Connection problems? Here's some solutions

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  • IronHorseIronHorse Developer, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributor Join Date: 2010-05-08 Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
    @robby

    YUP. This is 4G gaming alright.. i know it well i've been primarily using my phone to play NS2 with for the past 4 months.
    Nothing we can do about it, really, gaming on 4G isn't entirely expected and is amazing that it works at all, given latency potential.

    I guarantee you, if you monitor your modem in real time during a 30 minute download you'll see the same behavior on a graph.
    Gaming is possible on 4G only due to it's lowered latency times compared to 3G - which would've been fine to game from too, mostly, except for the high latency of traveling 23,000 miles into space and then back again... a physical limitation, as you can see.
    And so while its possible, its still not ideal conditions, factors like distance from the cell tower, interference from walls and objects, weather and other fun factors will keep it from being "ideal" . (NOT TO MENTION FREAKIN DATA PLANS, UGH)
  • RobbyRobby Sweden Join Date: 2012-09-16 Member: 159687Members
    edited April 2013
    While i appreciate the sharing of information on the subject, which may be of use to those who know nothing of it, you're wrong in this case. This is meant without any offense whatsoever, but you seem to be in need of reading up on 4G yourself as you make the typical mistake of comparing 3G to 4G. Something that people who know very little about either often do.

    1. I live in Sweden. If you're unaware, we were first in the world with 4G and have since had the best network coverage and capacity of any nation, by far. 4G is actually better here than many other alternatives, as fast as it's expanded and upgraded. Extremely low latency and jitter and zero data-loss in 80 Mbit/s down and 40 Mbit/s up with unlimited bandwidth. For the lowest fares in the world too, i might add.

    2. I live very close to a high-performance station with barely anything in between. Yet another upgrade is planned here in the next three months.

    3. And most importantly, i've been playing many games including NS2 without any lags whatsoever for over a year. The problems i mentioned are recent ones that only occur in NS2 and in other games where the developers are aware of that it's server-side issues.

    Whether these lags are on my side or not, it has nothing to do with the type of connection.

    With that said, do you believe that UWE will have any further interest in investigating the report? I guarantee you that you're wrong with your assumption. It's somewhat worrisome that the creator of this topic, who seemingly is in close relation with UWE, immediately blame these suddenly appearing and pretty extreme problems on the connection type just because it's standard to do so.

    Believe me; these issues are completely new for me. By no means do i expect them to be able to fix these problems for me specifically. I only wanted to add to the growing pile of data that may be of use to them. It won't be of much use though if the data is shunned simply because it was logged over a 4G connection.
  • IronHorseIronHorse Developer, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributor Join Date: 2010-05-08 Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
    edited April 2013
    @robby : Ah. I was only speaking of U.S. 4G, where the average speed (with perfect reception) is ~9.5 Mbps with much higher latency and jitter.
    Yes i am aware what throughput 4G is still capable of in theory. Also i was comparing 3G to 4G because i didn't know who i was dealing with, i obviously know the differences in tech.
    Where i live, i only get 1 bar (Signal strength ~ -92 dBm) and have much worse experiences with 4G and gaming.

    I do disagree with ruling out your connection as the issue still.
    Given the statistical success of those without your specific connection issue using more "typical" network setups, I'd obviously point out that huge difference would be a good place to start from at the very least when troubleshooting. Disregarding or skipping certain steps when troubleshooting/eliminating factors, kind of defeats the purpose of troubleshooting.
    The fact that it was operating for X amount of time without issue lessens the likelihood but is not concrete evidence - networks dealing with satellite reception have huge variance and constant infrastructure changes.

    So it really shouldn't worry you or make you think of words like "shun" when i follow the proper steps... i always start from "Did you try the ON button?" because eliminating factors in order is the correct method of troubleshooting, despite expertise and experience - its a basic practice and worth doing it even if you know for a fact its not the culprit.

