POL Error Code 0011, 3001. WTF

[CPBismarck]

i managed to get rid of POL 1160 by uninstalling and reinstalling POL, however 0011 still remains.

[Hyzenthlay]

Can't connect to POL, Code POL-0007 "There may be a problem with your route address or the communication route."

[CPBismarck]

0019 is my new error now lol this is slowly becoming a joke

[kierie]

I managed to log onto a mule and i got excited so i tried to log onto my main and 6001 error again and now i cant get back onto my mule either /cry

[Exodias]

I too am with 02 and having the same issues with logging in to SE services. I have just spoken to 02 support for the second time today and after they said i have a faulty router, they are now saying they are aware of the issue in accessing certain online services and are estimating that things will be fixed within 48hrs.

[RAIST]

Don't recall exactly where all this has been broken down before to link to it, so just gonna try to rehash it all again off the cuff.

I forget the exact numbers, think it was either 3001 or 3011, but if you are getting the message indicating no response from server, it <should> simply be a communication issue--not necessarily an issue with your actual game files. This is a routing issue. The suspects for this are your local security/routing, your ISP's security/routing, SE's security/routing, or some additional party in between. The only way to resolve it is to trace the communication path from each endpoint to resolve it.

If you are using a router, verify if port forwarding is setup, and if set--make sure it is setup properly for FFXI. In some cases, you don't need the port forwarding (routers have gotten a lot better in recent years)--so you can even try not using port forwarding at all as well. If you don't have it setup, try setting it up to test if it is needed. Also note that some routers have security options that could be causing issues: SPI firewall settings like responding to ping (or simply firewall enabled/disabled), NAT features for open or closed/secure routing and/or SIP ALG filtering etc. Double check settings in the LAN/WAN sections of your router config to see what options are available and enabled. You may need to turn some features off or otherwise configure them differently to resolve a routing issue with the game traffic. Also note that sometimes it is an issue that can be generated by the routing path initiated as early as your DNS lookup. If you are using the DNS from your ISP, sometimes you can get a different result by simply changing the DNS used on your PC. You can get a list of DNS servers to try from the OpenDNS group and plug them in as static DNS servers in your TCP/IP settings.

Note also that SE has made some significant changes to their network structure over the years, and continually tweak it. I've seen new IP's pop up here and there the last couple years, as it has caused issues with some SPI security options and their whitelists have needed updating a few times--which is something to consider as well if you are managing whitelists somewhere. Which brungs us to the next section.

Check all your logs that you can locally: Firewall and/or internet security suite, Anti-Virus (it can be blocking a server in a webshield, or otherwise trapping a pol.exe hook, etc.), and your Router. If you are using a router/switch/hub between your system and your modem--bypass it and connect directly to your modem and try again. Again, in this config--double check all your logs. If during this process, you find communications/file(s) being blocked--verify the blocked item is a valid FFXI resource and add it to that device/software's exception/ignore/allow/trusted list. Obviously, if it is a file in the FFXI folder it should be safe to whitelist--if it is an IP address, simply google the IP. You should get some hits for ARIN info, a WhoIs lookup, etc. so you can verify that it belongs to SE. One easy thing to look for is the admin contact for the IP--ie: if it is peering @ square-enix.com, then it's managed by SE.

If, after you've confirmed it is nothing locally blocking communication, then it needs to be traced in real time as you are trying to connect to try to pinpoint the point of failure. The old-school way is to run netstat in the background as you are connecting to try to find the IP/FQDN of the connections being made and then trying to trace them individually to test for connectivity issues. There is a handy tool you can use to trace your connections in real time that is a litttle easier to read. Download Sysinternals TCPView. note, this link is from Micrsoft's TechNet pages, so it is safe. Read that page, as it tells you how to use it. It's pretty straight forward, just run it and watch your connections as they happen.

