Disconecting problems

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1

I’ve been getting disconnects since changing ISP a few months ago, at the time they were quite consistent but I could never work out what the problem was. Initially I could swap back to my old connection and use that but that has been turned off now.

My old connection was ADSL2+ which was ~12Mb down and ~1Mb up (at best) and I’d average 220ms to Proudmore and 44ms to the Oceanic servers.
The new connection is HFC (cable) 25Mb down 5Mb up, Proudmore is 160ms and Oceanic 22ms.
As you can see the new connection is better in every way, other than WoW disconnects.

A friend had similar problems when he changed to a faster connection too and he said they settled down over a week or so, almost like WoW was adjusting to the connection.
Mine have improved, initially it was SO frustrating I’d use the old connection for mythic progression as it’s not fair to the other 19 people for my connection to let them down.
I don’t have that option any more.

There were a few types of disconnection, from least common to most common:

  1. Lagging out, it was like my client had lost sync with the server but the connection hadn’t been closed, chat would still work but clicking on NPC or casting spells wouldn’t. In those cases I’d just ALT-F4 and relaunch the game.
  2. Lagging out where nothing happens and 10-15 seconds later I’d be looking at the login screen.
  3. Dropping straight to the login screen, very similar to when the server thinks you’ve moved too fast.

#3 could happen different ways:

  1. entering combat, flight form > stealth > attack > login screen this was most similar to a you’ve moved to fast d/c.
  2. side stepping an attack so I wouldn’t die, these were very annoying as when I’d log back in I was dead.
  3. doing almost nothing, chatting or pet battles. Most confusing as I’d have no idea why.

I was going to make a post in December, when this all started, but silly season got me and I never got around to it.
I ran WinMTR numerous times and there was never any connection problem, I’ve failed to keep any of them but there was nothing which looked like a problem.
It was only WoW which would disconnect, my music stream and voice chat was still working, I’d be able to tell my raid I’d disconnected and we managed to abort a couple of boss attempts without wasting an attempt.
It was most confusing.

Over time the frequency has decreased but I noticed a couple of other posts about disconnecting and thought I should document this here in case it sounds similar for others.

I’ve included as many details as possible as I think it might help you track down what is causing the disconnects.

Something common to all of them was that when I’d log back in I’d get the little notification about the Guild & Communities tab, like it did when you first logged in after that was added to the game.
Occasionally I’d get the splash screen you get after logging in after a new content patch.
Can't connect to a voice chat server right now. Please try again.(VoiceError: 16)
I’ve been getting that error for a while but I’ve been unable to solve it following all of the suggestions on the trouble shooting pages, I don’t use the built in voice so it doesn’t matter but thought I should mention it as it might be relevant.

I thought that perhaps an addon was upsetting WoW so I disabled them all and did some pet battles and general housekeeping things, I still got disconnected in exactly the same way so I turned them back on.

Hopefully this post wasn’t a waste of my time and it helps you track down what causes it.

2

Hey, Zakelwe! Thank you for the detailed post here. The mention of the “Guild & Communities” was a bit curious since we have seen issues with WOW51900319 error that ties in with the Guild/Communities Windows open. The disconnections are not immediate and can happen after closing the window, but we have been able to reproduce these issues on our end. So far the reports are with larger guilds (500+), and this ones not concretely confirmed, but with high ranks (Officer+). Here’s one thread about this and another one here.

Do you have a character without a guild that you can test to see if the disconnections occur? Make sure this is the first log on, and you have not logged onto any alts. If you have, exit the client and login.

If the other character doesn’t experience any issues, try your main characters and do not open the guild window. I wanted to mention this in case it may possibly related to the disconnections here. Some of the workarounds have been the following:

  • Demote to a lower rank.
  • Don’t open the guild window.
  • Join a less populated guild.
    These are not permanent solutions and not ideal by any means. Our team is working on the Guild/Community errors.

It is still a bit odd this this didn’t happen on the old ISP. If it doesn’t seem tied in with the guild and communities windows issue, please include a WinMTR test while running the game for 5-10 minutes while capturing a disconnection. Copy and paste the text file created and paste it between two ~~~ like so:

~~~
WinMTR Here
~~~
3

My main character is in a very large guild and that’s the one I’ve had the most disconnects on, including two which cost me Heroic Visions. :frowning:

I’ll try those things you’ve suggested and see if it makes a difference.

