POL News: All Worlds Maintenance

[duncanrun]

That's the point. If its a backbone problem, there's nothing SE can do if they don't know where it is. And finding it themselves would take a lot longer then their playerbase helping them out.

As I've said several times and still not gotten an answer to, exactly what is it you expect by complaining? there's nothign they can do, and complaining won't make it go faster. It'll only cause yourself to go around and be annoyed, andry and/or upset, which is clearly noticable by your attitudes in this very thread.

The problem is there are plenty of things Square can do with this other company to help solve the problem. If they have so many problems with the company they are outsourcing like you say (with it happening to you all the time) they can choose to switch to another company. If it happens to you all the time there should alreay be a solution to this problem. I know you won't agree with this and thats fine you are as entitled to your opinion as I am to mine.

Since I seem to be repeating myself and Im sure you will too I will stop posting on this topic now (you have plenty of other people to respond to as well). I hope the problem is solved and the figure out what is wrong. I hope this also causes a fix that will help you have better conections as well. We both want the same thing so I wish you the best with your connection and hope mine gets better soon.

 

[pchan]

Wow you're really not getting this. Let me help you out: This problem is happening for people in EU & NA locations almost exclusively. I found that out when I tried to get support through POL Service & Support. It is happening to all types of system users (PS2, Xbox & PC), it is happening to people with DIFFERENT INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS, is happening with different zones on different characters within the same account. You really need to stop talking to all of us like we're morons. Get it through your skull, this is not an isp problem when you're talking about random people that widespread with different isps having this issue. Calling my internet service provider is kind of ridiculous considering it's obvious the issue is not with their service. And furthermore PCHAN, it is not a windower issue or a dat changing issue because people have posted again and again that they use neither and are still having this problem. And btw,that is a ridiculously slanderous and irresponsible thing to say that anyone having problems of this nature cheats. Not to mention, your statement about "Oh reinstall, it's no big deal" is crap. It is a big deal. It's a ridiculously long amount of time to reinstall. 3 hours is being modest even with a fast computer. And I believe someone said in one of the other posts they did a reinstall and it didn't solve the problem anyway. Not to mention if you have any marks on your maps, they get wiped, which may not be a big deal to some, but when I had to reinstall a few months back, maps that were marked over time with important information (ie: sky nm locations/entrances) were wiped clean.

If you'd like to keep telling yourself SE is doing great and we're all a bunch of whining bitches, you keep telling yourself that. But please, stop spouting that garbage here. Because this is frustrating enough to deal with without someone trying to tell us to shut up and cope. I spend money to play this game and plenty of my personal time which has value to me. With this number of people having issues (and yes, there is a large number of people having issues, so just because it doesn't affect you doesn't mean it isn't affecting most people), yes, SE needs to step up and locate the problem. Their product is now defective for a LOT of their userbase, and "yeah we don't know what's wrong with it" isn't going to keep those players paying for long. They can trace the problem a hell of a lot easier and more thoroughly on their end than we could with our limited resources.

I mean seriously "Just run a tracert and stop bitching?" M'kay. And when we find this magical backbone issue, and we've been so proactive, oh sage of bottlenecking, what then?

Sorry i'm not responsible for your trouble, all i say if unless you accept not playing the game during weeks by doing nothing, just reinstall the game, and this might fix the problem. If the same problem occurs then it's SE's fault, and if not then it was on your side.

And yes reinstalling is no big deal, sorry. You can do backup of your macros and maps file if u have a pc.

 

[Uzor]

The problem is there are planty of things Square can do with this other company to help solve the problem. If they have so many problems with the company they are outsourcing like you say (with it happening to you all the time) they can choose to switch to another company. If it happens to you all the time there should alreay be a solution to this problem. I know you won't agree with this and thats fine you are as entitled to your opinion as I am to mine.

Since I seem to be repeating myself and Im sure you will too I will stop posting on this topic now (you have plenty of other people to respond to as well). I hope the problem is solved and the figure out what is wrong. I hope this also causes a fix that will help you have better conections as well. We both want the same thing so I wish you the best with your connection and hope mine gets better soon.

wow, you didn't understand at all, did you? <.<; SE can't simply chose which route your packages take. The problem isn't with another company that SE chose to use. The company is within the internet backbone. Its not something SE can simply chose to use or not. Its not a company that they pay.

