Red Minimap, PPPoE Lost Connection Problem

Since Monday, I've been having severe connection issues with SL.

I can't do anything significant (inventory, rezzing, etc.) for more than a few minutes without losing my connection to SL. The client doesn't crash. Instead, the mini-map turns red and I can't move. Must relog to fix it.

This is repeatable, it happens over and over. Essentially, SL is unusable for me.

This problem seems to be affecting a number of other residents, as well. There have been several posts to Second Life Answers referring to the mini-map going red.

My network configuration:

My computer
>> is directly connected via cable to a
D-Link DGL-4300 Wireless Gaming Router
>> which is connected to
a Westell 2100 DSL Router in bridge mode

DSL service uses PPPoE with username/password.

The D-Link Router is currently handling both DHCP and PPPoE. The Westell is acting merely as a modem. Both are running the most current firmware available.

This configuration has been working flawlessly for more than 6 months on a daily basis with SL.

The apparent problem:

After looking at this in detail, I discovered that the PPPoE session is getting shutdown somehow, but only when SL is running. This appears to be at least part of the problem, although I'm not sure if it is the cause or the effect. The D-Link router reestablishes the PPPoE session, but SL never recovers from it.

I've also tried connecting directly to the Westell router with it configured for PPPoE and I get the same result. So, I've eliminated the D-Link router as the source of the problem.

So, I'm confused!

This configuration has been working fine for me and now it doesn't.
I'm not enough of a network guru to know if this is something that has changed in SL or if the way my ISP handles PPPoE might have changed. Or maybe I'm completely off base about the PPPoE session being the problem.

Basically, I need input from the community as well as Linden Lab to hopefully come up with a solution or the right set of questions to ask my ISP.

i've been having about the same issues, tho my net work is not the issue since i don't have the the issue with any other online game, I play wow, DDO, DAOC, guild wars, ect, just fine with this set up, i only have a huge problem with your latest updates.

i know now why this game is free, hardly any one would pay to play it

Oh, and my network stats in SL are good up to the time of the problem.

I'm on a fast computer with a fast connection. I get 100-120ms ping times. FPS in the mid-teens with a 160 draw distance.

The connection and the computer are not under load when it happens.

I have had no problems. Which version of sl are you using windows, mac, linux? Also what speed is your dsl connection? And have you tried totally reinstalling sl and clearing the cache in the network settings at regular (i usually stick to mabye every 3 days) intervals? as well as fiddling with network settings/graphics settings and otherwise. Also is the router opened to the correct ports for SL to use? There are any number of things it could be but wait and see for now i'd completely reinstall SL though as i have had 0 problems sure stuff gets slow sometimes with inventory but i have a huge inventory never crashed.

FYI for reference going to put down my system specs.

Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 2 (build 2600)

1.67 gigahertz AMD Sempron (2400+)
128 kilobyte primary memory cache
256 kilobyte secondary memory cache

250.05 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
214.71 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

LITE-ON LTR-40125S [CD-ROM drive]

ST3250823A [Hard drive] (250.06 GB)

Motherboard - MSI K7N2 Delta2

2 gigs of ram (ddr) pc3200 400mhz

nvidia geforce 6600 (agp edition)

built in ethernet connected to a motorola surfboard cable modem on a 7.5 mbps cable connection.

It's possible you're using dynamic PPPoE. The connection may not be staying on full-time. Also the router may not see SL data as activity, so it times out.

To check this go into PPPoE settings on your router, and set connection mode for always-on or the longest idle time you can set.

gus

not sure on my connection but it's fine for other games so it should be fine for your game

and also my computer is a fresh format just last week and system

2.01 amd 64-bit 3200+
160gig hard drive
dual socket 1gig 400mhz ram
fxf 6600 g-force 126mb

2mb wireless DSL (thinks that's the term)

you see wireless is tricky. Also there is a vast difference saying its ok for other games. Connection wise it may not be great for SL as SL can chew up internet connections also unless the wireless is coming thru at full speed to your laptop or whatever your using then its unlikely even at 2 mb. Quite often wireless routers are dumbing down the connection that the laptop or whatever is wireless receives. That varies per router though. I plug in a direct line at most times though i do have a router as well. Simply because of the dumbing down.

There are a few factors Gus pointed one out and as i have said try reinstalling sl freshly sometimes stuff gets weird when your just updating stuff ( i tend to do a fresh install each update just to be safe at times) this was reccomended to me by a linden by the way when i was having problems with SL and sure enough it fixed em. Now i've had computer troubles since then and my NIC/ethernet card basically told me to f'ck off for awhile (still allowed data but was being very slow). But have had no actual problems with sl.

Windows XP Professional, SP2



6 Mps download, 512 Kps upload



of course. I tried clearing the cache earlier in the week and fiddled with settings. Today, I uninstalled SL and reinstalled.



I can't say for sure, but SL worked fine on Friday and didn't on Monday. Nothing has changed. I'm able to connect fine and perform actions such as looking at inventory, rezzing from inventory before the connection dies.