    If i assumed the game was the culprit for every tech support case, i don't think much could get accomplished considering by my tally in the past year or so, roughly 80% of all requests for troubleshooting result in the culprit being on the user's end. (despite their claims every single time) When I've reached the wall with troubleshooting things on their side then I gather info and submit it to the devs. I volunteer my time with this, btw.


    BUT since you seem more adept than average on technical side of things, how about some wireshark logs and modem information since all those logs you pasted were nothing useful really.
    Since this is so reproduce-able for you, you shouldn't have any trouble gathering logs of the problem occurring, as well as not occurring and still able to keep the log file size down.
    Also a comparison log downloading a file for 15 minutes since you have unlimited bandwidth, you lucky duck.



  • RobbyRobby Sweden Join Date: 2012-09-16 Member: 159687Members
    I had a feeling you didn't live here. I didn't intend to use the lecture of 4G in Sweden as a mean of reprimanding, rather than to actually inform others of something that a lot of people who usually accuse 4G as the culprit of any connection-problem usually are unaware of; the very different state of this technology in ol' Swedoreno. It's nothing personal; just assumptions, which we both seem prone to, for one reason or another! ;)

    I didn't rule out my connection as the potential culprit; just the type of connection, being 4G. As i just explained, i intended to use the lecture of Swedish 4G as means of once and for all (in this topic at least ;) ) rule out instant accusations against the technology of 4G, which i felt were coming, as they always do. I would lie if i said i wasn't tired of it.

    Anyhow, i could bring you all the logs in the world, but how would that help UWE improve the net-stability of NS2? I assumed that the data that people are collecting here would be used for something more... collective, rather than for customer support by humble philanthropists. That in itself is of course helpful for many of us, i'm sure. But how will this help UWE actually find possible flaws in NS2? Was more than that not the intention of this data-collection? As Max is the person who asked for this data, and thus presumably is the person who will actually examine it in a technical way, i guess it's unfair to assume that you would know of this anyway. I wouldn't be offended if you didn't reply to this, as it isn't really getting neither of us anywhere and i bet you have better things to do. You're clearly acting as a necessary support rep for these incidents, which indeed is appreciated. But as an avid NS2 fan one would naturally be interested in knowing if these logs are going to be used for anything else. Something that could actually help both UWE and people with my current problems, when it can be determined with certainty that this problem is so many times worse in NS2 than in any other game that it wouldn't be unfair to assume that it's something in NS2 that is making this happen.

    I'm not ruling out any other form of issue, though. Could be unknown, unintended incompatibilities with modems, routers or firewalls that occurred after a recent build. My modem by the way being D-Link's DWR-923. The reason why i'm bothering is because i'm as interested as anyone in keeping NS2 as good as it could possibly be. As a competitive gamer who recently posted a presentation about myself in the Competitive Play board i obviously also would like to be able to actually play the game. I've been contacted by several teams who i was very grateful to receive replies from and was very excited to start playing with who have had to listen to my lame excuses of lag-issues all of a sudden, so i am a bit peeved about all this right now. I was so looking forward to getting back in the saddle.
  • IronHorseIronHorse Developer, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributor Join Date: 2010-05-08 Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
    edited April 2013
    @robby :
    Spoke to devs about what your logs could mean and they said "basically some message is coming in that is taking a long time to process, it's probably executing LUA code that is taking a long time, and doesn't have anything to do with the actual networking"

    SO.. looks like its time for the good ol' profiler screenshots! ;)
    And maybe even a p_logall if that doesnt result in anything..
    Also try net_messages in the console just in case.

    *edit*:
    Make a new thread in here as this is no longer related to networking and requires more thorough diagnosing.
  • RobbyRobby Sweden Join Date: 2012-09-16 Member: 159687Members
    Thanks.