Close all programs and disconnect any devices that would connect to the internet in the background (iPod, etc) for updates (I wouldn't advise shutting down security software, though), go ahead and run all updates for programs/devices that you need to have connected (like security software, windows updates, Java, flash, etc.) or disable their auto-update features so they don't try to update while testing. Configure FFXI so it is windowable. you want to either be able to run it in a small window so you can watch TCPView as you are connecting, or have the option to alt-tab between them during each step of logging in to note what is going on in TCPView during each stage. Basically, launch TCPView, and after each step of your logging in/zoning in game, verify the state of your connections in TCPView. What you are mostly looking for are connections that are going into TIME_WAIT states WHILE your are connecting/zoning. Established connections are typically good--handshakes are taking place and data is flowing. Some of these IP's will show up with ESTABLISHED state, and then go into TIME_WAIT. This is not necessarily an indication of a problem--but it is an indication that there is not a flow of data keeping them active, and thus could be more prone to interruption. Still, make a note of the connections that are coming up as ESTABLISHED and maintaining that status though, as you may want to test reliability of them as well for good measuer. As you go through this process, you will get a feel for which ones are valid connections specifically for FFXI (sometimes you may get some weird connections from security software like local host port 12080 redirection, sometimes this happens for blocking pop-ups and bad sites). Once you have a list of IP's isolated to your FFXI use, you have some numbers for tracing to see if there are any stalls taking place.

Google the IP's to verify they are from SE. I have a short list you can use for some known numbers that may help save some time:

square-enix.com 202.67.53.202
SE DNS servers (dns1-dns4): 202.67.53.31, 202.67.53.95, 202.67.53.32, 202.67.53.96)
***note the 202.67.53.xxx subnet may be entirely owned by SE, I have not verified this though)

ffxi00.pol.com 124.150.154.122
c000.pol.com 202.67.54.52

IP's in the following ranges are confirmed to be leased to SE:

124.150.152.1 through 124.150.159.255
(note, I have seen a lot of UDP traffic on some of these)

202.67.54.1 through 202.67.54.255
202.67.62.1 through 202.67.62.255

So, if you see anything in this range, pretty much...it's SE.

Now, to trace them to confirm reliable routing. There are some windows tool that can be used, but many don't show the path taken. A more consistent and common tool is the old DOS pased tracert command. Open a command prompt window by going to start/run or start/search (will vary by XP/Vista/Win7 interfaces) and enter cmd. This should pull up a black box terminal style screen shoing a file path with a blinking cursor, something like this:

c:\Documents and Settings\Username>_

What you will do is simply type the word tracert, a space, followed by the IP number, hit the <Enter> key, and watch the results. Note, you can use the FQDN name of the connection as well, as I did for the next quote. When it's done, you should see something like this:

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>tracert ffxi00.pol.com

Tracing route to ffxi00.pol.com [124.150.154.122]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 edited
2 pathing
3 for security
4 reasons
5 the first few lines will show your local and initial ISP routes
6 44 ms 37 ms 37 ms ae-3-0.cr0.hou30.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.36]
7 86 ms 87 ms 87 ms ae-0-0.cr0.dfw10.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.39]
8 85 ms 87 ms 87 ms ae-3-0.cr0.lax30.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.0]
9 80 ms 81 ms * ae-1-0.pr0.lax00.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.129]
10 80 ms 80 ms 81 ms pacnet.com.any2ix.coresite.com [206.223.143.138]

11 186 ms 199 ms 186 ms gi8-0-0.cr1.nrt1.asianetcom.net [202.147.0.121]

12 179 ms 176 ms 178 ms gi1-0-0.gw1.nrt5.asianetcom.net [202.147.0.178]

13 186 ms 190 ms 189 ms squareco.asianetcom.net [203.192.149.210]
14 178 ms 178 ms 176 ms 61.195.56.129
15 177 ms 179 ms 177 ms 219.117.144.2
16 187 ms 189 ms 187 ms 219.117.146.149
17 194 ms 197 ms 184 ms 219.117.146.129
18 188 ms 189 ms 186 ms 219.117.146.182
19 177 ms 177 ms 178 ms 124.150.154.122