 

[Zyndara]

Wow, see that's why customer service treat people like morons. How many times have I said I'm not saying its a ISP problem. All I said once was to call your ISP and ask for information how to trace the problem. That's far from saying its your ISP's fault. What's more is that Iv'e eve nsadi several tiems that its quite naturally that it happends to severa ldifferent ISP's

You're obviously not reading even half of my posts. Try doing that before you throw yourself at the quote button, because I've stated this more then once in almost every post.

And I didn't once call you whining bitches. You're seriously exagerating there. I did tell you to stop complaining, but that's far from callign someone a whining bitch.

I do appreciate the constant insults and remarks, though.

As always Uzor, you say things in print and then try to act like you don't say them or that somehow we misconstrue the meaning.

"Yes, I know. Your ISP will quite naturally tell you its nothing wrong at their end. I do believe I even wrote that myself. You need to ask if there's anything you can do etc."

YOU typed that. By typing that, you're suggesting that people call their isp, who have nothing to do with this problem. And you have the nerve to say "this is why customer service people assume people are morons" in reference to me? Pretty ridiculous thing to say. I've worked customer service too. And if I worked for the post office and someone called me about a UPS package, I'd think they were a moron. Your advice to call your isp provider is bad advice, that was the point I was making.

And no where in my post did I insult you, yet you open strongly with "that's why customer service treat people like morons." Nice way to get your point across. The fact is, you're making light of a serious issue affecting a lot of people and your whole tone is derogatory to all of us like we're stupid. I read every word you said, and responded with reasonable skepticism not unlike several others in this thread. If you can't handle that, that's your problem. But let's not pretend that I insulted you or didn't respond based on things you said yourself. Accept that you have a weak argument at best and try not to resort to suggesting I'm a moron simnply because I disagree with you.

 

[Everlasting]

That's the point. If its a backbone problem, there's nothing SE can do if they don't know where it is. And finding it themselves would take a lot longer then their playerbase helping them out.

As I've said several times and still not gotten an answer to, exactly what is it you expect by complaining? there's nothign they can do, and complaining won't make it go faster. It'll only cause yourself to go around and be annoyed, andry and/or upset, which is clearly noticable by your attitudes in this very thread.

Dude. Man.

Like *I* said several times there are many, many threads with people running traceroutes on Alla, BG and KI. If that is your concern then no need to worry, people are already doing this.

If your concern is us bitching then kindly leave the thread, you don't have to read it.

 

[Pasquale]

Sorry i'm not responsible for your trouble, all i say if unless you accept not playing the game during weeks by doing nothing, just reinstall the game, and this might fix the problem. If the same problem occurs then it's SE's fault, and if not then it was on your side.

And yes reinstalling is no big deal, sorry. You can do backup of your macros and maps file if u have a pc.

Reinstalling is a big deal, because it takes forever, and it may not even work.

 

[Ubuntu]

See, if everyone attempted to do what Ubuntu did, you could isolate the problem faster. It really isn't much harder then performing a tracert.

One of the times I had this problem, the problem was at a backbone in Japan aswell. It wasn't at the SE office, it was at a backbone in Japan. The time it took the longest to fix, the problem was with a backbone in russia.

So, Ubuntu, could you kindly provide us with the address you pinged towards?

Sorry I'm at work right now and I can't remember lol

It starts with 207.xxx.xxx.xxx I think and it traceroutes to JP subnets in less than 5 hopps if I remember correctly. This IP address does not have a DNS entry when I performed a reverse lookup.

 

[Uzor]

And like Pchan said, if you're compleyely stuck and can't login at all, why not just attempt to reinstall? You have nothing to lose (in-game that is) if you can't even login. Worst part scenarion, you lose no time and the problem persists. Best case scenarion, the problem is solved.

 

[Uzor]

As always Uzor, you say things in print and then try to act like you don't say them or that somehow we misconstrue the meaning.

"Yes, I know. Your ISP will quite naturally tell you its nothing wrong at their end. I do believe I even wrote that myself. You need to ask if there's anything you can do etc."

