Unable to teleport

Hi, I raised a ticket 4051-7031358 as I keep haveing random problems with being unable to teleport. All that seems to happen is that support close the ticket after about 2 weeks with the same answers which do not work and I reopen it again. I am being treated as if I am stupid as it is clear that support does not beleive there is a problem even though I have demonstrated it during several live sessions. I have tried all the suggestions such as supping down my huds etc. I have even tried teleporting with the test Char with no clothes etc. This does not work.

If I log onto the place where I want to get too, I usually find I have lost my groups or I can't move and I can't TP back so shopping is a pain. I then end up re logging and clearing cache an number of times until I get everything back. I have tried using 2 different PC's both of which have way above the minimum requirements. I am not using a wireless connection and I have a a DSL connection which when I have problems still provides around 3000KBPS download and 1000kBPS upload to a test site on the West coast of the USA (I am in the UK).

I have tried using Emerald which appeared to gave a slightly better performance but was used by support to close the ticket as I wasn't using the standard viewer.

Any suggestions?

My first suggestion is to not bother with other viewers until this is solved. They may be fine to use later, but none of them are going to make something this serious magically disappear. (It was a fair thing to try, but it doesn't actually test very much about what could go wrong with TPing, so unfortunately we couldn't learn much from it this time.)

Given that even the dreaded Test AVs have the problem, it seems very likely to be network related, although not the limited-bandwidth-and-dropped-packets variety of problem that one gets with wireless connections. If Support didn't already tell you to do this: try powering down every piece of network gear on your LAN, wait a minute, and then power everything up and try again.

When that doesn't work, you're facing some ugly choices. It could still be your local network, with a misconfigured or flaky firewall or router, or it could be on your ISP's side. Ideally, you'd try logging in your existing account on a completely different machine at a different location, to see if the same problem obtains there.

I guess you could also create a new account and try that from your current location, just to rule-out any account-specific (e.g., Inventory-related) artifacts... but I think that's pretty unlikely, given that the Test AVs don't work.

What model is your DSL modem-router doodad?

If you can swap your modem-router for a different one, you might try that.

Can you access your modem-router control panel?

Have you done a trace route ?

Could you paste the text of the tickets you filed and the responses from support?

Thank you Qie and SuezanneC. I can't really paste the ticket and support response to it as it is several pages. The problem with the support response is that it just keeps repeating the so called Tips and not providing any real help, nor do they actually read the whole of my input. For example In reply to my input about not being able to TP using the test AV with no clothes on the sent me the link to tips which tells me to try TPing with no clothes or huds on and closed the ticket.

Moving onto connection stuff, the problem occurs with 2 different modem routers and 2 different networks within the UK. The 2nd network is the new UK 21CN up to 20Mbyte connection system. I looked into the possibility of latency issues and my internal system was fine with normal ping (>1 ms) times - tracert gave me the same times to Level3 as LL in the US. around 173ms when I had the problem to when I didn't. Ping times to loadbalancer at LL are 113Ms or there abouts

I had the same issue with an ALT I tried too- what happens is that the TP starts and then nothing (the bar= don't really move from just below 1/4) until I get logged out.

One thing I have noticed that when it does happen it happens about 8pm UK time (mid day West coast) - this isn't the peak time in the UK that happens at abou 6pm when ppl log on after work and it only happens on week days. Next time it happens I will try using my laptop on 3G with a different provider to eliminate that

Just to add some things. I see in Technical issues that there are or has been a number of posts describing the same problems as I have had. It also came up in a chat group that I belong too and a significant number of ppl on line (about 1/2) have occasional issues. I have bee trying to get them to raise tickets if is happens - most ppl seem to put it down to that's just SL but unless ppl complain in numbers LL won't fix it.

Maybe this problem is more sporadic and intermittent than I appreciated on first reading. Just to be sure: when this starts happening, it occurs regardless of the origin and destination sims, right? And other folks can successfully TP between those pairs while you can't?

