Network problems - Troubleshooting

Disconnects? Lag? Login trouble?

Chances are, that when 1000's of people are happily playing, the problem is on YOUR end! (Your end, in this context, meaning somewhere between your PC through your home network and all the way to your providers carrier uplink.)

Disclaimer: This will not help you troubleshoot/solve ALL possible network related problems on your end - just 99% of them :-)

Troubleshooting network problems can be frustrating and tiresome but to keep things simple you need to work in steps and not try to solve everything at once.

Step 1: Check that you have internet connectivity+DNS
* Start a commandprompt (On a Windows PC: Win+r, type cmd + ENTER)
* At the commandline type: ping google.com (press ENTER)

Most likely you will send/recieve 4 replies. If you get the replies go to step 2.
If you get 4 timeouts you either have a DNS or internet connection problem.
Try (at the commandprompt): ping 8.8.4.4

Step 2: PC Firewall/Antivirus problems
* Check your "Windows Firewall". You shouldn't have a problem unless some joker with access to your PC have made changes without your knowledge. (You do NOT need to disable Windows Firewall, with default settings, to play PoE!)
* Are you running ANY other kind of internet "security/shield/protection" software? This is NOT a trick question: Programs such as Norton, Bullguard, Comodo, Whatever Internet Security are well known for causing a variety of with network connectivity. (Their firewall/proxy components - I have limited knowledge of their anti-malware/virus components).
UNINSTALL your 3.rd party "internet security/shield/protection" (Unless ofc it is a corporate requirement but in that case: Gaming on your corp. pc?), reinstall WITHOUT any internet "shield/webshield" components.

Step 3: Verify PC behaviour
Close/exit all programs running on your PC (do not close all services - just browsers, spotify, media players and whatever you know needs a network connection)
* Wait 3 minutes
* Start a commandprompt
* At the commandline type: netstat (press ENTER)
You should see no more than 3-5 lines in the output, all of them with TCP as the protocol.
Recheck/close your running programs and repeat step 3.

IF you see more than 3-5 lines of output you have some unknown/rogue network processes running: Post output here and I will try to identify them.

Step 4: Your PC is fine - Check your LAN!
Assuming your PC is ok, the rest of your troubleshooting is your LAN. (WiFi/LAN in this context is the same! A wireless accesspoint works like a LAN switch, just with lower performance.)
* Are there other devices on your network? (Any computer/idevice/TV-streaming box can be the source of network congestion/exhaustion) Familymembers running P2P (either knowingly or not) is the killer of many networks - Repeat step 3 on their computers if they agree.
* Reboot switches and gateway/router (this includes any AP's)

Now try the game again. If it works: Great! But you need to find out why rebooting worked.
In most cases when rebooting your LAN infrastructure works the reason is that your router/gateway is running a UPnP service.
(This is a service that automatically forwards ports to PC's running programs that request UPnP portforwards: Instead of arguing with your younger brother because Skype or his P2P program hooked the PoE port just disable UPnP services on your router! You may need to check the manual to do this)

Comments
As I said this short step-by-step guide to troubleshooting "your end" does not include every possible problem, but once you have checked/undone any strange adapter settings and you have ruled out hardware failure on your equipment you should be pretty well armed and ready to contact your ISP for further investigation.

Good luck!

all day today game was lagging big time , many disconect , if they don't take care of it gamers will leave. nobody wants this broken game , even if it's a beta.

and no, i don't have pc problems or wi-fi problems , i'm running this game on a hi end alienware pc.

fix this game !!!

Chances are, even if there are thousands of players happily playing, thousands more have frequent disconnections, heck many who wanted to play get discouraged because they cant even access the game, trust me if this continues without any proper solutions then without a doubt this game will start to lose players.

You might have the coolest Alienware computer, but that has no bearing on how stable your network connection is.

Pretty good post, a lot of simple things to troubleshoot. I would also mention more local area network issues, as 4 pings can easily miss router problems, wifi interference, and broken ethernet cables. You might restart the computer and router to flush the caches and crashed services.

Got more TCP lines than 3-5 here are they, please help



I only had Flex Tye and Java (notifying me for update) programs on my PC when i check netstat
I use N3 net provider.

Why i get more than 3-5 lines as you said?

The game code and/or game servers are rubbish for network stability.

"

coffecat wrote:

Got more TCP lines than 3-5 here are they, please help

I only had Flex Tye and Java (notifying me for update) programs on my PC when i check netstat
I use N3 net provider.

Why i get more than 3-5 lines as you said?

I am sorry if I got you worried. There are no alarming entries in your output!

You obviously have Avast antivirus running. It opens a lot of connections - some of them to check for updates, some to check/send reports to the avast communitybased reporting.
Basically every line from "Admin:1560" to "Admin:4114" is Avast doing its thing.

Not dangerous behaviour, but noisy and potentially using memory and network ressources.

Thank you for your answer, thought i still have lag :(
Maybe i will just create my own thread and wait for answers, but your thread gave me a boost of what not to worry from. Tnx

disabling upnp on the router is urgently recommended anyway since home networks get hacked big style by using a security leak most cheap plastic routers have.

edit: for people who like having a more graphical output of their current network connections there is a tool from microsoft (original creator: sysinternals). needs no installation, just run the exe.

http://technet.microsoft.com/de-de/sysinternals/bb897437.aspx

sysinternal tools from mark russinovich are the best tools available for everyday easy system analysis. these tools (and games) kept me from mainly using linux at home.