4

Thank you, Zakelwe! Hopefully, some of those suggestions do help :slight_smile: Replying here in case you do need to reply back with the requested details!

5

Last night I got a disconnect shortly after looking at who was online, when I tried logging back in I briefly saw where I died and got disconnected again but I could see I was dead.
I left it a few minutes and when I logged back in I was at the graveyard, I thought I should set up WinMTR but it was very late and I went to bed.

Today I’ve set everything up to capture a disconnect and it won’t happen! It’s a completely different time of the day, about twelve hours later, so I’ll try again tonight to see if that is a contributing factor. I know it shouldn’t be but I feel like I’m chasing something random already so trying to be consistent with things seems like a good idea.

This is what I’ve got from this session, I’ve looked at the guild and communities panel numerous times, done some WQ and not disconnected.

I chose not to do a +14 as I was expecting a disconnect, Murphy says that if I’d tried I’d have disconnected and screwed the key up. :frowning:

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|                                      WinMTR statistics                                   |
|                       Host              -   %  | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
|                              10.35.10.1 -    1 | 6601 | 6599 |  142 |  169 |  265 |  147 |
|                          217.138.205.97 -    1 | 6605 | 6604 |  144 |  170 |  267 |  146 |
|                         217.138.223.132 -    1 | 6606 | 6605 |  145 |  170 |  269 |  146 |
|                          217.138.223.72 -    1 | 6601 | 6599 |  145 |  169 |  265 |  146 |
|                           113.29.26.249 -    1 | 6605 | 6604 |  145 |  170 | 1777 |  145 |
|                            4.69.215.133 -  100 | 1331 |   12 |    0 | 2320 | 4480 |  324 |
|                              4.7.26.166 -    1 | 6598 | 6595 |  322 |  350 |  529 |  323 |
|              ae1-br01-csla1.as57976.net -    0 | 6608 | 6608 |  325 |  355 | 1224 |  330 |
|       xe-0-0-1-3-br01-eqla1.as57976.net -    1 | 6599 | 6597 |  327 |  358 | 1976 |  330 |
|        et-0-0-2-br01-swlv10.as57976.net -    1 | 6338 | 6330 |  328 |  445 | 4818 |  329 |
|        et-0-0-0-pe03-swlv10.as57976.net -    1 | 6606 | 6605 |  326 |  354 |  526 |  327 |
|                           137.221.105.2 -    1 | 6590 | 6585 |  327 |  352 |  449 |  329 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|
   WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider
6

Your latency is super high in the first hop. We generally expect to see that number under 10 for worst, and often the avg is 0-2. You also have some packet loss from the first hop on.

It looks like it could be router or modem issues, or it could be wireless issues if you’re wireless. How do you connect to the router?

7

I second what Zungar said above.

This node is awfully high.

| 10.35.10.1 - 1 :warning:| 6601 | 6599 | 142 | 169 :warning:| 265 :warning: | 147 |

There’s a 1% loss which isn’t too much of a concern, but the average latency is 169ms, while the worst is at 265. With this in mind and the latency being quite high, let’s try resetting the protocols and winsock for the system.

  1. Right click on your Windows Start Menu, and select “Command Prompt (Admin)” or just search for Command Prompt and right click, run as administrator.
  2. Now type in or copy and paste, “netsh int ip reset” Press Enter.
  3. Then do the same for “netsh winsock reset”

Once it’s complete, you’ll need to restart the computer to complete the reset. The suggestions and questions from Zungar are still valid, this is just to see if it may help with resetting a few things to lower the overall average latency and potentially disconnections.

It seems that this test didn’t capture a disconnection, would you be able to re-run the test and see if a disconnection can be captured? It may be worth trying ot run a few LFGs or something after to see if it does disconnect. Maybe for a mount or something that you’ve been wanting for a long while :slight_smile:

8

No idea why it’s so high in that one, I just started another to see and it’s 20-26.
I had no disconnects that session, also my reported ping in the game is less than that. Witchcraft!

