Hourly Error 90,000 problems

[Raist]

The latest Avast Free works fine with it... at least in Win8. Used it for years also in XI, and now use it with XIV on two systems. Up until Christmas, one of those was an XP Pro 32-bit box. That's now a Win8-64 machine running a fresh install of Avast from scratch, updated to the then current engine at the time of the install. This laptop was also updated last week (v2014.9.0.2011). I play for hours at a time with no problems from Avast on both of them--sometimes 5 hours straight on the weekends.

[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.

[Thunderz]

I've never had any problems with the game but I have been getting the weird 90k then Lobby server error

My brother who plays the game, same house, same internet was still connected to the game just fine but I got booted

I was still connected on VoIP too with my friends talking just fine

I believe its really SE broke something (explains the last 2 maintenance that happened)

[Raist]

could also be flakiness on the nodes as well. Recent weather issues... oversold markets... could even be bad hardware injecting feedback/noise on the line down the street that knocks people off intermittently.

Can speculate all day I guess. It doesn't seem to be massively widespread yet--very likely it's regional. So it may actually be something between you guys and SE having issues, just no one has managed to identify just what it is yet. We once suffered similar issues for 2 days before TWC finally tracked down a bad amp around the corner that was wreaking havoc on a local company's webserver's line. Might need to push through for T3 support from your ISP to investigate line quality not just on your line, but possibly your neighborhood.