Here are mine:

Windows XP Professional SP2

Pentium 4 3.6 GHz
2 MB RAM

nVidia Geforce 6600 256MB pci-e

Direct ethernet cable to D-Link DGL-4300 Gaming Router and Westell 2100 DSL modem. 6Mps

Thanks, Gus, but the router is set up as Always On.

It's interesting that Lina has had no problems on a cable connection, whereas we both have DSL.

Lina, does cable use PPPoE?

no i'm directly connected to the router, but i get the "interenet" from a wireless connection from a company, dish the house, but I just moved and I used to have a normal DSL connection as you would think of it, the connection speed is about the same if not better, but the issue you don't seem to understand is that it's just happen, and there has been no connection difference on my end.

ok i lied I did change service types, but I've used this connection before (moved in with a friend that has this set up) and had no issues with it before, so why now?

No my cable is always on unless i shut it off. And i dont use a router to play on SL i use a direct line.

Well it could be a lapse of service on the ISP's end if it goes thru a dish that can cause other problems. Wireless internet in that format isnt 100% stable and is going to have moment with that. Especially working with SL internet connections are a bit just blech. It may be your isp it may not. Do you run spyware/antivirus checks and defrag on a regular basis as well because those can attribute to a massive network slow down.

My DSL is always on unless I shut it off, too.

But underneath it uses PPPoE to connect, which is basically I guess a session-based protocol that uses a userid/password.

But of course, there are other ways to do it. The ISP could give you a static IP address or you could get a dynamic IP address directly from a DHCP server on the ISP's network.

It's been bugging me that such a glaring problem wasn't widespread and it just seems that somehow it might be linked to PPPoE.

i've had the problem with both DSL types, wired and wireless.

i'm thinking it's something they did in one of the updates

I defragged this morning while I was waiting for SL to come back. I do that pretty much on every upgrade.

I think it is too, but it isn't affecting everyone or the forums would be filled with messages.

So, the question is "What's the thing in common between all the people with the problem?"

My cable connection doesnt require a username/password. Its literally always on i cant log out or what have you i can only shut off my ethernet card or unplug my modem to stop the connection (or use software that stops all internet based activities)

Add me to the list. I've not only been having this problem, Shack, but it's actually been tanking the router itself. I'm also running under Window's XP but with a DSL modem and a Linksys Wireless-G 2.4GHz Broadband Router running my home network.

I had this problem crop up in an earlier update a few months ago. It not only dropped my connection, it toasted my router, requiring a software reset. This has happened again following last week's update.

In my case, I have email and YIM running in the background, so it's not an idle connection. I've tried closing all other background apps and tsr's to see if there was a conflict, but still the same problem.

SL is the only thing that has ever messed with my router, so I'm curious to know where the glitch is.

Just ran WinMTR as instructed here

13 % packet loss on one of the ISP nodes. I probably need to check into that...

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|                                      WinMTR statistics                                   |
|                       Host              -   %  | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
|                             192.168.0.1 -    0 |  496 |  496 |    0 |   26 |   46 |   31 |
|                           68.216.218.60 -    0 |  496 |  496 |    0 |   10 |   47 |    0 |
|                            68.216.218.1 -    1 |  496 |  495 |    0 |   11 |   47 |    0 |
|                          205.152.181.25 -    1 |  496 |  495 |   15 |   31 |  219 |   16 |
|          axr00asm-7-1-0-0.bellsouth.net -   13 |  496 |  436 |   15 |   22 |   47 |   16 |
|            pxr00asm-0-0-0.bellsouth.net -    0 |  496 |  496 |   15 |   23 |  109 |   32 |
|       so-1-0-0.gar1.Atlanta1.Level3.net -    1 |  496 |  495 |   15 |   23 |  125 |   31 |
|        ae-1-55.bbr1.Atlanta1.Level3.net -    0 |  496 |  496 |   15 |   22 |  125 |   31 |
|     as-0-0.mp2.SanFrancisco1.Level3.net -    0 |  495 |  495 |   93 |  109 |  265 |  109 |
|  ge-6-0-0.gar1.SanFrancisco1.Level3.net -    0 |  495 |  495 |   93 |  107 |  219 |  110 |
|INTERNAP-NE.gar1.SanFrancisco1.Level3.net -    0 |  495 |  495 |   93 |  110 |  313 |  109 |
|    border1.ge2-1-bbnet2.sfo002.pnap.net -    0 |  495 |  495 |   93 |  112 |  328 |  109 |
|                 data.agni.lindenlab.com -    0 |  495 |  495 |   93 |  105 |  125 |   94 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|
   WinMTR - 0.7. Copyleft @2000-2001 Vasile Laurentiu Stanimir  ( [email]stanimir@cr.nivis.com[/email] )

This won't help you Shack, but your last post is the reson I'm hopping on.

I have both Cable (Comcast) and DSL (Verizon). The cable is 6Mbps/384Kbps, the DSL is 3Mbps/768Kbps. The cable is connected through a Linksys Router W54GT I believe. The DSL is a direct connect to the modem.

With cable I get 0% packet loss. With DSL I get 8-15% packet loss. I have not investigated, I have gone with the solution that works.

