Disconnection

[Gimbold]

Getting a bit fed up with all the disconnections i keep getting lately.

Seems if you keep still for too long you get booted, is this "working as intended".

I play two toons on two computers and I'm finding it harder to do, if this is how it's going, i might as well cancel one sub and play one toon.

[Shen Long]

i hate it too, but I wont cancel because of that.

[Kodey]

I noticed that too. I used to afk and go to bed and wake up to play again. xP

Now it's like 20 minutes of inactivity D/C's both my accounts. ffos

(Though I haven't been playing recently, keeping subs up. xP)

[Steelclaw]

If you get disconnected after some period of inactivity, do you do any of the following?

1. Move your character at least once after logging in.

2. Receive text (such as from a /tell, a chat channel, or /say).

[StalePopcorn]

If it's due to inactivity, maybe you could create a macro that call itself with the command "jump" or something? Anything, as long as there is some feedback to keep the server connection alive. This probably isn't something you should use if you're going to bed though - more legit if you have two toons on two PCs IMHO

[Tcei]

chat (In tells, local, and global) doesnt seem to effect it. ONly remaining stationary is what gets me dc'd. I've not paid any attention to how long I can stay in one place, but it seems to be in the neighborhood of 1-1.5 hours before I get kicked.

[Steelclaw]

So is the idle interval before disconnection 1-1.5 hours or 20 minutes?

[Nambroth]

I have not paid attention to the exact amount of time it takes (will do so now), but I too experience this. If I go AFK to do some cleaning/errands etc, I come back to find that the client has disconnected. And I do indeed move, fight, craft, receive tells and chats, etc before I go idle.
I'll pay better attention next time it happens to see what the duration is.

[RuneDragoon]

I remember getting up and wadering off for a snack and then coming back after getting sucked in by a movie on tv and was booted.

[Velea]

If you are getting disconnected after being inactive for any more than 5 minutes, your ISP is cutting the connection to the game. From what I was told by someone who works for an ISP setting up their networks, most companies now days have it set to terminate connections if so many "inbound" packets are received and nothing "outbound" is being sent back. He says one ISP is infamous for doing this, in fact, to the point where they have been sued by their customers for cutting them off from being able to download torrents. And the ISP's primary defense is that most people who are using some sort of "torrent" connection are getting something illegal anyway, so what they (the ISP) is doing is ok.

[Sigi]

And this is new? Because it didn't "work" like that a few weeks before.

[Creme]

I believe I read that one of the newer clients stopped sending positional updates on characters that had not moved (or something along those lines). My best "guess" is that previously, those positional updates to the server were enough back and forth communication for the ISP not to drop you.

This is just a guess, but the release of the that client coincides with when I noticed getting dropped after a period of inactivity.

[Steelclaw]

Yes, the newer client does not send positional updates when not moving, so there is a drastic decrease in outbound traffic. That may be bringing up connectivity issues that haven't been seen before.

Velea brings up an interesting point, though, I'm not going to immediately blame individual ISPs for the disconnection problem. She reminded me of something rather important: NAT gateways and "stateful firewalls" limit the time that a connection across them is valid. The timer on a connection is reset each time traffic is seen, however, the timer may only be reset on outbound traffic, not inbound. Since the server-client protocol uses UDP as its transport, there's no guarantee that inbound traffic will result in outbound traffic (though the protocol generally requires the receiver to send an acknowledgment). Some NAT/firewall implementations also place smaller timeouts on UDP connections since those mappings generally tend to be short-lived (think DNS lookups) and resources to store and manage the mappings is scarce.

So, who gets disconnected and ISN'T using a NATted connection, residential gateway, "router", or firewall?

[Knossos]

And maybe the answer to

So, who DOESN'T get disconnected and IS using a NATted connection, residential gateway, "router", or firewall?

Would serve to add dimension to the previous question and the issue at hand.

Knossos

[Creme]

Yes, the newer client does not send positional updates when not moving, so there is a drastic decrease in outbound traffic. That may be bringing up connectivity issues that haven't been seen before.

Velea brings up an interesting point, though, I'm not going to immediately blame individual ISPs for the disconnection problem. She reminded me of something rather important: NAT gateways and "stateful firewalls" limit the time that a connection across them is valid. The timer on a connection is reset each time traffic is seen, however, the timer may only be reset on outbound traffic, not inbound. Since the server-client protocol uses UDP as its transport, there's no guarantee that inbound traffic will result in outbound traffic (though the protocol generally requires the receiver to send an acknowledgment). Some NAT/firewall implementations also place smaller timeouts on UDP connections since those mappings generally tend to be short-lived (think DNS lookups) and resources to store and manage the mappings is scarce.

