Lost Connection after a certain time.

[bill_3810]

We are able to connect but after a random period, sometimes 5 minutes, sometimes 30 minutes, sometimes 15 minutes but ALWAYS after a certain period has passed we get connection lost.

On another note, when connecting using a VPN we cannot connect at all, which is odd because usually when you have connection problems a VPN takes care of it.

21112 & 22222 ports are forwarded just fine.

Firewall turned off during test and also an exception was made through the firewall as well.

Running latest release, downloaded & installed April 20, 2020.

Running Real Traffic and it doesn't matter which Airport.

I remember this happening when I first bought this product years ago and probably the main reason I stopped using it.

Any suggestions?

Help from other members would be nice but lets' hear from the developer.

 

William

[blacklabelbraai]

Hi William

2 hours ago, bill_3810 said:

Help from other members would be nice but lets' hear from the developer.

I know I'm just a member but as a networking engineer, I find your issue interesting and I have a theory which I'd like you to disprove 🙂

Assuming you both know each others public IP address, I'd like to see whether you get disconnected if you do this while playing MP:
Open a command prompt, type in ping -t 12.34.56.78 where 12.34.56.78 is your friend's public IP address. The -t flag in the ping command will continue pinging until you press CTRL-C. Let him do the same, using your IP address.

Keep the ping running continually until you have completed.

EDIT 2: It would be even better if you both had at least 2 monitors, so that the command prompt window could stay open on one of them...let me know if you getting kicked off coincides with either of your pings failing.

Of course, first prize would be that you don't get kicked off at all.

Regards
BLB (Peter)

[bill_3810]

Thanks for the assistance, I will do this test.  I'm curious if it isn't just my location.  I work in the middle east and although I have a stable connection with descent pings to the USA and Europe i'm sure there are some things going into the USA and Coming out of the middle east that might be causing some issues.  A lot of IP blocking going on here due to some restrictions etc... that the game might not handle as well as other games do. 

I can connect and play other games for hours and hours on end with no issues due to possibly more advanced MP code who knows.  I know if I do speed tests in the USA my up speed is chopped from 20M to 2-4 M and pings are in the 250 ms range.  However if I connect through a VPN say in France and do the same speed test to the same location in the USA, the pings are in the 195 range with up speeds of 20M which is my limit.  So it sounds like the the routing of the connection when going direction from the middle east to the USA is a bit funky.  Route to the USA via Europe and pings are improved as well as up speeds.

I will do the test and take any suggestions otherwise I can put it back on the shelf until I get back to the USA permanently.

[bill_3810]

Tried this with another user and he was able to ping me but when I tried pinging him it timed out and we could not connect so i'm guessing a firewall issue or something on his end.  Will try again soon.

[bill_3810]

17 hours ago, blacklabelbraai said:

Hi William

I know I'm just a member but as a networking engineer, I find your issue interesting and I have a theory which I'd like you to disprove 🙂

Assuming you both know each others public IP address, I'd like to see whether you get disconnected if you do this while playing MP:
Open a command prompt, type in ping -t 12.34.56.78 where 12.34.56.78 is your friend's public IP address. The -t flag in the ping command will continue pinging until you press CTRL-C. Let him do the same, using your IP address.

Keep the ping running continually until you have completed.

EDIT 2: It would be even better if you both had at least 2 monitors, so that the command prompt window could stay open on one of them...let me know if you getting kicked off coincides with either of your pings failing.

Of course, first prize would be that you don't get kicked off at all.

Regards
BLB (Peter)

Ok Peter we ran your test. We played I think 45 minutes and on my End the ping times were pretty solid at 243 ms and roughly the same on the other participants computer.

When we lost our connection the ping showed Request timed out. and the last ping received was 243 ms so no change in time.

However once I closed the game the pings started returning but now the went to 245 - 290ms consistently until we killed the ping.

 

So it appears the connection is blocked at some point and pings won't return until the game is closed.

Does this make sense?

 

Also as a side note I switched to my VPN and although we were able to ping each other through the VPN the game will not connect when using a VPN, this makes absolutely no sense.

[blacklabelbraai]

Okay so my theory was disproved 🙂

How do you get Internet access where you are currently living?

Try the game again please, except this time instead of running a ping, download and install WinMTR from SourceForge:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/winmtr/

It's very straightforward to use and the beauty of this tool is that it will allow you to see, when you lose connection, where the traceroute dies.

Do that when you are running the next game...and report back the IP address where it dies.

(MTR = My TraceRoute)

Edited April 26, 2020 by blacklabelbraai
Added request to install WinMTR

[bill_3810]

My internet is through STC in Riyadh Saudi Arabia (been here 8 years).

Fiber to the Router on my desk (router connected to PC via CAT 5)

Really a descent connection to be honest, the only game that has issues is Tower 3D.

Will do a test right now and report back.

[bill_3810]

Ok here is the data.

HTML is other user:

TXT is mine.

Telia.net is where we see most loss and disconnect.

 

 

 

[blacklabelbraai]

Thanks for doing this for me. Please give me some time to analyze.

[blacklabelbraai]

Okay...well a few things...although I'm appalled at your ping times. I would have expected +-150 ms - not over 240 ms

1. Hop #2 ( 95.218.160.1) is your ISP

2. You appear to be getting NAT'ed from there on until you reach hop #11

3. All the hostnames from hop #6-18 do not resolve to IP addresses, which is odd. (security by obfuscation or extremely strict Access Control Lists?)

4. Hop #8 (prs-bb4-link.telia.net) is extremely odd. This is where I suspect things went awry.

5. Hop #11 (192.205.33.25) is where you are handed off from telia.net (Swedish Telecoms company), to AT&T and you use them all the way to your destination IP address in California.

In conclusion, I'm somewhat baffled by what I mentioned in points 2, 3 & 4 above.

The root cause of your troubles with Tower!3DPro could be due to the way Feel There implements their multiplayer code.

Something along that route (inside telia.net) is breaking their method of implementing multiplayer (which I suspect is some form of openVPN), and your friends traceroute tends to bear that out.

Thank you for indulging me, and I'm sorry we weren't able to solve it.
 

[bill_3810]

Thank you sir for taking the time to help out.

Concerning the Ping times, I would guess an unnamed 3 letter agency probably has a bit to do with that, especially coming from the middle east.

If I go through France via a VPN and then to the USA I can reduce pings to the 190 ms range, so something is slowing things down, especially coming from Saudi Arabia.

Anyhow I appreciate your time and I can see it's simply my location combined with MP code.

I'm hearing there is work on a new version, maybe some improved MP code is in order as well.

Thank you very much.