Trace complete.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>

That is a fairly clean connection. You want to run it a couple times, to see if you wind up with a consistent string of stalls along the way. This will show up with a * in the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th column, as noted at line 9 of that trace:

9 80 ms 81 ms * ae-1-0.pr0.lax00.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.129]

This leg had 1 stall in 3 attempts during the trace. While this is not a serious issue, it is something that can potentially get problematic during times of heavy load or foul weather, etc. What you DON'T want to see is a string of * * *'s on a connection. If tracert finds this, it will retry that several times and you'll see a run of failed connection attempts and it might eventually time out, like this:

Tracing route to www.exchange.gmail.com [204.232.137.207]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 edited
2 pathing
3 for security
4 reasons
5 the first few lines will show your local and initial ISP routes
6 29 ms 29 ms 27 ms 107.14.19.133
7 32 ms 30 ms 29 ms xe-0-1-1.er2.iad10.us.above.net [64.125.12.61]
8 30 ms 30 ms 29 ms xe-0-0-0.er1.iad10.us.above.net [64.125.26.233]

9 29 ms 35 ms 29 ms 209.249.11.37.available.above.net [209.249.11.3
]
10 29 ms 29 ms 29 ms vlan905.core5.iad2.rackspace.net [72.4.122.10]
11 32 ms 30 ms 29 ms aggr301a-1-core5.iad2.rackspace.net [72.4.122.1
1]
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * * Request timed out.
26 * * * Request timed out.
27 * * * Request timed out.
28 * * * Request timed out.
29 * * * Request timed out.
30 * * * Request timed out.

Trace complete.

This is an indication of a stalling/blocked path. This can be for any number of reasons--could be a firewall at that last point, or downed servier/router/etc. THIS is your potential point of failure that needs to be investigated. Initially, I would contact your ISP and forward the problematic trace log to your ISP to see if they can investigate it. If it is too far down the line, it will be a device out of their control, but they may be able to contact the admin's in charge to advance recovery--or they may be able to work out a way to redirect to get the routing going again. You could also forward it to SE (through the support portal, don't post it on the forums, for security reasons) in the event it is near their endpoint--as in it is failing close to their end they should investigate, or forward it to their JP ISP to investigate.

To get the data from the DOS prompt to clipboard, you can click/drag the text to highlight just that selection, then go to the command menu and select Copy, or you can choose to select all text from the command menu and then go back and select Copy from the command menu. To open this menu, click the black and white "C:\" icon in the upper-left corner of the window to get the menu to open up. Go down to the "Edit" submenu and you will see the options for Copy, Past, and Selec All. Once you have it on your clip board, you can then use the normal pasting operation of notepad, word, email client, etc to paste it (usually the short cut combo of <CTRL>-V works, or pull it down from an Edit menu).

[Hyzenthlay]

I noticed your thread before and directed the O2 person to it, he (also a WoW player) didn't seem to think port forwarding was needed, i guess it is kinda odd as i've been playing for years and never had this issue before. Have tried to log in on 2 different computers and getting the same message. If still not fixed tomorrow I'm willing to try anything...

[Maydot]

0011 error now gone but still getting 3100 error. There is a post on the O2 user/support forums which I think may be relevant - http://community.o2.co.uk/t5/Home-Br...er/td-p/223693

The last link on that page points to - http://beusergroup.co.uk/

which mentions something about routing issues. I have absolutely no idea what all that means @.@ but hoping someone might.

I give up trying now but if can't log in tomorrow will look more closely at Raist's post and try what he suggests.

[CPBismarck]

http://www.melbournestatus.co.uk/eve...e-o2-broadband

[Maydot]

/sigh...so at 16.18 the connection was stable and only one minute later it was shut down. Thank you for posting this CPBismark - it's a shame that O2 couldn't have made an announcement though - there doesn't appear to be anything on their own support pages about this (unless it's been posted in last 15 minutes when I last checked).