1.7 Issue - Network Clogging

Hello,

Since the 1.7 release, I've been having problems, so I've waited a bit to see if it would settle. However, I've not seen any posts on here concerning my specific issue, so I thought I'd post it. Yes, I know that I should e-mail, but I would first like to see if it is just me having a problem, or if several people are having the problem.

In detail, what happens with me is that SL just doesn't seem to stay connected. I can't move, and the minimap land turns red. All other programs on my computer can't connect to the internet any more, and everything logs out. I'm running WinXP SP2. If I try to disable the Network Connection, it won't even do that. It just sits there, still enabled, after clicking "disable". Clicking on Repair causes it to say "Connection failed". How useful an error message is that?

Also, I noticed that on our network, after this has happened the network gets rather erratic. Only once the computer has been rebooted does it stabilise again, suggesting to me at least that for some reason, SL is choking our internal network. Either that, or it's doing something really odd to the network adapter in my computer, seeing as I can't even disable or re-enable it, and it actually affects the rest of the network despite the fact it's merely a workstation, not acting as a server.

Yes, I am sure this is SL doing it, because we've now tried several times to recreate the problem. It always happens when SL is running (and ONLY SL) and doesn't happen if SL isn't running. And it's only started happening since the upgrade.

Does this sound like anything anyone else is experiencing?

Oh, the specs. Running WinXP SP2, ATI Radeon 9600, AMD Duron 1.4GHz processor, 768MB DDR333 RAM.

-Tungro Oe

Could you provide a bit of background on your network? What service is being used for the internet (DSL,CABLE,T1 etc...)? Do you have a router/firewall hardware device often called a broadband router/gateway , if so what is the brand/model of it? If no hardware solution is used, are you using software based Routing i.e. Interent sharing in Windows or dedicated Linux/UNIX routing using IPChains or IPTables? Do more than 1 computer access SL at a time?

I am interested because I have similar issues with 1.7 too but they seem to go away after a few moments and only reappear when entering a new area while my system caches the textures and such.

I'm connected to 3Mbit/s downstream cable. It is connected to a Linux box, running iptables. Normally it is the only computer connecting to SL, and the problems seem to occur irrespective of whether someone else has logged in (tried this as I've got a friend staying over who plays SL).

We've been trying to gather more information about it, and noticed a few more things in the meantime.

When it causes this problem, the mouse sometimes stops working. Bringing up the Task Manager shows that SL tries to grab all the CPU processing power - it's running at 99% during this time. At the instance we looked at, it was not eating all memory - it was using some 300MB (I have 768MB DDR333 RAM, and the pagefile is set to 758MB-1.5GB).

I can now say for sure it's to do with SL because we've tried again and again to reproduce the problem and it only occurs when SL is running.

I will do some digging around my network to watch what happens. Although you mentioned using an AMD Duron proc, that is about equiv to an Intel Celeron aka K-Mart CPU due to it's low cost. Memory and vid sound pretty darned good, but I have ideas that your CPU may not be able to completely handle the floating point math involved for SL. I know it is a weird thing to try, but if you could get your hands on an Athlon proc, even one at 1.4GHz, that may solve the issue. I know the L2 cache is smaller if not present on the Duron proc, I almost think they crippled it in some way or other to reduce it's cost and market it as a budget CPU (I never trusted the budget products by AMD due to past experience with their stuff , just seems that they do things just to be able to compete with Intel)

I've got the same problems now myself. I don't know what's going on, but it kills my connection to my router and knocks me off from SL, as well as the internet for a while.

This is starting to get to be ridiculous!

These symptoms could be related. Although I am not on a network.

Zania, what graphics card have you got? I think I might be detecting a possible trend?

I've got a Connect3d ATi Radeon 9600. I'm using the 5.9 version of the Catalyst software when problems occurred, so I tried to upgrade to 5.10 with no luck. Fully uninstalling all the drivers and stuff and then reinstalling drivers did not help. And even uninstalling and then installing the 5.7 drivers (the oldest I can see on ATi's website) did not help (made it worse in fact because it started to screw up another game of mine). The only other bit of news I have is that with that other game, it crashed to give a divide by 0 error.

Elror: Do you mean /142/ae/67863/1.html or a different one?

Just starting hear more about caching and network problems today....

All right, just discovered something more!

Something in the SL client is causing my computer to screw up. Even if I load SL and don't actually log in, just leave it running, after some time the crash happens.

Now, the interesting thing is, it seems to screw up whatever window has the current focus. For instance, I opened SL, didn't log in, then opened WinAmp and loaded a music stream. I left the focus on WinAmp, then after some random amount of time WinAmp just ended up looping about 2s of the stream, couldn't click on anything, then the PC speaker added to the din by beeping continuously. Until we hit the reset button on the PC case! The only way to get it to shut up heh...

...hiya tungroe - i'm having the exactly same problem (well, your first issue with SL killing your network, i haven't noticed the OS focus thing) and my sytem couldn't be more different from yours...

