Issues, Workarounds & Localization

I'm not sure if this is THE answer to socket closed issues, but if you are running a wireless connection, you might want to continue reading as after two weeks, I have solved my countless socket closed errors. There's a TLDR at the bottom, but for those who care why the problem was happening, how I worked to solve it, and the end result, please feel free reading through my wall of text.

The socket closed error is due to 5 consecutive timeouts from the EVE client according to a support ticket I had previously opened. I was informed I should call my ISP to have this issue resolved. Well, this doesn't make sense for a varied amount of reasons, and I'll hope that CCP will have their generic copy paste answers re-structured to provide more helpful insight in the future, but I won't hold my breath. Besides EVE, the 'game you play while you play other games' or in my case....work, I have lots of nifty programs running across a WAN. If any of these programs stopped running, I'd get various email alerts and bells and whistles ringing and my batphone would start ringing. So I know this isn't just an ISP issue, but definitely something local that the EVE client doesn't like.

I load up my trusty AirPcap along with some various software I use for wireless testing, and run around the inside and outside of my house capturing traffic patterns without the EVE client running. I then repeat this process while the EVE client is running.
In this day in age, some of us may have wireless everything. The problem with that is that the localized airspace around your dwelling is limited. If you live in an apartment or condo complex, even more so. Things like garage door openers, wireless security cameras, that weather station your father in law bought you, radar systems, satellite WAN links, remote home maintenance modules etc. etc. etc. can all eat up valuable air space. Obviously to mitigate this, wire what you can, but when you must have wireless, unplanned use of airspace is bad.

Every time I got near one of my wireless devices, both my wireless network card, and my wireless AP's starting changing channel hopping at a very quick pace trying to find some uncongested air time. While many other applications handled this fine, EVE decided to time out. Luckily I was able to see this time out through having my AirPcap card in place which captures wireless traffic just like wireshark captures wired network traffic.

I decided to use this time to upgrade my homes airspace useage and upgraded my AP's to have 4 radios instead of the dual radios my older AP's were having. The power spectrum on the newer AP's were also a lot higher and as such, I could adjust as needed. I also upgraded my 'DMZ Wireless Router' (aka home internet) to run on 15 dbi antennas and slapped a power gain adjuster onto them.

After all this, I began running around my house starting at the 4 corners of the lot outside, and working my way to being close to each wireless device, then finally to my desk next to the wireless router. I had to do a lot of power management, and channel control. You can do channel and spectrum analysis with quite a few tools as InSSIDer which I believe is still free and open source, netstumbler, or enterprise level products like Aruba Analyzer or Opnet Modler.

Low and behold, I am now able to run around my house with my wireless devices playing EVE and I no longer see packets being dropped while changing channels. So why didn't I just change the channel in the first place? Not so simple. While sitting on my couch I would channel hop maybe once every 2 hours. During this channel hop, I would cause a 'hiccup' for about 80ms. Since it was so low, I expected that most software could recoup. What is interesting, is that EVE could not handle a channel change. Just out of curiosity, I wired my laptop up to a wired connection, pulled the plug, and about a second later plugged it back in.....EVE still ran fine. While at this very moment it's way passed my bedtime and my brain is turning into mush, I'll have to research into the difference between the two.

So there you have it, a wall of text with how I solved my socket closed errors.


TL:DR

EVE doesn't like Wireless changing channels. Chose a channel and power output that provides maximum strength without adding too much noise into your local airspace.

NOTE: In my environment, power gain is absolutely necessary. Some devices must have lower power settings than others, because I don't use standard gear (I use Aruba AP's and a Controller) in order to provide coverage to my entire house. So it might not be necessary for you to play with power settings or if on generic ISP based wireless routers you might not even have the option to mess with power settings without loading extra firmware. Increasing/Decreasing power may create unwanted noise in your airspace.