    The lags i experience show no reading in the profiler bars, so i want to write one last post in this topic just in case.

    p_logall causes the game to crash with an error message whenever i join a server:

    Felet uppstod i programmet med namn: ns2.exe, version 0.0.0.0, tidsstämpel 0x517f1997
    Felet uppstod i modulen med namn: d3dx9_42.dll, version 9.27.952.3001, tidsstämpel 0x4a6d13bb
    Undantagskod: 0xc0000005
    Felförskjutning: 0x000ed40f
    Process-ID: 0x161c
    Programmets starttid: 0x01ce45992b9084e0
    Sökväg till program: A:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Natural Selection 2\ns2.exe
    Sökväg till modul: A:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Natural Selection 2\d3dx9_42.dll
    Rapport-ID: 8f4fed30-b18c-11e2-ab7c-60a44c579fa7

    That's the information from the Windows error logs, so it's in Swedish. I can get you a screenshot of the actual error message window too if requested.

    The net_messages seemingly does nothing. What am i supposed to do after it's activated?
  • IronHorseIronHorse Developer, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributor Join Date: 2010-05-08 Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
    @robby start a new thread, and try running p_logall after you're already in game.
  • intrikintrik Join Date: 2003-10-05 Member: 21451Members
    intrik said:
    I actually haven't, mainly because it's a bit of a pain in the ass, but you're right it is a good diagnostic step.

    My configuration is:

    - ADSL2 Modem > PPPoE Passthrough to Firewall WAN port
    - Firewall does authentication using PPPoE with 1492 MTU (1500MTU is too much and packets needs to be fragmented).
    - Switch connects to Firewall to core switch
    - Core switch connects to office switch
    - Computer connects to office switch.

    The funny thing is other games work fine? I'll post up the log file later.
    It's worthwhile mentioning that in a recent release of NS2 (a few months ago), that everything is perfectly fine now. Either it was fixed in an update, or it was another issue with ISP that went away.
  • homonculushomonculus Join Date: 2013-06-09 Member: 185525Members
    Net log: http://pastebin.com/3E2Eg9EL
    DX: http://pastebin.com/NhLcx4K4

    Ping spikes after 30 sec to 2 min, from 35-37 to 300+ and finally (after 1-2 min) it spikes at 999, unplayable. Yeah w/e.

    Running wireless through a Belkin N300 router - problems started when I installed it, ran on a DIR-300 before with /g-specs and never had any problems.
  • GeekGeek Colorado Join Date: 2002-12-01 Member: 10346Members, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow
    I have been having problems for a long time with mods not downloading automatically, I worked around that by subscribing to mods as I found they would not download, but I had a problem with them updating so I tried just deleting my mods folder and unsubscribing from every mod to see if it was fixed, it would worked maybe once and now I just get Error 16 for everything it tries to download.
    In my mods menu it does show a few mods that I am not subscribed to.
    Error: Couldn't download mod 'NS2Stats' (error code: 16)
    Error: Attempting to redownload mod 'NS2Stats' after timeout
    Here is a log
    http://pastebin.com/r2THJ7AZ
    Thanks for any help!
  • IronHorseIronHorse Developer, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributor Join Date: 2010-05-08 Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
    @geek error code 16 is Your client unable to download from Steam's workshop servers..
    A workaround is to change your steam's download server.
    Steam > Settings > Download > download server region
  • philmanphilman Join Date: 2013-07-16 Member: 186159Members
    My problem sounds easy: when i try to join a server it always says timeout...i looked inside the console and it told me: Error: gamestrings/frFR.txt:667: Expected'='
    so i did what you told me(hope it will work:)
    heres my log-link:
    http://pastebin.com/4QjTVvX5
    im not using a wireless connection:/
    pls help me:)
  • IronHorseIronHorse Developer, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributor Join Date: 2010-05-08 Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
    @philman that's flooding of your modem /router.

    Lower the value in steam > settings > downloads > steam server browser refresh rate
    To something like 250.
    The issue is pop populating the server browser and then directly joining one is too much pinging for your router..
    A guaranteed around is to type retry in the console after connecting fails
  • rdmrdm Join Date: 2013-07-28 Member: 186431Members
    I can't connect to any Server. It always times out.