Some sims get into a condition where they just won't process teleport requests fast enough to prevent the viewer timing out on them, or will even strand the viewer in some weird state in the handshake protocol such that the viewer locks up (although the latter seems to happen less these days). This is usually but not always associated with the sim being very busy.

My hunch is still that there's something subtly wrong with the networking... firewall... anti-virus... something suppressing packets from one or the other sim host involved in the TP.

Thanks for the response to answer some of the questions and points:

a. Yes it is intermittent, it used to occur say twice a week on week days.Since the maintenance I have only seen this once but I am now seeing AVs very slow to rezz (large parts remain grey for a noticeable time).

b. It does seem to happen irrespective of where the start and end points are. It happens irrespective of how may prims I have on too. As a test I have tried running a number of ALTs. I currently have 4 on line on 2 PCs and I am able to TP all of them even 2 at the same with HUDs and AOs on and high prim shoes and jewellery. When the problem occurs, I can't TP one even with that one being the only one on line.

c.I said it does seem to happen irrespective of the start and end points, but when I was in contact with Porter Linden and later Jason Linden, we did notice it slower to tp back to my home, Jason did suggest that there maybe an issue with the SIM and asked me to raise this in the Ticket. I did but it was ignored and I was advised to remove all the prims I had attached. and they closed to ticket (I didn't have any on!). I have a feeling that there maybe a double problem - one with my home Sim and another system one.

As you have found, support is next to useless. The overwhelming majority of the time they give pat answers (did you clear your cache and try again? read the wiki? etc) and then unceremoniously close the ticket. Or just ignore it and eventually close it. Not what any of us that actually work in the Real World would call support at all.

To give a close example to what you submitted, I used to be in another sim. One day teleports started failing (both to that sim and within that sim) and people would be dumped just over the border in another sim. Every once in an extremely rare while they would work, but we could be pretty confident of reproducing the error each time we tried (yes, everyone that went to that sim noticed it, no matter the viewer, attachments, or whatever). This went on so long that many people thought we had just shriveled up and died.

Myself and a lot of people had to keep submitting practically identical tickets for weeks. We quickly learned to add 'it does not ALWAYS work every time, so make sure you are not doing something unusual like running with your Linden powers turned on'. They would just give us a pat 'it works for me' every time and close the ticket. Finally, we just had to abandon our land and move to another sim.

If there is a network problem I would suspect it is between their network and the outside world. Given that someone on their net claims it works for them and everyone outside the net had it fail most of the time.

Hi Linda, I've been having similar issues here, and I've heard of others who are having problems too. Technical Issues has various threads mentioning this.

My problems started months ago before I upgraded my iMac to OS X 10.5 from 10.4. I did this to try help with freezing and crashing issues I was having with SL. Everything else on my Mac worked fine, and various tickets raised amounted to nothing. Anyway the upgrade cured that problem, but since then I have been getting the same intermittent teleport issues that you talk about.

I raised a ticket at the time which was closed because I was silly enough to experiment with another viewer to see if the problems were the same there, same thing that happened to you.

Eventually things seemed to settle down for a while, so I didn't bother pursuing it.
Now though things are back to square one. It's always worse for me as soon as more users are online. Anything over around 52,000-53,000 and things start to go pair shaped.

I have noticed that if I get stuck logging in at the "Initializing multimedia..." stage, things are at their worst if I do eventually get in. No land info is available, groups usually vanish and saving scripts, notecards etc give and "Unable to upload error", and teleports or sim crossings just end with "You have been logged out of Second Life".

I have just raised another ticket mentioning all this.

I too am in the UK and was starting to wonder if my ISP could be the problem as sometimes when these problems occur I'll try a speed test and my download speed may be poor. More recently though download speeds haven't been so bad, I'm getting pretty much the speeds I'm used to. My ISP is PlusNet btw. One thing I did also wonder about was just general broadband traffic here in the UK. Especially at the moment, with the weather being horrid. More people are staying in and and spending time online maybe? Or maybe the general link between UK users and the SL servers is pretty poor?