YOU typed that. By typing that, you're suggesting that people call their isp, who have nothing to do with this problem. And you have the nerve to say "this is why customer service people assume people are morons" in reference to me? Pretty ridiculous thing to say. I've worked customer service too. And if I worked for the post office and someone called me about a UPS package, I'd think they were a moron. Your advice to call your isp provider is bad advice, that was the point I was making.

And no where in my post did I insult you, yet you open strongly with "that's why customer service treat people like morons." Nice way to get your point across. The fact is, you're making light of a serious issue affecting a lot of people and your whole tone is derogatory to all of us like we're stupid. I read every word you said, and responded with reasonable skepticism not unlike several others in this thread. If you can't handle that, that's your problem. But let's not pretend that I insulted you or didn't respond based on things you said yourself. Accept that you have a weak argument at best and try not to resort to suggesting I'm a moron simnply because I disagree with you.

Yes, and what part of what I wrote is insinuating that the problem lies with your ISP? I quite clearly see myself writing "Yes, quite naturally your ISP says there's nothing wrong on their end". If you'd have actually read what I suggested, you'd have seen that I suggested you to call your ISP, as they should be quite knowledgable in networking, and ask if there's anything you can do. Since you're a customer, I'm sur e they'd be happy to provide you with information you can do to fix the problem, even if the problem isn't with them. How is that bad advice?

And the reason I brought customer service up was because of the point that you constantly say I treat you like an idiot. To which I kindly responded that customer service does treat everyone like morons. Having worked in customer service yourself, you should know that you don't know what the customer's knowledge etc. bout the issue is, so you automatically assume they have no knowledge about the issue in question at all.

And I didn't anywhere suggest that you're a moron. If you'd actually read my posts you'd see that yourself.

 

[Uzor]

Dude. Man.

Like *I* said several times there are many, many threads with people running traceroutes on Alla, BG and KI. If that is your concern then no need to worry, people are already doing this.

If your concern is us bitching then kindly leave the thread, you don't have to read it.

If your concern is me trying to help you out, and tell you that you might be fast at jumping to conclusions that its something SE can not fix, then you don't have to read it, either.

 

[Sabia]

And like Pchan said, if you're compleyely stuck and can't login at all, why not just attempt to reinstall? You have nothing to lose (in-game that is) if you can't even login. Worst part scenarion, you lose no time and the problem persists. Best case scenarion, the problem is solved.

Except for the fact that you know...people who have the same problems we're having have reinstalled and it hasn't done jack all to fix the problem. There are 2 very distinct problems people are dealing with after the update. NOT being able to get into FFXI (Timing out or getting 3113 errors) and other being - while in the game R0ing when doing certain actions or trying to leave zones.

This isn't an isolated problem happening to very few people - this is a very distinct problem happening to a whole bunch of people. Why do you assume someone reinstalling the game is going to fix a large problem that many people are dealing with, that only occurred after an update?

Lets use our mad detective skills! Game runs fine before update - people are happy. People install update, game stops working, SE ignores people and doesn't acknowledge theres a problem, people get pissed off because they're A) Not getting help and aren't getting the vibe that SE is even wanting to help and B) are being charged for a service they aren't getting. Now using mad batman detective skills I can assume something with the update is screwing up some peoples connections/games, considering that everything was FINE before hand. Jeeze that was hard to figure out - they should give me a utility belt and a city to defend because it was just so tricky to figure out where something went wrong.

 

[Marajade]

tracert for me showed no timeouts over 4 connect points, even when in a d/c zone while d/cing. I connect just fine. They're not sending the information.

 

[Everlasting]

I see that a news thread has turned into a trouble shooting thread? :biggrin:
well... has anyone try to tcpdump the data using ethereal while you're getting R0 ?

I see packets being dropped (at my end - the client side) from an IP in Japan and the port range is around 33xxx.
These packets can not reach POL thus you get R0

From what I understand SE uses something very similar to Cisco GSS that globally load balance user traffics to their systems that's why people from Japan and most people from Taiwan are not having this issue.

The global load balancer detects where you are coming from and decides what would be the shortest distance to route to.

