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Socket Closed issues. The elephant in the room.
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hudders
State War Academy
Caldari State
#41 - 2016-03-14 03:02:27 UTC
Okay riddle me this. If it is unreliable connection issues answer the following questions.

Why does it only happen when I am in a state of inactivity? I never DC while actively fighting, moving warping, etc.

Why does it only happen to one account and not all of them? They don't socket close together. Same computer, same ISP. How is one account more reliably connected than the other?

And finally, if CCP making a server change can negatively affect how our ISPs connect, why are they not able to make a change to positively affect it? Why not change the way this system "pings" our connection so that we socket close less. Realistically CCP cannot expect all their players with this issue to do complex troubleshooting on their own.

I am paying for a service, it shouldn't require me to spend hours troubleshooting my otherwise fine connection. If the issue cannot be resolved on their end, I will simply end service for a game that I can no longer play. I am sure there are many many players that will follow a similar path. "It's not our fault, check your ISP" isn't a good response. Especially when it's a new problem and my ISP hasn't changed, but CCP servers have.
Helios Anduath
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#42 - 2016-03-14 10:18:07 UTC  |  Edited by: Helios Anduath
hudders wrote:
Okay riddle me this. If it is unreliable connection issues answer the following questions.

Why does it only happen when I am in a state of inactivity? I never DC while actively fighting, moving warping, etc.

Why does it only happen to one account and not all of them? They don't socket close together. Same computer, same ISP. How is one account more reliably connected than the other?


Each account has it's own connection so depending on when it tries to talk to the server while idle, one client could hit an issue that passes by the next time a client tries to communicate.

Now, the fun thing, over in the other thread on this, someone is having an idle client disconnecting issue - the kicker, it only happens when he is connected to the wired port of his home router. If he connected by Wifi, his 3G hotspot or uses a VPN on the wired connection, he has no problems at all. Packet captures show a spike in TCP retransmissions and duplicate ACKs right before the socket closed (TCP retransmissions happen in the operating system's network stack, below Eve, and are a sign that some packets have not made it to the destination for some reason).

Networks can be fickle things and diagnosing them can be a complete PITA.

hudders wrote:
And finally, if CCP making a server change can negatively affect how our ISPs connect, why are they not able to make a change to positively affect it? Why not change the way this system "pings" our connection so that we socket close less. Realistically CCP cannot expect all their players with this issue to do complex troubleshooting on their own.

I am paying for a service, it shouldn't require me to spend hours troubleshooting my otherwise fine connection. If the issue cannot be resolved on their end, I will simply end service for a game that I can no longer play. I am sure there are many many players that will follow a similar path. "It's not our fault, check your ISP" isn't a good response. Especially when it's a new problem and my ISP hasn't changed, but CCP servers have.


They are in the process of doing this. If you read the end of the dev blog, you would see that they are implementing a new dynamic BGP routing solution to look for better routes and that they recently ditched an ISP who was not up to par.

However, ultimately, CCP are not in control of what goes on outside of their network and because of the way the internet works, there will always be transient issues that cause problems. CCP "Pinging" your connection won't get around a packet loss issue.

Regarding users needing to do troubleshooting, welcome to tech and the troubleshooting you need to do to work out where an issue is here really is not complex and the basic diagnostics hardly take hours. It is also the type of troubleshooting that the user has to do as CCP can't do it for you. [/i]Most[/i] of the time, socket closed issues are a problem on the user's end or something out of CCP's control and while you may pay CCP for access to Eve, but you don't pay them to support your home network/ISP/the internet.

Now, you say that your connection is otherwise fine but I will bet that is from observation only and you have not actually done any diagnostics? This has been the case with a fair few of the people complaining about packet loss and it turned out to be a Wifi issue. The fun thing about network traffic is that a fair chunk of what you do every day can cope with packet loss and just be a little slower. Some services, by their nature, are just more sensitive to packet loss.




So, to troubleshooting your problem, any chance you can tell me what make/model your router is, how you connect to it (wifi/wired) and can you provide a screenshot of a Pingplotter to client.eveonline.com taken just after a socket closed event (you set it going and just play like normal until you get a socket closed). Another quick test you can carry out is to play through a VPN (someone has reported that the Avast VPN 7-day free trial with the Frankfurt server selected works quite well).
Kinete Jenius
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#43 - 2016-03-16 00:03:04 UTC
hudders wrote:
Okay riddle me this. If it is unreliable connection issues answer the following questions.

Why does it only happen when I am in a state of inactivity? I never DC while actively fighting, moving warping, etc.

Why does it only happen to one account and not all of them? They don't socket close together. Same computer, same ISP. How is one account more reliably connected than the other?

And finally, if CCP making a server change can negatively affect how our ISPs connect, why are they not able to make a change to positively affect it? Why not change the way this system "pings" our connection so that we socket close less. Realistically CCP cannot expect all their players with this issue to do complex troubleshooting on their own.

I am paying for a service, it shouldn't require me to spend hours troubleshooting my otherwise fine connection. If the issue cannot be resolved on their end, I will simply end service for a game that I can no longer play. I am sure there are many many players that will follow a similar path. "It's not our fault, check your ISP" isn't a good response. Especially when it's a new problem and my ISP hasn't changed, but CCP servers have.

I have 12 accounts still active and I've AFKed them extensively the last few weeks. They have both sat AFK in space and in station for +6 hours at a time. I haven't had a socket reset since the big patch a while back that broke everyone's ability to connect to the server. After a couple days those socket resets stopped.

It's either your connection or something further down the line like your ISP's ISP.

As stated in other areas each account talks separately and if you lose a few packets at the wrong time for a specific client that client will socket reset while others don't.
BrundleMeth
State War Academy
Caldari State
#44 - 2016-03-16 00:32:36 UTC
Enjoy it. These days it can be the most fun in game...
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