Forged Alliance Forever

Re: Lobby fails to load

2014-10-12T17:45:22+02:00

Hello all,

so i have the same issue as many of you and i'm wondering if there is any solution somewhere? I haven't been playing for about a month now and is loosing hope.

To recap the issue:
FAF opens fine, everything connects, goes to "games tab" which is empty, can't even create a game, waits a couple of minuts get "Connection Lost to Lobby"

http://pastebin.com/ETCw7H5f

(since it's not game related i don't think the game.log is applicable. But hey, what do i know:
http://pastebin.com/XbpsVvqQ
)

The tracert connects fine - no time-outs.

As i understand it this has nothing to do with portforwarding but since i'm not that kind of engineer i thought might as well try it. UPnP with ports forward disabled, enable ports, change ports and everything else that's mentioned in the "Connection Issue"-wikipage - should be noted that it never acted up like this before and nothing has changed from my side.

Now i'm all out of options and is sincerely considering getting a life.

please help!

(and btw, why was my FAF Forum account deleted? I needed to re-create it- same email, same account Name)

Statistics: Posted by DamienSlayer — 12 Oct 2014, 17:45

Re: Lobby fails to load

2014-08-13T21:57:32+02:00

Shade25 wrote:
From the behavior of the issue, the wide amount of people/isp's/equipment/locations involved, and that mainly occurs during certain times of day and clears up after that, it seems to be a load issue.

It has been said it isn't serverside because it isn't affecting everyone, but an overloaded server would not affect everyone, a portion of the userbase would still be business as usual, while those that are in the buffer of requests that are over the amount that can be handled in a timely manner would be having the issue.

I also tested those two links from a different isp connection and computer with similar results, at certain times of day (original post was from my home windows desktop on a cable Midcontinent connection, also tried it from here on a Goldenwest DSL connection on my linux laptop)

Just my two cents anyhow, also in just trying to login to the forum to post my thoughts I got this from the server:
Service Temporarily Unavailable

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.

Apache/2.2.22 (Ubuntu) Server at w w w . f a f o r e v e r . c o m Port 80

Edit: Inner grammar nazi noticed a few mistakes.

This seems to make sense. I can confirm that in the daylight hours, I can never get the FAF mod list/game list/anything else aside from the chat to work at all.

Alongside that, I'm starting to experience what could be described as soul-crushing lag whenever I try to connect to anything on the http://www.faforever.com site. Had to wait about 10 minutes until Chrome finally connected and loaded the main site.

Half an hour later, I managed to type this post. Here's hoping I don't lose connection again when I post it. Nonetheless, I'll come back here in ~ 12 hours (1 AM or so) and check to see if the connection's fine. If it is, a server overload would seem to be the cause of this issue.

Also, just for the sake of fitting this all in one post, after recently wiping this PC, the download speed for the FAF lobby is literally a couple kilobits per second. Assuming this is finished within the next week, I'll be able to test the mod list/server connection/statistics server alongside an MTR test. Maybe it'll work in the middle of the night, as it usually seems to.

Statistics: Posted by Badstormer — 13 Aug 2014, 21:57

Re: Lobby fails to load

2014-08-06T19:43:18+02:00

From the behavior of the issue, the wide amount of people/isp's/equipment/locations involved, and that mainly occurs during certain times of day and clears up after that, it seems to be a load issue.

It has been said it isn't serverside because it isn't affecting everyone, but an overloaded server would not affect everyone, a portion of the userbase would still be business as usual, while those that are in the buffer of requests that are over the amount that can be handled in a timely manner would be having the issue.

I also tested those two links from a different isp connection and computer with similar results, at certain times of day (original post was from my home windows desktop on a cable Midcontinent connection, also tried it from here on a Goldenwest DSL connection on my linux laptop)

Just my two cents anyhow, also in just trying to login to the forum to post my thoughts I got this from the server:
Service Temporarily Unavailable

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.

Apache/2.2.22 (Ubuntu) Server at w w w . f a f o r e v e r . c o m Port 80

Statistics: Posted by Shade25 — 06 Aug 2014, 19:43

Re: Lobby fails to load

2014-08-06T03:28:52+02:00

This is starting to get mildly infuriating.

The amount of people that are suddenly having this problem seems to be rather odd. If this happens to quite a lot of us at once, even with different modems, ISPs, etc, surely there's something more than an ISP/packet loss issue?

Now, for example, if I were to have packets end up being lost while connecting to FAF, surely I'd see some other issues. I frequently use far more bandwidth-intensive programs than FAF. But seeing as this issue happens with FAF and ONLY FAF, I get the feeling that something else is causing this.

