Erratic Performance - 4.3.10

[S_B_R]

The reason I can't believe it's a Hardware/Network problem is, how is it possible that all of us experiencing this problem had the exact same hardware/network failure presicely when SEQ 4.3.10 was released?

[LordCrush]

/agree S_B_R

i had a similar problem in february i think - but i was the only one who had it - and that was a buggy hub, but now ... i tried to switch hardware, but nothing changed

[Dedpoet]

I have 4 accounts. My roommate has 5 accounts. We have 9 computers here. We have all 9 firing at once and this does not happen for me on US servers.

Fester, you have a problem alright, and it doesn't have to do with TCP/IP packets :-P

[LordCrush]

Is there anything more that i can provide to help debuging this ?

Thanx in advance

-- LC

[BadgerOne]

are people still getting unknowns ? or is replacing BUFSIZ with 1500 the way to go ? Or is more info needed ?

[LordCrush]

Did not help me ... still all unknown after initial Zonein.

I made the following tries yesterday:

1.) I changed my Hub -> Still unknowens
2.) I used a SEQ 4.3.12 that is installed in a VMWare Linux Suse 8.0, that i got from a friend. This SEQ works flawless at my friends home, but i get unknowns. We have the same Notebooks with the same hardware equipment (P4 2,8 GHz, 1GB Ram) so ist not the NB that is too slow and we use the same VMWare version

Hmm looks like something hardware- or network-related. I will try with annother NIC for my router and perhaps do a networkscan for retransmits ..

[Hendrix_Morton]

Originally posted by BadgerOne
are people still getting unknowns ? or is replacing BUFSIZ with 1500 the way to go ? Or is more info needed ?

Still getting them here, and the BUFSIZE issue is in the .12 version, so that doesnt help...

I swaped out all the hardware involved, some 3 and 4 times and still get the unknowns...

LordCrush was doing some packet diagnostics to try and detect what might be causing it, but havent heard anything from the developers about this in awhile..

/em wishing there were more than 24 hours in a day...

[S_B_R]

Still getting it here as well...

[Zaphod]

I'm having trouble getting a datastream that will produce the described behavior in 4.3.12. So if someone really wants to help and doesn't mind giving up some level of their annonymity to me they can e-mail me a packet recording that exhibits the problem.

To do this you would use the '--record-filename=<FILENAME>' option when running ShowEQ and go through a session and attempt to reproduce the problem. If you are able to reproduce the problem, stop the EQ session. Compress the recorded packet stream (preferably with bzip2) and e-mail it to me at [email protected]. At which point I should be able to reproduce the problem.

All information in the packet recording will be maintained in the strictest confidence.

Thanks and Enjoy,
Zaphod (dohpaZ)

[LordCrush]

Zaphod,

i will do this tomorrow .. on raid atm it takes normaly 1 respawn to show up the error

/Wave

-- LC

[Alfred]

This might be an interesting piece to the puzzle. (I hope it isn't old news...)

Let me describe what happens normally.

I login to EQ, wait for the character selection screen, start showeq, select my character, show eq works like a champ...

Then as new character(s) and mob(s) show up (no matter what zone), they show up as unknowns. If I want to see everything again, all I have to do is zone and then zone back.



This has been standard procedure for about three weeks for me. I've used myseq but it crashes on the ldon zones.

Then something interesting happened.

I started screwing around with the caller quest in fungus grove. When i first entered the zone, everything was as before, new mobs show up as unknowns, etc. But as I've been learning the do's and don'ts of the caller quest I’ve been doing a lot of dying and rezing. The first few times I’ve been into the zone, I've been completely nude and amazingly... all the NEW MOBS SHOW UP.... This has happened at least three times for me.

Leads me to believe that something I am wearing, or special handshaking that is going on while nude is allowing showeq to continue handling new mobs.

Very interesting indeed.

Now I haven't had a chance to verify whether the old behavior starts once I have all my equipment... (I’ll do that the next time... probably in three or four days)

Any thoughts on this?

[LordCrush]

@Zaphod ... i have send you an email with a packetcapture

@Alfred : i have tried to get the error with a naked lvl 1 ... no err after 10 Mins normally it shows up after 1 or 2 Mins

seems that you are on the right track ... will check further

[S_B_R]

I've had some experience with gear causing weird problems in-game and/or with the login process... Not saying I'm sure this issue is related, but it wouldn't surprise me.

[Raistlin]

Couple of days ago, in PoStorm tracking for Daiku. All of a sudden I notice that there's a POTLOAD of unknown up...and I assumed it was what's described here...every mob that spawned since I zoned in was appearing again as an Unknown.

I'm fairly sure that none of my network equipment is faulty (This is the ONLY problem i've had on any of my computers on my network).

Network setup: DSL going into a NetGear 10/100 DSL router. Netgear connected to a DLink 10/100 hub. Linux box and 2 EQ boxes on the hub (Several other inactive lines connected to the Hub and several active lines connected to the NetGear.)

I've only noticed this since upgrading to .12 (was running .9 for quite some time) to correct the LDON issues, and of course, this is not happening in the LDON zones (Duh, no respawn). Since I generally only use SEQ for offscrean maps and pulling LDON now adays, I havn't noticed unknowns spawning in any zones other than PoStorm that one time.

[Zaphod]

I believe this issue to be fixed in the 4.3.13 CVS commit that I just made (see this thread. Thanks and and appropriate props go out to LordCrush who provided me with the packet recording that allowed me to finally diagnose and fix this problem (well, at least this one anyway).

This problem stemmed from one of the unknown bits in the flagsLo part of the packet header being set and including and extra 2 octets before the arq, and thereby throwing a bunch of stuff off. It looks like this bit indicates a NAK (Negative Acknowledgement) being recieved with the extra data being the client arq that wasn't received. This typically would happen if your connection was running into congestion or packet corruption of some sort between your computer and the SOE's server. This also explains why naked characters didn't see the problem as much (all the item data that isn't being sent down at zone in time).

It wasn't a hardware problem, it wasn't unique to 4.3.9 through 4.3.12, but either SOE put that previously unknown bit in the packet to use, or it is just getting excercised more due to the recent changes SOE has made in the packet payloads (such as the new item packets)..

Thanks and Enjoy,
Zaphod (dohpaZ)