So, who gets disconnected and ISN'T using a NATted connection, residential gateway, "router", or firewall?

English please, for internet for dummies types.

Thanks!

[Steelclaw]

And maybe the answer to

So, who DOESN'T get disconnected and IS using a NATted connection, residential gateway, "router", or firewall?

Would serve to add dimension to the previous question and the issue at hand.

Knossos

No; if someone who has a completely open connection to the internet has the same disconnection issue, then NAT/firewall can be ruled out as a factor. I'm not crazy, really!

Configuration and implementation differences in firewalls and NAT devices may prevent the disconnection problem from ever showing up, so having one of the above intermediate devices in your internet connection and not having a disconnection problem means nothing.

English please, for internet for dummies types.

I'm a bit pressed for time right now, so I can't explain in detail. Generally, if your computer plugs directly into your cable/dsl modem, there's a chance that your connection is direct. If your computer plugs into an intermediate device, like a Netgear or Linksys router, or connects wirelessly, then it's almost assuredly NATted.

That being said, a lot of cable/dsl modems come with built-in NAT these days, especially the ones provided by the ISP and ones with built-in wireless.

The only way to rule out NAT is to check your IP as seen on the internet (http://whatismyip.com) and make sure it matches the IP assigned to your network interface on your computer.

[velveeta]

And this is new? Because it didn't "work" like that a few weeks before.

actually sigi, it may have been around for a longer time than we realize...
after reading this thread, i am remembering the times i left vel or mw logged in for a bridge meet while i went to work or did other things (sorry, peeps anti-pl'ing.......) - i always would come back to find i had been disconnected at some point in the process.
as vel stated, i always thought it was my isp cutting the connection after so long a period without a response from me........

i am not sure if vi will be able to do anything about this particular matter, as i do not believe it is a game related problem, either.......

just my thoughts, sorry if its fanboi.......

[Raeshlavik]

English please, for internet for dummies types.

Thanks!

NAT (Network Address Translation): Essentially, what this does is make Internet apartments...

Rather than having an Internet house (one front door per street address), NAT takes a single street address and turns it into lots of Internet apartments - so a family or group of roommates can all be on the internet at the same time, even though the ISP only provides one address.

What does this is the router; a piece of equipment that watches all of the traffic in and out of the door to the apartment building and figures out which data packages go to which apartment (or computer) based on who requested them. The way it does this is by remembering who each computer is speaking with, so that when a reply comes in, it goes back to the correct computer.

Where the problem comes in is that the router has a limited memory for these things. So if enough time passes, the router assumes the back and forth communication has ended and resets, waiting for the next series of communications.

A side effect of this one door - many people thing is that a random bad guy on the Internet doesn't know your specific apartment number... All they can see is the street address. So this, coupled with the fact that the router at the door understands some basic bad packages (if it's ticking, don't forward it!), this makes you a bit safer in your apartment.

Additionally, being as you can have a lot of people in an apartment building and only one door, things can begin to queue at the door... Torrent traffic is really bad for this as one apartment asks for a package, but 300+ people each send a little piece of it, clogging the door for everyone else.

What Steelclaw is saying is that to reduce the communications overhead of the client, it has been adjusted to only send your position to the server if you are moving (explains the 'move around a bit before you try that' messages of late)... So if you stop moving for a while, the router stops seeing data packages going in and out of the front door to your apartment building, and closes the connection to give other apartments faster service.

So... If you go to start > run (xp) or in the search box (vista/7) and type 'cmd' (sans quotes), you'll see a black text box. In this black text box type 'ipconfig' (sans quotes) and press enter. Your computer will regurgitate a lot of numbers - one of which will be your local IP address.

If you see something like 192.168.X.X or 10.X.X.X for your "address", chances are really good you're on a NAT router. If you don't see any numbers matching 192.168.X.X or 10.X.X.X and instead see something like 97.65.196.100, you are probably directly attached to the Internet (the internet 'house' from above).

Hope this helps!

[Knossos]

Would it be possible for the devs to address this issue by configuring the server/client communications such that after log in and prior to the toon's position being changed there could be a drastically reduced rate of data exchange between the server and the client? With such an approach, the intent of the recent change to "no data exchange until the toon changes position" might still well be served with "sufficient data exchange to satisify a router or other offending timeout but not enough (or of game pertinent nature) to allow game exploit". If this could be mechanized, it would seem that all interests would be addressed, and this issue could be put behind us.

Knossos

[Steelclaw]

Almost. I want to make sure that the underlying cause of the problem is as described before trying to come up with a solution. Having a few test cases is good too.