I've done everything that can be done to remedy packet-loss issues. Nothing has worked. (Though, oddly enough, at night, it seems to work perfectly. Anything past 8 AM, no luck.)

I've gone as far as to try separate routers, a separate modem, and tried to solve this packet loss issue with the one server that ended up dropping it (I insisted that they had something wrong, they insisted that nothing was wrong.)

Statistics: Posted by Badstormer — 06 Aug 2014, 03:28

Re: Lobby fails to load

2014-08-05T07:28:47+02:00

Just wanted to say I too am having problems with the lobby of the sorts described. *Edit: misworded*

I just downloaded FAF today to see how it is after playing FA itself for a while on it's own.

The Lobby shows the intermittent behavior where it will sometimes display everything fine, sometimes it won't have parts of the lobby filled in.

Also when trying to 'host' a game (this example being a coop mission) it downloaded some of the FAF files, but now it is just stuck trying to get some of them, it will progress up to a random percent (3-50ish typically) before it will stall and not move anymore even if waiting for an extended amount of time, if I hit close it will ask if I want to close it or try to relaunch it, at which point the client says the file was not sent correctly and try again later.

I did non-internet troubleshooting such as uninstalling and reinstalling Supreme Commander, FA and FAF (and doing the clear cache, settings and game files options from the lobby), installing supreme commander/fa/faf in alternate locations (on another drive then C), clean graphics card driver update with removing from safe mode and updating, and more just to be thorough.

I have done the same connection troubleshooting others have (and some others as I figured it might be a connection issue before finding this thread), checked all firewalls (Windows, Router and Antivirus which does not have one), tried alternate DNS (googles and others including doing a /flushdns and /registerdns after each check), netsh'ed and restarted, bypassed my router (was wired to it, not wireless, my cable modem is bridged to give a direct wan ip, no firewalls etc..), and so on. My ISP is Midcontinent which I have never had a problem with or issues contacting any other server regardless of country.

The download from the lobby includes the http link to the file it's trying to download, I've tried to download the file directly in the browser with similar intermittent results (either not starting, or getting some percentage of the file then the transfer stopping), the following two are examples of ones I've been trying to get for awhile now:
h t t p : / / d i r e c t . f a f o r e v e r . c o m / f a f / u p d a t e r N e w / u p d a t e s _ f a f _ f i l e s / u n i t s _ 0 . 3 6 3 3 . n x t
h t t p : / / d i r e c t . f a f o r e v e r . c o m / f a f / u p d a t e r N e w/ u p da t e s _ c o o p _ f i l e s / l o b b y _ c o o p _ v 3 8 . c o p

Statistics: Posted by Shade25 — 05 Aug 2014, 07:28

Re: Lobby fails to load

2014-08-05T04:18:02+02:00

Update:

MTR to d i r e c t . f a f o r e v e r . c o m now shows 0% packet failure.

And, not surprisingly, the FA Forever lobby/client is now working.

If it fails again I'll send more info.

Statistics: Posted by visionik — 05 Aug 2014, 04:18

Re: Lobby fails to load

2014-08-05T03:50:08+02:00

the server might also limit icmp responses. (but it probably does not)
cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/icmp_rate{limit,mask}
furthermore the udp packets that are supposed to trigger the icmp message from
the faforever.com server may be lost in transit and thus never reach the server.
if you can produce a traceroute, where the penultimate hop has very little packet
loss and the last hop has high packet loss, that would indicate that the last hop
is malfunctioning (if indeed it does not legitemately ratelimit icmp packets).

i have never seen what you describe. if the server was misbehaving it would happen to all users.
if it happens next time, measure ping response from the server.
this is what i see at 2am UTC:

$ ping -c 100 -i 0.2 faforever.com
--- faforever.com ping statistics ---
100 packets transmitted, 100 received, 0% packet loss, time 19880ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 61.683/63.878/67.626/1.183 ms

Statistics: Posted by rootbeer23 — 05 Aug 2014, 03:50

Re: Lobby fails to load

2014-08-05T02:53:53+02:00

Ze_PilOt:

TL;DR -- you seem to have a ~ 10% packet loss on *your* server, and your server specifically. Not in the internet; on your server.
We can't do anything about this. Only you can.

Details:

First, it's important to understand how MTR works. MTR uses ICMP packets to check IP addresses and routes. These are not normal packets, they are packets used specifically for IP diagnostic and control purposes. Some (especially large backbone) routers rate limit ICMP packets once they get above a certain threshold. This does not mean that the router is dropping regular packets.