By resetting your IP address I believe resets the ip stickiness table on the GSS that allows you to login again.. until the next R0

I don't think anyone tcpdump'ed it yet, that idea was shot down on Alla because the FFXI packets are encrypted (not that it matters....).

Your idea about the load balancers is probably right, that's how the few I've worked with would handle it.

Here's what I think someone needs to do:

- Start capturing on tcpdump and start an UDP ping to FFXI server and port.
- Create r0 situation.
- See if incoming FFXI packets are still flowing. If they are but you are getting r0 then it's most likely a FFXI internal problem. If the number of incoming packets becomes lower but does not stop then it would be a congestion problem.
- Watch UDP ping. Does this also go to zero when the problem occurs? If not then the problem is with FFXI and not the network. If the packet loss in the ping increases then it's likely network related.

 

[pchan]

Reinstalling is a big deal, because it takes forever, and it may not even work.

Yes it could take 6H, but it may work.

 

[xKronox]

Why is the this maintence 7 files, but 3 hours long? Are those files 20gigs each or what? ;P

 

[Pasquale]

Yes it could take 6H, but it may work.

That's too much time to throw away for something that may work.

 

[Sharpe]

Except for the fact that you know...people who have the same problems we're having have reinstalled and it hasn't done jack all to fix the problem. There are 2 very distinct problems people are dealing with after the update. NOT being able to get into FFXI (Timing out or getting 3113 errors) and other being - while in the game R0ing when doing certain actions or trying to leave zones.

This isn't an isolated problem happening to very few people - this is a very distinct problem happening to a whole bunch of people. Why do you assume someone reinstalling the game is going to fix a large problem that many people are dealing with, that only occurred after an update?

Lets use our mad detective skills! Game runs fine before update - people are happy. People install update, game stops working, SE ignores people and doesn't acknowledge theres a problem, people get pissed off because they're A) Not getting help and aren't getting the vibe that SE is even wanting to help and B) are being charged for a service they aren't getting. Now using mad batman detective skills I can assume something with the update is screwing up some peoples connections/games, considering that everything was FINE before hand. Jeeze that was hard to figure out - they should give me a utility belt and a city to defend because it was just so tricky to figure out where something went wrong.

Sabia ftw!

 

[Uzor]

tracert for me showed no timeouts over 4 connect points, even when in a d/c zone while d/cing. I connect just fine. They're not sending the information.

Which IP or address did you ping?

And since you connected just fine while you were DC'ing, that means the problem isn't on your end. Although it doesn't really tell you a whole lot since its pinging a certain address and not the server you're currently connecting to.

I don't think anyone tcpdump'ed it yet, that idea was shot down on Alla because the FFXI packets are encrypted (not that it matters....).

Your idea about the load balancers is probably right, that's how the few I've worked with would handle it.

Here's what I think someone needs to do:

- Start capturing on tcpdump and start an UDP ping to FFXI server and port.
- Create r0 situation.
- See if incoming FFXI packets are still flowing. If they are but you are getting r0 then it's most likely a FFXI internal problem. If the number of incoming packets becomes lower but does not stop then it would be a congestion problem.
- Watch UDP ping. Does this also go to zero when the problem occurs? If not then the problem is with FFXI and not the network. If the packet loss in the ping increases then it's likely network related.

Could someone try this after the update, provided the problem is still there? Additionally, if you're a more advanced user you could try using a packet sniffer to see if SE sends any "kill" packets, or if there's any expected packages being lost.

And yes, Sabia. I'm well aware a lot of users have similar problems. But you can't automatically assume the problem lies with SE from that fact alone.

 

[Arctyrael]

Yes, but that doesn't mean its FFXI's fault.

Have any of you actually even ATTEMPTED to perform a tracert, or even talk among eachother to find a common connection between everything?

Or are all of you just sitting on your hands waiting for the problem to be fixed?

Get me the internal IP for the server that handles Northern Sandoria and I will tracert for you - otherwise, it ain't gonna happen. Jesus.

It is impossible to get that IP btw because there is usually a gateway server that directs traffics to an internal network - My packets are getting lost somewhere between that external server, and the corresponding internal server.

 

[Myrid]

Wow, Uzor. You should probably learn something about routing before trying to advise everyone on what to do.