Black screen of connection problems - dev attention please

[LOMS]

i'm well aware of the connection behaviour of the client, thank you very much for the lecture.
I fail to see how that explanation is relevant here, though. What is your point ?

You've mentioned port 80 and TCP protocol. I said port 80 may cause different problem and our problem is related to UDP protocol and port 1870 only.

If I had to hazard a guess, it's not the change of IP address that does the trick but the fact that you are disguising your internet traffic (probably routing the TCP parts this client uses through port 80 of the proxy).

[Kandarim]

well, the proxy will tunnel the UDP communication through TCP port 80 as well.

After all, UDP is best-effort: it still seems to be an intermediate router dropping UDP packets, and there is very little the devs can do aside from moving away from UDP completely.

[LOMS]

well, the proxy will tunnel the UDP communication through TCP port 80 as well.

After all, UDP is best-effort: it still seems to be an intermediate router dropping UDP packets, and there is very little the devs can do aside from moving away from UDP completely.

Which proxy are you talking about?

[Kandarim]

the private tunnelling thing you've suggested a couple of times now.

[LOMS]

the private tunnelling thing you've suggested a couple of times now.

AFAIK, it uses completely different ports.

I can't get your point. Do you think, if completely different people, with different hardware and software, living in different places, have the same issue with Salem and have no issues with any other games (even very similar to Salem in all parts. H&H), there is no hidden flaw in Salem's protocol/connection setup and this is not a dev's problem?

[Kandarim]

the private tunnelling thing you've suggested a couple of times now.

AFAIK, it uses completely different ports.

that's the whole point.

I can't get your point. Do you think, if completely different people, with different hardware and software, living in different places, have the same issue with Salem and have no issues with any other games (even very similar to Salem in all parts. H&H), there is no hidden flaw in Salem's protocol/connection setup and this is not a dev's problem?

given that using a tunnel service solves this,

no.

[LOMS]

the private tunnelling thing you've suggested a couple of times now.

AFAIK, it uses completely different ports.

that's the whole point.

I can't get your point. Do you think, if completely different people, with different hardware and software, living in different places, have the same issue with Salem and have no issues with any other games (even very similar to Salem in all parts. H&H), there is no hidden flaw in Salem's protocol/connection setup and this is not a dev's problem?

given that using a tunnel service solves this,

no.

Tunnel doesn't solves this. Tunnel ignores or automatically corrects a deviation from protocol (like some advanced routers or firmware can do), while router can drop corrupted packets from the server, or server ignore corrupted packet from client. As far as I dug into that, that's a packet with message, containing character list.

[Procne]

If the issue is with corrupted UDP packets, and it's fixed (or ignored as you said) by tunnels then there is nothing devs can do. Because it means corruption happens on the way and is not caused by bugged server or client code. Maybe it's the overlord Putin messing with his firewalls too much?

[LOMS]

If the issue is with corrupted UDP packets, and it's fixed (or ignored as you said) by tunnels then there is nothing devs can do. Because it means corruption happens on the way and is not caused by bugged server or client code. Maybe it's the overlord Putin messing with his firewalls too much?

Putin In Canada? Seriously?

Well, have you ever solved strange network problems before? You know, when 1 dude start capturing outgoing packets from his side, second dude starts capturing packets from the other side, they both looking what has changed during transmission, looking into routs, etc. If they can't find anything at their level - they asking their ISPs to clear this up, then engineers from their ISPs sets up filtred package capture for them and here they go again.
After data has been gathered and analysis has passed, there is not too much possible options:
- fix server,
- fix hosting/data center,
- fix client,
- fix ISP routing/problems,
- fix nothing, because noone can tell what's going on.

If you think I'm worrying about my Salem - don't worry, it's always working when I want it to, because I'm IT specialist after all. But other players aren't. Some of them sucessfully abandoned or never tried Salem because of the problem. I'm not OK with that, I'm pointing at the problem and offering my help, that's all.

[MagicManICT]

This statement could be useful, but too many people across the world, with different ISPs, has the problem and I doubt they have problems with anything but Salem. And there is no problem with H&H (Salem's direct ancestor). Thus, I claim this server side issue.

Haven has had the issue in the past, and I'm not aware of it ever getting fixed beyond it being a 3rd party software or hardware problem locally. Yes, there could be an obscure bug in the code that combined with the right software or hardware causes the problem. The problem is that I've seen at least three categories of causes of it--hardware, software, and ISP related--and within each cause, there might be a few different potential fixes. In hardware, it's been bad firmware or even a bad router model. In software, it's been software configuration (some firewalls block Java connection by default, but don't flat out block the program), needing to open specific ports for Java/Salem, or flat out buggy or poorly designed firewalls (Comodo and ESET come to mind).

The point of contacting your ISP is that the can send out test data and monitor the connection to see where the problem lies. At least if you can pin it down to a cause outside of the client, you can at least bring something to help troubleshoot.

And if you're a good programmer, you should know that you can recreate the bug situation without actually finding the source of the bug just by screwing with the wrong thing. If you've double checked your work, good, and you can take that statement as my paranoia showing.