Google "diagnosing network issues with mtr" for full details, but the important paragraph is this one:

"When analyzing MTR output, you are looking for two things: loss and latency. First, let’s talk about loss. If you see a percentage of loss at any particular hop, that may be an indication that there is a problem with that particular router. However, it is common practice among some service providers to rate limit the ICMP traffic that MTR uses. This can give the illusion of packet loss when there is in fact no loss. To determine if the loss you’re seeing is real or due to rate limiting, take a look at the subsequent hop. If that hop shows a loss of 0.0%, then you can be pretty sure that you’re seeing ICMP rate limiting and not actual loss."

I just did a 100 packet MTR test to three servers:

91.121.153.175 (d i r e c t . f a f o r e v e r . c o m) - This shows a 10% packet loss to the end server - your server. The % loss for the servers before yours do not matter due to IMCP rate limiting, as explained above. However, the 10% packet loss to your server specifically does appear to be "the problem".

91.121.153.176 (your "IP Address Neighbor")- show 0% packet loss to the end server.

91.121.153.174 (your "IP Address Neighbor")- show 0% packet loss to the end server.

I have screen shots that clearly show all this, but i can't post them here because it says any external links are "too spammy".

Statistics: Posted by visionik — 05 Aug 2014, 02:53

Client problems

2014-08-04T23:19:20+02:00

Hello

Suddenly today I am having the same problem reported here by FALeader and others. I have been playing FAF for over a year with no problems at all.

1. Client takes a long time to start/login

2. List of players loads slowly

3. Coop missions and find games don't load properly - I see only a few games and can't host any. On the left panel their is no option to host.

4. Client will sometimes report it has lost TCP connection

5. Client will sometimes just freeze for a while.

This was all after downloading the big patches today.

I have:

a) rebooted router/firewall,
b) confirmed all router/firewall settings,
c) uninstalled and re-installed FAF,
d) switched internet providers (I have both cable modem and DSL from two different vendors) and have the same problem on both providers
e) Done a ping/traceroute to d i r e c t . f a f o r e v e r . c o m - no problems there

I know in the other thread this was brushed aside as an "ISP" problem but I'm rather certain there is something more going on. Seems like an unusually high number of people are suddenly having the same issue.

Attached is my faforever.log

Also, the first time I tried to upload the faforever.log file to this forum I received the following error:

Service Temporarily Unavailable

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.

Apache/2.2.22 (Ubuntu) Server at ____ Port 80

I had to replace the name of this server with ____ because the forum otherwise said "your post looks too spamy for a new user, please remove off-site URLs.

Statistics: Posted by visionik — 04 Aug 2014, 23:19

Re: Lobby fails to load

2014-08-03T10:25:12+02:00

It's caused by dropped packets, I can't do anything.

Statistics: Posted by Ze_PilOt — 03 Aug 2014, 10:25

Re: Lobby fails to load

2014-08-03T07:35:18+02:00

Zep - Would you please take a step back and try to approach this problem from another angle?

There are so many of us having problems, its so sporatic, and I never have any other internet problems. IE my lobby fails to load but I can still play other games online.

Also sometimes the lobby loads but I get a TCP error.

Other times the lobby loads but the custom games list does not.

Thanks so much for your help! It's so upsetting :'(

Statistics: Posted by Archist — 03 Aug 2014, 07:35

Re: Lobby fails to load

2014-08-01T18:11:29+02:00

that doesnt prove its a layer 3 problem.

Statistics: Posted by rootbeer23 — 01 Aug 2014, 18:11

Re: Lobby fails to load

2014-08-01T17:24:53+02:00

The proof is that the lobby fails to receive some basic informations like the game list.

Statistics: Posted by Ze_PilOt — 01 Aug 2014, 17:24

Re: Lobby fails to load

2014-08-01T17:03:09+02:00

Ze_PilOt wrote:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8242&start=30#p77858

It clearly shows that out of 10 packets sent, only 8 are received on his hand.

8 packets sent 12% loss.
either one packet lost or ctrl+c before it was received. small sample size doesn't prove anything.

Statistics: Posted by rootbeer23 — 01 Aug 2014, 17:03

Re: Lobby fails to load

2014-08-01T07:50:12+02:00

rootbeer23 wrote:
the logs only show that some routers dont send icmp messages.
that doesnt mean they fail to route packets.

http://www.tek-tips.com/faqs.cfm?fid=381

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8242&start=30#p77858

It clearly shows that out of 10 packets sent, only 8 are received on his hand.

Statistics: Posted by Ze_PilOt — 01 Aug 2014, 07:50