Frequency disconnects during cut scenes.

[kashiko]

Hi Einmimiria,

I am starting to think there is no network issue. That one hop is not always sending traceroute responses back, but looking at the full route, no other packet is lost. This indicates to me that no packet is lost either going to destination or returning to source. Simply that one router sometimes ignores traceroutes (which as you say is legitimate, perhaps sending too many traceroutes close together it chooses to ignore to avoid the extra work).

I am thinking this may be a bug in the Final Fantasy 14 application itself. I was wondering if there is any logs I can collect or any debugging I can do.

I have tested that port forwarding is working correctly with my router. I can run other applications on these ports and verify that forwarding is working correctly.

I used Resource Monitor to look at the active TCP connections for FF14. I see two connections, to 204.2.229.108, which are on local ports 51259 and 51258. These are different ports than the ones you suggested to have forwarded.

I also notice that Final Fantasy 14 is not listening on any ports. Port forwarding should only be necessary when an application is acting as a server so the router knows which device to send incoming conenctions to. It appears that my computer establishes the connection to FF14, so NAT takes care of the forwarding.

The two TCP connections, I believe one is to the game server and one is to the lobby server. When I disconnect, my game drops back to the character selection screen. This seems to indicate that my connection to the lobby server never fails. I tested this by disconnecting the internet physically, the reaction was the game disconnected from both the game server and then also disconnected from the lobby.

Any more investigation you can suggest would be great. It seems others on this forum and online (if google) have had similar experiences. I am fully willing to cooperate with debugging to help your engineers track down this bug.

Thanks!

[kashiko]

I can confirm that two TCP connections with only one failing.

I used a monitoring program. On one TCP connection, my PC and server are exchanging and acknowledging packets. At some point this stops, with my PC re-transmitting the same packet over and over without receiving an acknowledgment, and then gives up leading to the disconnect.

The second connection is healthy during this time, and then says a "finished" packet to the server, and receives acknowledgement of this packet.

Note that running a traceroute during the disconnect does not show any packet loss.

This makes me think it could be some bug in the client or server causing it?

[Einmimiria]

Hello kashiko.

There are a few things I'd like to address:

Hi Einmimiria,

I am starting to think there is no network issue. That one hop is not always sending traceroute responses back, but looking at the full route, no other packet is lost. This indicates to me that no packet is lost either going to destination or returning to source. Simply that one router sometimes ignores traceroutes (which as you say is legitimate, perhaps sending too many traceroutes close together it chooses to ignore to avoid the extra work).

The trace route will and an individual packet to each node. Yes, there are several packets that do not have an issue, this makes sense because you can access the game. There are just instances where you disconnect, just like there are instances where you lose a packet along the route. You can lose connection going to the destination just as you are losing connection to that particular node. They use the same route. The node isn't ignoring the trace route. You can see the two other responses in the same trace route.

I used Resource Monitor to look at the active TCP connections for FF14. I see two connections, to 204.2.229.108, which are on local ports 51259 and 51258. These are different ports than the ones you suggested to have forwarded.

I also notice that Final Fantasy 14 is not listening on any ports. Port forwarding should only be necessary when an application is acting as a server so the router knows which device to send incoming connections to. It appears that my computer establishes the connection to FF14, so NAT takes care of the forwarding.

The two TCP connections, I believe one is to the game server and one is to the lobby server. When I disconnect, my game drops back to the character selection screen. This seems to indicate that my connection to the lobby server never fails. I tested this by disconnecting the internet physically, the reaction was the game disconnected from both the game server and then also disconnected from the lobby.

Here you are referring to local ports (where information is sent out to the server), the ones I listed are remote ports (so your router can accept information from the server). You can see this in the information you posted:
Image PID Local Address Local Port Remote Address Remote Port Packet Loss (%) Latency (ms)
ffxiv_dx11.exe 5292 192.168.1.6 51259 204.2.229.108 55026 0 68
ffxiv_dx11.exe 5292 192.168.1.6 51258 204.2.229.108 55026 0 32

55026 being the remote port.

I am thinking this may be a bug in the Final Fantasy 14 application itself. I was wondering if there is any logs I can collect or any debugging I can do.

We don't have any logs that can be collected regarding the connection status of the Launcher, but we do have a bug report forum if you feel there is an issue with it: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/f...2-In-Game-Bugs

However, i don't feel there is a bug in the application or the server. It's much more likely that you are experiencing a routing issue.

Thank you for visiting the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums.

[kashiko]

Hi Einmimira,

As far as I can tell, the issue lies on the FF14 server side, or in the game client. I see others are also reporting issues with behemoth in other posts, and a few people in my FC report disconnect issues as well.

The traceroute is showing that no packets are being lost, including during the time a disconnection occurs (I ran traceroute for a long time over 10,000 packets with all successfully acknowledged by FF14 server). My reading of the traceroute previously was incorrect. A single node showing dropped packets indicates that node is not responding to traceroutes (which it can choose not to do at any time). That the nodes before/after have no drops indicates no dropped packets. The traceroute shows all packets sent were received by the FF14 server and acknowledged. Despite this, FF14 application stops receiving responses from the server (packet logs). Given the traceroute is healthy during this time, this leads me to believe the issue is in hte client or server software not the network connection.

My ISP has checked their network as well as done a visit to my house and found the connection is strong and no issues are occurring.

Sorry, the information I provided about ports was incorrect. It was an outgoing packet form my computer to server. From server to my computer is like:
Src: 204.2.229.108, Dst: (my ip address)
Transmission Control Protocol, Src Port: 50737, Dst Port: 55026
So it looks like the port ranges are correct, which I am forwarding (packet arriving to me on port 55026).

I can see no evidence of a routing issue or a problem with my internet connectivity.

[kashiko]

Still experiencing issues post 4.5. Did another check on the traceroute and no dropped packets between me and the server, even when the game disconnects with 90001 or 900002. I do notice that the game is now using a port outside the range suggested for forwarding (60239, the port chosen seems mostly random). Although extending the forwarding range doesn't have any affect.