Are you getting connection timeouts?

[goate]

One person on IRC/discord mentioned that he/she started getting connection timeouts after the switch to EE.  I would like for anyone who is experiencing frequent connection timeouts to post here.  Please answer the following questions:

• Roughly how frequent are the timeouts?
  
• What country/timezone are you in?
  
• Is there anything in common between the timeouts?  For example, does it only happen with the server has 30+ people?  Does it only happen during a certain time of the day?  Is it only happening in a certain in-game area?  Maybe only when a certain amount of people are in that area?
  

Cheers,
gracken

[zDark Shadowz]

Timeouts can also happen if your upload/download bandwidth is flooded with other programs using it as well, so check the Resource Monitor to see if something else on your computer is using up your bandwidth, or maybe someone else on your network is doing stuff too.

Could also be Steam downloading updates for games, since that might be left running in the background.

[Pandip]

I'm timing out of the server once every couple of hours, if not more often. Has anyone found a solution or a fix for this? It's especially annoying with an enchanted weapon mid-quest.

[TsunamiWombat]

I'm timing out of the server once every couple of hours, if not more often. Has anyone found a solution or a fix for this? It's especially annoying with an enchanted weapon mid-quest.

Experiencing the same, no obvious cause

[goate]

Thanks guys, I'll get with you for some troubleshooting.  Anyone having frequent timeouts, please continue to post here.

[scribdce]

Roughly how frequent are the timeouts?
-I'm timing out of the server once every couple of hours, if not more often.

What country/timezone are you in?
-USA/CST

Is there anything in common between the timeouts?
-In my observation, it seems to be when somebody interacts or uses an item. I've been totally alone out in the wilderness and timed out while going through my UI, leveling or using an item.

[goate]

NOTICE: This post is more to keep me informed than to help the folks having these issues, but it may provide some clues to everyone involved.

[hide=case1]I watched the client connection of one person who is having this timeout issue.  Their client was connecting to the nwn.efupw.com:5121 server from UDP port 1024.    At time N their client started sending packets from UDP port 5120 instead of UDP port 1024.   Changing source ports mid-session should never happen and will easily cause a server socket to disassociate the client's data from the client.    For the next 58 seconds the client and server sent packets at each other - the server continued to send packets at UDP port 1024, and the client continued to send packets from UDP port 5120.   At time N + 58s the client sent a final packet (again, UDP source port 5120) to the server.   This is probably the point at which the client gave up on having  a conversation with the server.

At time N + 284s (about four to five minutes after the port change) the client reconnected to join the game again.  This is the time at which the timeout was reported.

This issue might be caused by the home router.  NAT (which all home routers use to share an internet connection among a household) changes source IP addresses. and can also (rarely) play change ports.   This could also conceivably be caused by the client machine jumping between two routers, connecting to one wireless router and then connecting to another.[/hide]

[zDark Shadowz]

Are they running third party software that tries to change ports or reroute to different servers to 'increase speed'? Things like pingzapper might interfere.

If they're running off mobile data, the tendency for switching networks would do it as well.

Just throwing out ideas for possible causes.

[goate]

NOTICE: This post is more to keep me informed than to help the folks having these issues, but it may provide some clues to everyone involved.

[hide=case2]This case is the exact opposite of case1.  The client in case2 was connecting to the nwn.efupw.com:5121 server from UDP port 5120.    At time N (frame 9857) their client started sending packets from UDP port 1024 instead of UDP port 5120.   For the next 58 seconds the client and server sent packets at each other - the server continued to send packets at UDP port 5020, and the client continued to send packets from UDP port 1024.   At time N + 58s (frame 10085) the client sent a final packet (again, UDP source port 1024) to the server.   This is probably the point at which the client gave up on having  a conversation with the server.

At time N + 92s (frame 10085, ~1.5 minutes after the port change) the client reconnected to join the game again.  The new conversation was from UDP port 1024 (client) to nwn.efupw.com:5121.

The fact that it's the exact same two source ports involved (UDP 1024 and UDP 5120) makes me wonder if this isn't a bug in the NWN EE client.[/hide]

[Kotenku]

gracken,

do you have a case of what a healthy connection pattern looks like for comparison?