minutes if you do not access any websites (Port 80) As online games generally do not use port 80 to connect, the router will not see any activity that it thinks is valid, and shut the connection down after 20 minutes. Please try the connection without any routers as a test, to see if this may be the case here. |
| by Petermn | 20/03/2007 01:27:11 After connecting directly to the modem it may require a system restart before you can connect, but it should still be able to be done. The modem is likely assigning an IP address to the router, which in turn would assign another IP address to the second router, and in turn assign a third IP address to the system. The system may have to be refreshed to use the modem only connection, and a restart is the easiest way to test once the connection has been done physically. |
| by Petermn | 20/03/2007 02:30:06 In your first post you mentioned:
After the technician checked the connection, has this improved the situation at all? Are you now only having problems with World of Warcraft or is it still with all online games? You also mentioned:
Do you know exactly where you are having the connection issues already? If there is a problem somewhere else in the connection, then there is likely nothing that you can do on your end to first it. Do you have more information in regards to where this "drop" may be happening? |
| by Petermn | 21/03/2007 00:01:21 If you do a traceroute to our login server, the trace will stop at the login server and give * timeouts. This is intentional and is not the connection dropping as such. If they are basing the connection dropping on our servers because the login server does not return traceroute (ICMP) requests, then this is not accurate information. If there is some form of timeout before the Attens hop of the traceroute this could be a problem however. You can try a traceroute and paste the results to see if they are normal or not. Steps for running the traceroute can be found here: http://www.blizzard.com/support/wow/?id=aww0827p5 |
| by Petermn | 21/03/2007 01:02:38 I'm sorry but I have no way to get involved in the character transfer process, and it would not be a good solution to simply transfer each time you couldnt connect. Chances are whatever the problem is will continue happening and this will not actually solve anything in the long run. Are you able to post the results of the traceroute? |
| by Petermn | 21/03/2007 03:38:37 I have never claimed that we have no part in it, just there are no issues with the realm that I am currently aware of. If there is a problem with a realm, it will affect all players on that realm. I would guess that you also have friends on the realm, are they also having the same problems? Do they always, without fail, disconnect after 20 to 40 minutes? If there is a problem with the realm I wouldn't waste my time trying to blame your connection, but when there is no current issue, and hasn't been a current issue for the past month (the timeframe of your issue), then it is unlikely that the problem is on our end. Have your friends try the trace route from their homes to the final available hop 63.240.192.138 to see if they are getting the same timeouts from their connections. There is information being lost on those hops, I will need to know if this is only from your Internet provider, or from all connections. I can forward those locations to be checked further but if your connection is the only connection having problems with them then it is likely to be a problem closer to you along the trace. I'm not trying to pass the buck, I am trying to find out where the problem is so it can be resolved. |
| by Petermn | 21/03/2007 05:24:01 There are often issues specific to one character, (Or two in your case) that will affect higher level characters only. Lower level characters have one bag, limited items, the clothes and armor they wear will not be anything special. For a high level character, you will normally have large bags, all full of items, and all of your armor will have modifiers and bonuses, this coupled with the players around you that also have similar level items, it can cause connection problems on higher level characters which will not appear on the lower level ones. This will normally be something causing a minor connection issue and causing the information sent and received to be restricted, and can cause problems logging in, or staying connected at busy times or in busy areas. Please try the following steps to see if anything appears to help. The following is a large amount of information, but I figured I'd cover as much as I could in one go. You already mentioned that your routers were configured and had tried both of them, we'll leave them out of the picture for now and try other things. For your computers network card, there are some brands and some settings that have been known to cause issues. You will need to check the advanced settings, to get there: Click on Start. Click on Control Panel. Double click on the System icon (in Windows XP, you may need to click Switch to Classic View on the left hand side of the screen). Select the Hardware tab. Click on Device Manager. Expand the section labeled Network Adapters. Right click on your network card and select Properties. Select the Advanced tab. You may have a Checksum Offload, or Checksum RX option, if so choose the Disabled option. Not all network card drivers will list the name as "Checksum Offload" exactly, but it should be named something similar. Most cards that include this option are built in to motherboards using the nForce chipset. This may also be listed as Hardware Checksumming. Also, on the Advanced tab, try changing the Speed/Duplex to Force 100 Full Duplex instead of Auto. Depending on your router you may need to select 10 full duplex if you cannot connect after changing it to 100. This may also be listed as Media Type/Connection Type. In regards to your security software, do you know if any of the programs you have on your system have the option of flood or spam protection? Some of the newer firewall programs can offer this. When the game gets to busy stages, such as entering capital cities, or in a large fight, the security software may see the surge of data as a spam attack on your system, and try to restrict the IP address responsible (which will be the server) If this happens, this may not be immediately apparent, but you can end up disconnecting 30 to 60 seconds after something like this. You may wish to check any security software you have on your system, and see if it is capable of spam or flood protection. If this is the case, this should also be recorded in the programs logs. You may be able to configure the option to not be so sensitive. Please try these and let me know if anything seems to help. |