In other tests, on Xbox Live I can routinely host 12 player matches on Far Cry Instincts with no lag, and 20 player matches with Star Wars Battlefront, using the DSL. The cable upload speed means I cannot do the same, of course, but it appears that there are indeed huge differences in connection service between the two systems (i.e. Xbox Live doesn't have the same connection issues as Second Life).

Thanks, Granville! That's good to know.

I started suspecting something like that last night and ordered a cable connection. But I'm not optimistic about that solving my problem. Back in the day (before I knew anything about home networking), I tried to get cable broadband. But it didn't work and the tech guys were singularly unhelpful, so I switched to DSL. But who knows. I'm much more knowledgeable now and maybe whatever the problem was has been corrected.

Last night I also saw huge packet loss in one of the San Francisco network nodes just outside LL. 50% packet loss. I'm also wondering if that could be a contributing factor. I posted about it here.

Edit:

Oh, and this is interesting. just ran WinMTR with SL and got these interesting numbers.

At the same time, SL reported a 13% packet loss in the About Second Life dialog. But what's really interesting is that it wasn't reporting packet loss in the stats display. But I turned on the debug console and could see lots of messages about packets being received out of order in SL.

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|                                      WinMTR statistics                                   |
|                       Host              -   %  | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
|                        Host Unreachable -   14 |  200 |  173 |    0 |    5 |   62 |    0 |
|                        Host Unreachable -   31 |  200 |  138 |    0 |   10 |   47 |   16 |
|                        Host Unreachable -   33 |  200 |  135 |    0 |   11 |   32 |    0 |
|                        Host Unreachable -   35 |  200 |  131 |   15 |   30 |  219 |   16 |
|                        Host Unreachable -   38 |  200 |  124 |   15 |   22 |   32 |   16 |
|                        Host Unreachable -   33 |  200 |  135 |   15 |   22 |  125 |   16 |
|                        Host Unreachable -   33 |  200 |  134 |   15 |   22 |  157 |   16 |
|                        Host Unreachable -   33 |  200 |  135 |   15 |   24 |   94 |   31 |
|                        Host Unreachable -   31 |  200 |  138 |   93 |  105 |  218 |  156 |
|                        Host Unreachable -   33 |  200 |  134 |   78 |   98 |  187 |  109 |
|                        Host Unreachable -   34 |  200 |  132 |   93 |  101 |  250 |  125 |
|                        Host Unreachable -   33 |  199 |  135 |   93 |  106 |  297 |  110 |
|                        Host Unreachable -   24 |  173 |  132 |   93 |  101 |  125 |  125 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|
   WinMTR - 0.7. Copyleft @2000-2001 Vasile Laurentiu Stanimir  ( stanimir@cr.nivis.com )

Just spoke to Bellsouth.

Not surprisingly, there wasn't much help there.

Last weekend, I put in an order to upgrade from DSL 1.5Mps to 6.0Mps. Then, Monday, I started having these extreme problems (Oddly, enough the service is called Extreme 6 )

Anyway, I had decided before starting the conversation today that I wanted to go back to 1.5Mps. I don't have time to debug this problem. I told him my story--about the 10-15% packet loss that I'm experiencing in the DSL network.

He ran a diagnostic and couldn't find anything wrong (no surprise). To be fair, the speed of it is good. I'm getting 6Mps to their network and I clocked 3Mps across the internet using a third party speed test. But it does have packet loss and I'm concerned that maybe the 6Mps version is using some tricks which allow packet ordering to get more scrambled than normal.

So, we decided to downgrade me back to 1.5Mps.

I'm not convinced that it will help, but it's a step. 2 business days.

And I've got an order in to the cable company as well to try out cable broadband.

*sigh*

Yes, unfortunately they must use tricks to pass the DLS standard of 1.5/1.5 which was stress tested over copper to determine those numbers and tie them to land-line distance from the carrier's hub. To get the higher numbers they must multiplex multiple lines and with copper this causes multiple reduncy checks which can lead to packet loss. Until we all get fiber connections tricks will be played to up download speeds, while most people will not even think of upload.

The one particularly telling thing you mentioned and that I was trying to skate around is seeing no packet loss from a debug application yet still experiencing it in Second Life. SL uses a number of protocols including broadcast packets that can be lost where regular ones are not. Without better protocol documentation I'm at a loss.

If you get a chance check out libsecondlife's work as they have had to deal with packet problems, particularly non-clocking kinds requiring old-style loop wait code instead of event-driven execution.

LOL It gets even better!

What about the opposite! Seeing packet loss in the debug application and yet not experiencing it in Second Life!

Well, they put me back on 1.5Mps today, even though they said it would take two days.

And as far as I can tell, I'm back to normal!

But I just ran WinMTR and I got a worse packet loss (17%). And when I was just in SL with it working again, the About Second Life dialog showed an overall packet loss of less than 2%. And it's working great.

The debug console is still spewing spooky messages about out of order packets, but somehow SL is hanging together now.

I honestly don't know what to make of any of this.