...i'm running a dual g5 macintosh under OSX 10.4.x, and it's exactly as you describe, it kills my whole network connection, OS-wide, and the only solution even with a reboot seems to be to reboot my DSL modem...it's very odd because networking under OS X is far more robust than this, but i think the problem mightn't even be happening on the computer side of things - something about the network traffic SL is generating is, i suspect, causing my ISP to drop my connection on their end...

...that's the best conclusion i can draw, since i have to reset my DSL modem every time (power off/power back on) in order for it to log into my ISP again...

I'm having similar troubles. Sim crash, followed by router reset cycle (not modem) and partial or complete loss of internet functions. Sometimes I can recover it without rebooting, but usually I have to reset modem, router, and computer to make certain everything comes back.

I've seen it from time to time before I started using SL, but nowhere near as often as I have with SL, and in SL, nowhere near as often as since 1.7 (but I have been in SL only a short time, so my pre 1.7 experiences are limited).

AMD Athlon 2400
NVidia NForce chipset motherboard with onboard network adapter
Linksys adapter card (I'll have to check which of these is the internet later, it's been awhile and I'm not sure offhand)
1 gig ram
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128 megs
Belkin router
Cable internet
We have wireless as well, but my machine isn't running through that.

I don't know about the mac *grins* but the PC you've got Dyne is very similar to mine in three regards:

My computer has an ATi Radeon graphics card
My computer has an nVidia NForce chipset motherboard with onboard network adapter (this is what I use)
My server has a Linksys network adapter (LNE100TX)

In my experience, I don't need to restart the router, but I do need to restart my desktop, and the network seems to stabilise whenever the desktop is fully booted.

I just now noticed that 2 of the reported systems have Linksys NICS in them, perhaps it is an issue with the NIC drivers and SL and not a video card issue? Just wondering if there are more systems out there that have this issue and have Linksys NICs in them.

Presently, my computer is using the Linksys for the net. The onboard interface is unused.

However, it doesn't seem likely to be a problem entirely on the client machine. My router is actually flaking at the same time SL gets weird ("network cable unplugged" in windows and all the port indicator lights on the router behave as though it were power cycled).

...i think you're right - i've never had this problem before 1.7 and unless i'm the only mac user experiencing it i can't imagine it having anything to do with the client machine, especially since your symptoms read exactly like what i'm seeing...i'm not going through a router but am directly connected to a speedstream 5100 DSL modem; no idea what chipset it uses for its ethernet bridge...

...couldn't something about the network traffic which 1.7 generates just before these crashes be killing the connection on the router/modem/ISP side of things?..

The thing is, in my instance, the client machine does NOT have a Linksys card. The router HAS got a Linksys card. My guess is that that doesn't seem to be causing the issue.

I've just performed a complete wipe and reinstall of Windows, installing only the bare essentials, and then tried SL again. Unfortunately, it still happens. I'm going to try a packet sniffer now to have a look exactly what does happen on the network when the problems occur.

Opening the big map has a better than even chance of triggering this problem for me. Closer to 85-90 percent of the time.

That's not the only thing that does it, but it's a pretty consistent behavior. Gotten any more info from the packet sniffer?

Also, I swapped my machine's net connection from the Linksys card to my onboard ethernet port, and the problem still happens.

I've only been playing for a few days now, but this is a problem for me too. I'm almost certain that it's due to the Linksys 802.11b router I use. It just doesn't seem to be up to the task of handling sustained heavy activity.

How am I trying to solve it? My buying a new router, of course! I ordered an Airport Extreme on Saturday and am now just waiting to receive it. I'll let you all know how it turns out. I realize that's probably not a viable solution for everyone, but it should shed some light on the situation.

I dont use a linksys router right now .. but I have found that after running SL .. my DSL modem will have dropped its connection from 3meg to as low as 300K to the central office. This ONLY happens when I or my roommate use SL and ONLY since 1.7. Its a westell router/modem.

This makes no sense to us .. anyone have a suggestion as to why it happens?

thank you
Josh

I'm not having problems connecting to anything but SL and when I am in game I move sooo slow, and I am on a T1 and all other games and MMO's and the net are fine. Not that it's really related to your issue, but my connection on a T1 is pretty terrible to SL itself. I can barely move in game no matter where I tele and I did reinstall and delete the cache blah blah (things you shouldn't have to do in any game, and I never had to do those things but in SL). Besides I am having this problem on two machines in two different locations with two somewhat different connection types.

I had very similar problems that occurred after the upgrade. However, I found the problem to be my Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200BG built in adaptor. I switched to a PCMCIA Linksys adaptor and the problems disappeared.

The latest patch seems to have fixed it for me...

...at least most of it. It's definitely reduced it a lot - it's only happened once since the update about a week ago. I'm wondering whether that was just a random glitch? But it did require a computer reboot to get it to work again.

...the network-kill issue has diminished greatly for myself as well - but it hasn't gone away entirely...i'm still getting one or two network connection crashes a night, always fixed by simply rebooting my DSL modem, then restablishing the network connection on my own machine...

Try disabling your UPnP service, odd as that might sound.

I listen to the rhythm of Second Life like raindrops and I've definitely felt something be off the last few todays. I'll shall see what happens today.