Issues, Workarounds & Localization

tl;dr I want your sanitized network diagnostic information to isolate a common lag/disconnect/d-sync issue.

I'm struggling with lag/disconnect/d-sync issues in which my client appears to lose its connection to the server entirely. The client remains responsive, and FPS stay steady, but it is as if my actions never reach the server, or the responses from the server never reach my client. Sometimes I'll reconnect, but the client and server are always out of sync until I dock or jump, and usually until I restart the client and launcher entirely. There's no consistent user action that precedes a loss of connectivity.

I've worked with GM Mechanic (very responsive and helpful!) to sort through "every" possible client-side setting and issue without finding anything offering significant improvement.

• cleared system/character caches
• adjusted graphics settings
• enabled/disabled download everything
• switched from ISP DNS to OpenDNS
• verified there's no significant GPU/CPU/RAM/Handle/Disk/Network bottlenecks on my local machine
• installed on another computer
• replaced my router

GM Mechanic indicates network diag doesn't show obvious indication the problem is there, and there's nothing on the server side to explain an issue. He suggested there may be something between my location and theirs that is causing the issue. There's some small evidence that the problem may be character-specific, but I only have one character I play on a regular basis, so I can't rule that in or out yet.

I've heard from several individuals that they are having similar issues, and significantly worse the past month-ish than ever before.


So, my question for you is - if you are having similar difficulties, are you willing to share the traceroute information from the launcher's network diagnostics? (E menu next to the - X in the upper right hand corner of the browser), with your first few (local network and first ISP hop) routes removed to protect your privacy? I'm trying to see if perhaps there's a problem at a regional router in common to several of us seeing the same issues.

If I can find a common thread, then I'll work with individuals who are not having issues to isolate any key differences in the route, so I can work via ISPs and/or CCP to see about chasing down a solution.

If you are willing to help, let's open a conversation. You can reach me at ErutorOfEve via google's mail service, on reddit /u/erutor, or contact me via my blog by leaving a comment on https://learningtoeve.wordpress.com/2016/10/11/eve-is-unironically-unplayable/ or using the contact page on the blog, or just comment here.

Several similar threads - Possibly related to laptops, possibly related to alt-tabbing

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=491513

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=493002

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=493425

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=493713

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=494808

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=495379

I also notices some 'weird' behaviour... My wireless dropped for 10 seconds, I lost connection with everything, but eve remained running. After 10 seconds it actually just resumed, threw me chat messages and notification in space in one instant and everything continued.

One fleet member got bluescreen, his clients remained logged in for full 2 minutes (not pointed / bastioned / cyno and did not leave fleet)

So, I've done some experimenting, and have a few useful bits to offer.

Tl;dr - Thanks to my travels, access to multiple hotspots, and data from Kamirel and (anonymous), I was able to compare working and broken EVE launcher diagnostics, and determine this is an ISP issue. Switching to OpenDNS helps but, using Avira Phantom VPN seems to solve it entirely.

My experience was significantly better when I set up my router to use https://www.opendns.com/ instead of my ISP's DNS. Not awesome, but not terrible. We moved (same town/ISP), so fiber optic at home was down for a couple of weeks. While it was down, I tried from my laptop using two different mobile Hotspots and from work in two states, all without any problems.

I compared working and broken network diagnostic information, and was not able to identify anything consistent between the broken routes, etc. With all the different connections and diags, I am pretty sure the problem is not with CCP, my computer, or my character, but something with my ISP. With others having very similar symptoms, it may be a common configuration error on the ISP side, or some common garbage hardware those guys use so they can pad their profit margins.

I finally got my fiber-optic reconnected, and immediately started having issues again, even with OpenDNS configured. I had to switch Antivirus anyway, and happened to choose Avira. It includes a free (up to a data cap) Avira Phantom VPN software. I started using that, and have put in about 12 hours of EVE time without a single problem. I think I can tell when my normal connection would fail - there is occasionally a very brief lag/stutter, but it doesn't de-synchronize me from the server or last very long.

The free version of Avira Phantom VPN is limited to 500mb unless you create an account (which I did), then it goes to 1GB. Judging by the usage it shows, 1GB should be plenty for me to play EVE regularly, as long as I don't try to do anything else significant on the connection while I do it, and do software updates with the VPN disconnected.

So, what I've done this week is
* Open the launcher normally
* Wait for any updates to complete
* Close the launcher
* Connect the Avira VPN
* Open the launcher, then EVE, and play

It does mean that I can't watch videos on this computer while I play, but I typically play on a laptop in the living room while I watch NetFlix with my wife, so that's not a big obstacle for my circumstances.

My biggest fear is that using the VPN will trigger bot-alarms at CCP. Here's hoping I can get back to exploding, and avoid setting off any false alarms.

So a fix for this issue that has worked for me is to use a VPN(virtual private network) to tunnel past the problem router(s) and get a stable connection to eve.

There is a lot of services out there that make it easy to do it, but make sure it allows you to use TCP protocol(as opposed to UDP, or another) between you and the VPN server. I personally use PIA(Private Internet Access)

just as a quick summary for those who don't know what a vpn is or why this helps; a vpn is a connection between you and a server that allows you to connect to the rest of the internet using that server's ip address. most services make sure these servers don't remember who connected to them or what they did, to protect privacy, the data transmitted between is encrypted, protecting one from a man in the middle attack(intercepted data).

The reason making such a connection can fix a disconnect problem is the TCP protocol verifies that the packets it sends are received, and if it doesn't get feedback saying it is received then it will send again. That makes it so when a bad router drops a packet it doesn't cause the connection to go bad, but instead has a ability to fix itself.

Eve i think uses TCP protocol too, but for some reason using a VPN with TCP between me and the VPN server has fixed my frequent disconnects.