    Here is the log: http://pastebin.com/XLwBrnTW
  • TornadoATPTornadoATP Join Date: 2013-08-17 Member: 186937Members
    http://pastebin.com/embed_js.php?i=yJRpsCdu
    http://www.mediafire.com/download/j9jwj409zs33g1b/tech_support.zip

    I've been having some connection problems. They usually involve me having a huge ping and a huge amount of lag (I can confirm that it isn't FPS) and also the fact that servers don't show up sometimes (though it's probably the setting that I have). Unfortunately I'm not able to "Experience the problem" with ping but that pastebin is for the no servers bug.
  • ConfusedConfused Wait. What? Join Date: 2003-01-28 Member: 12904Members, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester
    What does you net_stats look like?

    If you are having a high ping/choke, it is generally something with your connection. You should slots then be able to see the server tick rate as well. If that drops is server side lag.

  • TornadoATPTornadoATP Join Date: 2013-08-17 Member: 186937Members
    I can't really tell. There is no choke for me but the ping is high and the server tick rate hovers around 30.
    Also possibly odd, 0 messages are sent but 10 are received. It seems to be lag because when I move forward it suddenly moves the camera backwards.
  • ConfusedConfused Wait. What? Join Date: 2003-01-28 Member: 12904Members, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester
    ahh, if you are sending zero packets this is how it is going down

    You are at position (0,0,0), You push forward, Your client starts to move you forward until you get to (1,0,0), You don't tell the server anything, The server( who wears the pants in the relationship) sends you a note that says you are at (0,0,0) because as far as it know you haven't moved, the client moves you back to (0,0,0). Eventually, the note sent about being at (1,0,0) gets sent out, the server gets it and tells you you are at (1,0,0)

    What this looks like is you move forward, snap back, and then move normally when you are sending packets

    What we need to figure out is why you are sending 0 packets. This is very likely something outside ns2, since ns2 really really wants to send packets. Check firewalls, network settings, antivirus software, anything that you can think of that might be eating network packets. network card drivers.


  • TornadoATPTornadoATP Join Date: 2013-08-17 Member: 186937Members
    edited August 2013
    Could it be possible that a Graphics card be doing this (ASUS GTX660)? Could a Virus do this? What kind of high latency would this be called? Meanwhile I'll check through the settings.
  • fxckingartofxckingarto Join Date: 2012-12-03 Member: 174089Members
    edited August 2013
    Netlog: http://pastebin.com/9UAJDEYS
    DXdiag: http://pastebin.com/4rPS41sE

    whenever I play on a server that has Biodome I get the red plug-in symbol and then get disconnected from the server
  • asmallpandaasmallpanda Join Date: 2013-09-01 Member: 187582Members
    Red-plug when playing online. Unable to play as the red plug never leaves.

    I've attempted changing my wireless channel, but i'm the only one in my area on this channel and it is both fast and responsive. Information requested as follows:

    Date: 09/02/13
    Time: 15:47:01:
    Build 254
    Windows 7 64-bit (build 7601)
    Steam initialized
    Num displays: 1
    Direct3D 9 initialized: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M (9.18.13.2049)
    Sound Device: Realtek HDMI Output (Realtek High Definition Audio) stereo
    Record Device: Microphone (Realtek High Definition Audio)
    PhysX: Using GPU dispatcher
    Loading config://ConsoleBindings.json
    Loading config://FavoriteServers.json
    Loading config://HistoryServers.json
    Compiling 'shaders/Model_emissive.surface_shader'
    Compiling 'shaders/Model.surface_shader'
    Compiling 'materials/biodome/biodome_glass.surface_shader'
    Compiling 'shaders/Level.surface_shader'
    Compiling 'shaders/Model_emissive_alpha.surface_shader'
    Compiling 'shaders/water_refract.surface_shader'
    Compiling 'shaders/Level_alpha.surface_shader'
    Cooked mesh with 4794 faces, 3566 vertices
    Compiling 'shaders/Model_alpha.surface_shader'
    Compiling 'cinematics/vfx_materials/2em_scroll_vtxcolor.surface_shader'
    Error: Couldn't open file 'D:/build/assets/materialsrc/biodome/biodome_glass_01.material'
    Error: No shader specified for material 'D:/build/assets/materialsrc/biodome/biodome_glass_01.material'
    Compiling 'cinematics/vfx_materials/2em_1norm_scroll_distort_vtxcolor.surface_shader'
    Main Menu Initialized at Version: 254
    Steam Id: 62636470
    Compiling 'shaders/GUIBasic.surface_shader'
    Cooked mesh with 4794 faces, 3566 vertices
    Compiling 'shaders/Emissive.surface_shader'
    Compiling 'cinematics/vfx_materials/Emissive_glow.surface_shader'
    Compiling 'models/alien/alien.surface_shader'
    Network logging set to level 3
    Error: Attempted to load remote options from a file that does not exist.
  • benoveerbenoveer Join Date: 2013-04-23 Member: 184950Members, Reinforced - Supporter
  • HivelordHivelord Join Date: 2003-06-21 Member: 17567Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    edited September 2013
    I'm also getting the redplug issue. I join a game, and after a second or two I get a rep plug which never goes away. I can literally load up tf2 and play for ages without an issue, and I was playing NS2 some of yesterday fine.
  • ianfrommaianfromma Join Date: 2013-09-23 Member: 188421Members
    Everytime I try to join a server it just says waiting for server... and never loads. I am on sattelite internet and I thought it might be because it was slow from going over my monthly data limit but browsing is back to normal speed and still no NS. This happened right after updating to the new build so I'm assuming there was some change that is causing an issue.