I’ve not had time to do any testing the last few days, way too much real life getting in the way.
Here’s a short one now, although I wasn’t actually playing, I just read the replies in this thread and thought I’d have a look.

|                                      WinMTR statistics                                   |
|                       Host              -   %  | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
|                              10.45.11.1 -    0 |  136 |  136 |   20 |   23 |   26 |   21 |
|                          217.138.205.97 -    0 |  136 |  136 |   20 |   22 |   37 |   23 |
|                         217.138.223.132 -    0 |  136 |  136 |   20 |   21 |   27 |   24 |
|                          217.138.223.72 -    0 |  136 |  136 |   21 |   23 |   26 |   24 |
|                           113.29.26.249 -    0 |  136 |  136 |   20 |   22 |   27 |   21 |
|                   No response from host -  100 |   28 |    0 |    0 |    0 |    0 |    0 |
|                              4.7.26.166 -    0 |  136 |  136 |  198 |  204 |  255 |  229 |
|              ae1-br01-csla1.as57976.net -    0 |  136 |  136 |  203 |  207 |  247 |  206 |
|       xe-0-0-1-3-br01-eqla1.as57976.net -    0 |  136 |  136 |  206 |  212 |  313 |  265 |
|        et-0-0-2-br01-swlv10.as57976.net -    0 |  136 |  136 |  204 |  208 |  249 |  224 |
|        et-0-0-0-pe02-swlv10.as57976.net -    0 |  136 |  136 |  204 |  210 |  326 |  206 |
|       las-swlv10-ia-bons-02.as57976.net -    0 |  136 |  136 |  204 |  206 |  210 |  208 |
|                           137.221.105.2 -    0 |  136 |  136 |  204 |  206 |  209 |  205 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|
9

Thanks, Zakelwe! It’s looking a bit better than the last test 20-26ms is still a bit high, even for a wireless connection. Generally, for wireless, we want to see under 10ms. For a wired connection, around 1ms for the average. It could be that the test is much shorter on here though since it looks to have been ran for about 2-3 minutes.

It could be something acting up causing the issue between the network devices. You may not see it in game all the time since this is just the average and worst latency. It may be due to the disconnections that it does spike as high as it does.

Are you wired (ethernet) or or wireless? What’s the router/modem models? Do you have a separate modem and router? If so, try bypassing the router.

10

It’s a wired connection to an ASUS RT-AX88U.
Apparently WinMTR does it’s own thing and was using the VPN connection, so that explains the the 10.45.11.1 IP. I’ve got WoW setup to bypass it and told the VPN to exclude WinMTR too, but it hasn’t!
I know WoW is bypassing the VPN as if I disconnect the VPN I don’t disconnect but the launcher does and the music stream has a little hiccup too.

When I initially set the new connection up I did try connecting straight to the Cable modem, as the disconnects were more prevalent then, but it made no noticeable difference. I can do some more testing if you think it will help but I don’t want to leave it setup like that for long, I don’t really truest the winblows firewall. :wink:

I’ll try and find time to test the G&C tab while online with the big guild but it’s tricky as I’m not often online, outside of raid hours, when there are many others on. Unless others being online doesn’t matter?

11

Thank you for the details, Zakelwe! That completely makes sense on the connection test and its routing now. I didn’t check the IP addresses before hand. The use of the VPN definitely makes it harder to diagnose the issue as VPNs are not officially supported.

Would you be able to run a test without the VPN active, so that we can get a bit more of an accurate read to the connection issue? Did you use the VPN for WOW to see if the disconnections fully stopped?

I am curious since with the information you provided, it sounds like there may have been some issues with the router/modem. The VPN doesn’t bypass the home network, but it should change some aspects of the connection and network like the DNS and the routing. Have you tried checking if any settings like QoS (Quality of Service), WMM (Wireless Multimedia), UPnP (Universal plug and play) are enabled? If so, have you tried disabling them?

Something else that might be worth mentioning is that some ISPs use CG-NAT to assign IP Addresses. I believe your ISP may be using the CG-NAT technology. This might be relevant to the disconnection issues, but I’m not certain it is. You may be able to check with your provider to see if they do use this and request them to disable this feature.

This is definitely an odd issue, let me know if any of this information seemed to be helpful to the disconnections here :slight_smile:

12

I’m reading everything you’ve typed to me, please do the same for me. I already said WoW isn’t using the VPN.

I’ve no idea why adding WinMTR to the VPN bypass list didn’t work for it but now I know it’s using the VPN I’ll just disconnect it when I run the tests.

I haven’t done anything to the router setup beyond changing the default password, I know it supports some “gaming features” but I don’t expect them to really make a difference, the research I did before buying indicated that they’re very hit or miss and mostly aimed at FPS games. I’ve not signed up for the service and it isn’t enabled by default.

