Hourly Error 90,000 problems

[Lenicus]

Completed web chat with SE today on 90000 error after it happened multiple times today. SE first blamed my internet connection. When I advised them my 2nd computer on same connection and its own ffxiv acct had no issues at all they then moved to blame my computer. I advised them the problem only happens with ffxiv not with any other online game or online activity. They blamed my nic card. I did a stress test on my nic card and it passed. They then blamed my cables to my computer from my modem. I've been through 3 cables as I've switched out modems when I believed it to be a modem issue. They then blamed port forwarding. I advised them the other computer uses the same modem to connect to the internet and has no problems at all with ffxiv. They claimed port forwarding was computer specific. Not once would they admit something could be wrong with the game. I urge all of you having this issue to do webchat or call SE to complain about the issue as they seem to currently believe my computer is the problem.

[Raist]

They then blamed port forwarding. I advised them the other computer uses the same modem to connect to the internet and has no problems at all with ffxiv. They claimed port forwarding was computer specific.

Have you tried running it without port forwarding? This could actually be causing some of your weirdness, as when you forward ports you are forwarding them to a single IP address. That may have been what they were hinting at, but just didn't explain it properly.

Not once have I needed to port forward for a game. The ONLY time I forward is for something very specific like remote desktop access from work--but never to make a game behave. It's always been managed just fine through my router's NAT--and that's on 3 different brand names to date since 1996: a Blitzz, Belkin, and my current Netgear. Not high dollar ones either--these have been locally bought Wal-Mart items... and I've NEVER paid more than $40 for a router.

NAT has come a long way in recent years, and you may find you don't actually need to forward your ports--that's often more something to use to rule out localized routing/security issues (like to punch through firewalls and such). I never needed it in XI, nor XIV, nor any online games going back to 1996 when I was in the first public test market for TWC Cable Internet for our city. And we have a lot of devices that can be on my network, and any number of them can be active at any given time for various content (cut the cable channels out, so we stream a lot on top of gaming on multiple devices at the same time), and the only problems we've run into is if we are streaming too much at one time.

Might want to give it a shot without the port forwarding, just to see. Provided you are getting full pass-through from your modem to your router, it should work just fine. You may need to tweak some security options in the WAN sections or something if you've got the full-on firewall going or something (SPI firewall, NAT Filters, SIP Algorythm, etc.)... but otherwise you may find it works fine with the default security settings.