    http://pastebin.com/3g0tuUz7
  • ianfrommaianfromma Join Date: 2013-09-23 Member: 188421Members
    ianfromma wrote: »
    Everytime I try to join a server it just says waiting for server... and never loads. I am on sattelite internet and I thought it might be because it was slow from going over my monthly data limit but browsing is back to normal speed and still no NS. This happened right after updating to the new build so I'm assuming there was some change that is causing an issue.

    http://pastebin.com/3g0tuUz7

    was just able to join a server then got red plug...

    http://pastebin.com/gYwLjr68
  • ConfusedConfused Wait. What? Join Date: 2003-01-28 Member: 12904Members, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester
    @ianfromma, First things first, For my sanity can you try disabling all your mods.

    The red plugging at start thing is semi normal. Wait a bit and it generally figures it's self out.


    If that doesn't work. run a command prompt and enter
    ping -t 8.8.8.8
    make sure weird things to your ping to google don't happen on connection to the server.

    Finally, if all that doesn't work can you try connecting to the Confusionville server. It's dev machine and on a connection that cant really handle a game. But I can see the logs on it and maybe i can get a bit more data out of there

  • ianfrommaianfromma Join Date: 2013-09-23 Member: 188421Members
    edited September 2013
    while "waiting for server" ran that command and got bytes=32 time=650ms TTL=46...seems normal for my satellite internet (server ping is 700 or so on a good server). I have already tried disabling all mods. A strange thing happened...it was trying to update steam and would slowly load to 30 kb of 80,000 kb then stop. I tried restarting the computer and trying again and now it says my steam client is up to date -_-

    Tried it AGAIN and now its updating but barely moving and then I get this below the bar:

    Error Code: -324

    Failed to load web page (unknown error).

    Web is moving at normal satellite speed.

    This is super frustrating. I remember playing counter strike in 1999 on dial-up and never having issues like this. I feel like I need a god damned programming class just to play this game. Every time there is an update I have some sort of issue.


    edit: it's sort of working now but at a snails pace. at this rate it might be downloaded in a few days. fml.

    edit again: downloaded update overnight and it appears to be working now. Thanks for the help!
  • LodgarLodgar Ru Join Date: 2013-10-23 Member: 188799Members
    http://pastebin.com/JpZFpF7L
    Not authenticated, off the menu with an error
  • IronHorseIronHorse Developer, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributor Join Date: 2010-05-08 Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
    @lodgar there doesn't seem to be any internet connection established when connecting for you?
    Also authentication is on Steam's end.. are you A) sure that you are in Online mode B) able to connect to other steam games like TF2? C) Have you ensured your firewall and router allows ns2.exe?
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