I’m aware that my ISP is using CG-NAT, I almost mentioned it in my last post but worked out it was the VPN giving the odd IP address before I hit the post button. It shouldn’t affect the connection, I can enquire about a real IP but I don’t know if I’ll be able to get one. I suspect “WoW disconnects” isn’t high on the list of reasons for a real IP! :wink:

Today I’ve been connected for four hours without a disconnect, complete raid and then a lot of being AFK tabbed out trying to solve which gear to use. I’ve avoided opening the guild pane as I didn’t want to screw the rest of the raid with my testing.

I’ll fire up WinMTR now although I don’t have much time left today, I’ll update with results when I can.

13

Zakelwe, sorry for the delay in response, I wasn’t in the office the last couple of days. I have been reading everything you’ve typed as well. Sorry if it wasn’t very clear. I understand that WoW is not using the VPN. The main concern is that the WinMTR test is and oddly, it isn’t working even on the bypass list. We need the tests without the VPN connection route to accurately diagnose the issue. If it’s at all possible to try disabling the VPN completely and run the test, it’d be greatly appreciated!

The main reason why I called out the CG-NAT is because someone mentioned that they were getting frequent disconnections and disabling this seems to have helped for them. It’s odd and I also wouldn’t expect this to impact the connection itself, but it was a worthy callout just in case it may be similar :slight_smile: Here’s the exact thread if you wanted to check out what they said.

Glad to hear it’s been pretty stable for 4 hours! Whenever you have the time, please include the new WinMTR test! Appreciate all the details that you have provided so far :smiley:

14

I remained connected for over five hours today, I didn’t open the G&C frame during the raid as I didn’t want to screw things up. After the raid I opened it a few times, scrolled back to see what would happen and I didn’t disconnect.
Hopefully the patch last night had a fix?
I’ve no idea but I don’t have any extra data to provide containing a disconnect.

|                                      WinMTR statistics                                   |
|                       Host              -   %  | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
|                           RT-AX88U-77C8 -    0 | 9115 | 9115 |    0 |    0 |    5 |    0 |
|                            100.68.128.1 -    0 | 9115 | 9115 |    6 |   10 |  161 |    9 |
|                           180.150.0.245 -    0 | 9115 | 9115 |    6 |    9 |  141 |    9 |
|  be10-3999.core1.vdc03.mel.aussiebb.net -    1 | 9112 | 9111 |    7 |   10 |  153 |    9 |
|  be3.bdr1.coresite-la1.lax.aussiebb.net -    0 | 9115 | 9115 |  154 |  158 |  259 |  162 |
|      206.72.211.247.any2ix.coresite.com -    1 | 9111 | 9110 |  154 |  161 |  357 |  214 |
|              ae1-br01-csla1.as57976.net -    0 | 9115 | 9115 |  159 |  165 |  424 |  162 |
|       xe-0-0-1-3-br01-eqla1.as57976.net -    1 | 9087 | 9082 |  158 |  171 | 4405 |  163 |
|        et-0-0-2-br01-swlv10.as57976.net -    0 | 9088 | 9088 |  268 |  295 | 3499 |  405 |
|        et-0-0-0-pe04-swlv10.as57976.net -    1 | 9107 | 9105 |  160 |  165 |  312 |  162 |
|       las-swlv10-ia-bons-04.as57976.net -    0 | 9115 | 9115 |  160 |  163 |  259 |  166 |
|                           137.221.105.2 -    1 | 9111 | 9110 |  158 |  163 |  307 |  162 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|
   WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider```
15

Hey there Zakelwe, thanks for posting that new MTR test! It looks like this test was run for about two and a half hours, and the test shows no cause of concern. This would make sense if you didn’t disconnect while the test was running, as the MTR is most useful when you’re able to catch a disconnect while it’s running. I am, nevertheless, glad to hear that the connection has been more stable!

If the disconnects return, the best option will be to run another MTR test to capture a disconnect. This should provide us with the data needed to pinpoint where the problem is occurring within the home network or along the ISP’s route.

Thanks again for taking the time to provide detailed information and troubleshoot this with us. I’m hoping things remain stable for you!

16

If they return I’ll try and catch one.
I’d have liked to get useful data so it can be tracked down for others but I’m glad it’s stopped. I’ll be a little more social with my guild and see if that makes it happen more.

17

2 posts were split to a new topic: Malphas - disconnections