| by Petermn | 21/03/2007 06:43:51 The traceroute was to the same location that the previous traceroute you posted was to, just one hop back. You can check the IP addresses of any of the routers along the route and trace to them individually for follow up tests such as the one you did. The route for the second trace was actually different from the first however, this may change as internet traffic changes during the day, you may want to try the same trace again now to see if it is following the same route. It may only be that when the trace goes through the IP address 4.x.x.x routers (in your first traceroute, hops 8, 9 and 10) that the packets are being lost later on for example, and this can at least give you something to work with. If we can find a series of traceroutes that all show the same lost packets then this is a good place to start looking. You may want to try a trace after every disconnect to see if there is anything similar about the routes, also it could simply be that if you Internet provider, or one of the internet carriers in between is changing the connection route then this could cause a minor stop in connectivity, this normally happens all the time and shouldn't cause problems, but it is still something to try. |
by Petermn | 21/03/2007 23:11:49
Was the other computer on the same connection that you are using? Or a different connection? As you have mentioned, other computers all seem work with your characters, the problem happens on your computer on your connection. If there was a fault with the game, or the server, what is happening would be re-producible on any computer, on any connection anywhere in the world. You have said yourself that this is not the case on another system that you yourself have tried. There is still something either on your system, or on your connection that is causing the issue. I know that disconnections can be frustrating, and if it is not possible to find out through the normal steps what may be causing the disconnections then it comes down to trial and error. Are you able to take you computer to a friends house, and use a different connection to connect with? If you can play fine and do not disconnect here then you will know for certain that it is something on the connection. If you disconnect when using the different connection then the problem may be something on your system itself. This will not give you a definite fix, but by removing items from the list of possible causes it can help t at least narrow it down. |
| by Petermn | 22/03/2007 03:01:33 The IP address without the name on it is likely to be on the AT&T network, as it appears to be between two other AT&T routers. (That's if I'm looking at the same one you are) However it does not appear to have any problems as far as I can tell. What you may want to try however is using a program such as http://www.d3tr.com, as it will take a trace route over time, rather than only a single moment. If a spike or disconnection occurs then it should pick it up. Try to use that and have it running while you experience the problem in game to see if it detects anything. In the target field of the program enter: us.logon.worldofwarcraft.com You may want to watch it for a short time, few minutes, to see what it does. There are a few different views you may find useful, a "3D graph" and the "as List". The "as List" view will have a minimum/maximum and average time for each hop as a numerical representation of the graph. It will also display the total lost information per hop, which is useful in locating a potential problem. |
| by Petermn | 22/03/2007 03:46:05 Nothing stands out as a major problem, there are the usual minor ups and downs as with any connection but nothing that should cause your disconnection. From what I can tell the connection should be fine. On a side question, what Operating system are you using? The mushroom message itself doesn't immediately strike me as a problem, more than likely it is something from a Custom UI mod leaking through into the chat window, maybe a warning or debug message. However there are certain things in regards to the User Interface that could potentially cause connection issues. I am guessing you have already tried the removing of the Cache, WTF and Interface folders? After doing this did you start the game using the Blizzard launcher or did you use another program to start the game? Some Custom UI's will use their own launcher, and using them will place their code back into the game, potentially causing any problems before removing the folders to not be resolved. Do you use any custom UI mods while in the game? Some of these have the ability to send and receive a lot of information above the normal amount of information the game would normally send. |
| by Petermn | 23/03/2007 02:42:10 Glad to hear that it is finally working correctly. It is possible that in the files you removed/replaced the first time that there was still a rogue UI file causing problems. You may wish to save your 'good' copies of the files in case any similar issues happen in the future. There are many issues that can be solved by resetting the UI files, some custom UI mods can cause problems due to system or connection differences from what they were tested on. I am glad to hear that the problem seems to be resolved however. |
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