Thank you Kara and wow Prawnylocks, we have a lot in common.

I am using Vista, but your experience with the Mac is identical to mine, including the initialising media bit. Now here is the thing I am on Plusnet too ! I have noticed that there have been reports of issues on plus net with the BT 21CN network and latency. I had the problem with crashing etc before and after I was moved to the BT 21CN network, so I am fairly sure that that is not the problem here, indeed I have not seen extended ping times during such a session.

For info to non UK ppl in the Uk, the bulk of broadband connections are via British Telecom Wholesale who provide the actual connection between the copper of the house and the Internet Service Provider (ISP). The 21CN network is the latest technology and is designed to allow TV and other services to be provided. Eventually it is planed to give all digital services including voice using VOIP, it currently provides up to 20Mbyte connection.

Somebody raised this issue again last night, see above topic

This has hit me again today - but the results are a little different - I get a unable to complete your TP in a timely manor. If I try again I get logged out. It also seems to be just some places I can get too and some I can't. I contacted Live chat and they recommended that I raise a bug report. The issue is still happening.

Mmm... very strange. I didn't have any bother at all tonight. Speed tests and pings were also the best I've had in ages. Shall have to see how things pan out here.

Finally cleared, I think that the issue is that being in the UK, we are along with most of Europe a little slower in our connection - it takes that bit longer to reach LL in San Francisco. So if SL slow down a little - lots of PPl logged on or in the sim we are trying to get to we don't make the TP in time and it just times out. Clearly this can be made worse it we are trying to transfer loads of Prims too - the hair I am wearing right now is 93 prims and there are shoes hud etc it all adds up. Most of the time this is not an issue and TP goes wooosh Bang but at the limits then it does matter.

looking back at yesterday, there were issues with the MSQL database which mut have increased the bandwith used until the updates and the inventories etc have downloaded fully. One of the Sims I was trying to TP to was very laggy when I logged on there haveing failed to tp and I had still not rezzed properly after 10 mins - I still could not move, and the Sim Ping time was over twice my ping time to LL. I was able to tp there this morning (Around 12:30 am SLt) and rezz almost instantaneously even with all my prims and huds.

Take care all

Would be nice if this helped sort things out.

The last few days I was having issues with TPing it was a hit and miss thing.
I contacted live help and was told to remove my boots i did and could TP. When I arrived i put them back on and all was fine till I went to TP again, once removed I could TP

I think you are right. I have raised a bug report SVC - 5257 lets see if that does anything. I have just got a request for my log files too so it maybe something is moving

Sorry Windswept, that is not relevant in this case I could not TP with a default AV with no prims, huds or AO's ther was nothing to take off.

It could very easily be a timeout issue - I don't know if LL can adjust SL's server timeouts for transAtlantic users to be longer, but I know it's impractical to adjust lower-level protocol timeouts, and you may be up against those.

Just looking at forum threads, it seems to me that UK has a disproportionate number of folks who have problems with SL, more than Germany, for example. I DO know that BT's 21st Century service uses traffic management in the network, and I wonder if your problems are being exacerbated by selective traffic throttling of streaming during peak traffic times. You would have to call BT about that, and hack your way through 1st and 2nd level support representatives until you reach a technician who actually knows something.

For most service providers, 8PM is a peak time for streaming traffic - folks have come home and are watching films, listening to Shoutcast, and of course gaming. Unfortunately, that is also pretty close to SL's daily peak concurrency, which (at least last year) used to be at 10AM SLT.

Note, too, that SL has 2 data centers, one in SanFran and one in Dallas, which may contribute to the variability sim-to-sim.

I hope they really do make a Euro data center SOON. The transatlantic cable just doesn't help. What are your typical ping times (from the stats panel in SL)?

Voted for and commented on.
Still waiting for a response to my ticket though