Cannot stay connected (again)

Some time ago, I posted about this problem happening immediately after a patch. In essence, I log in, set about doing whatever I am wishing to do today, only to find after several minutes (about 3 - 5, sometimes as much as 10), I am no longer connected to the world.

There really should be something put in place on the client side to detect and notify your residents when their connection has been severed. I was gleefully building a piece of new furniture and thinking I was getting somewhere... in actuality, every damn thing I did not only wasn't happening, it wasn't saved.

And I swear to god, if anyone puts me through the 'firewall, anti-virus, ISP' litany again, I'm taking a hostage. I have the latest drivers, I reluctantly open myself to the world every time I spin up Second Life, I turn off all anti-virus, and not a bloody thing has changed here since Hector was a pup with the singular exception of downloading and installing your updated client.

This is not something happening on my end. Ping and Traceroute both say the path is clear. This is, however, something that seems to happen after some of your patches.

It's not likely to be on the server side if you are the only person seeing the problem. I sometimes crash, but it's not very frequent, and I run 3 PCs with SL at the same time. I have had problems where either my ISP connection or my wireless connection died, but unfortunately the client never knows when this happens and continues as if you are still connected to the server. Yes, it would be nice if the client could detect a disconnect.

I'm sorry that I've missed your previous posts so hope I won't suffer bodily harm

Did you check your firewall?

Seriously, it your client just ceasing to run or does it say "Disconnected"? If it is just going poof, I have no idea. If you are getting affirmatively disconnected are you seeing packet loss? Any packet loss (the bar next to your wallet) is nearly deadly to an SL session. You can reduce loss by lowering the bandwidth under preferences.

Another "never thought to check there" thing is that my router/NAT box sometimes gets slow and lossy (suspected memory leak in router firmware). Power cycling the router clears this.

Good luck.

It only happens after a patch. What part of this are people missing?

I am not the only one experiencing it. I am one of few who will bother to come here and post it. There are at least 20 people I know in-world who are having the same issue. Who knows how many that I do not personally know are having it.

It is not my router/modem. Firewall is always off. I think I said this already. Yes, I did.

bump

You can't simply "disable" your firewall software as an effective troubleshooting measure. For starters, many indicate in their fine print that "turning it off" means "it's running but it acts as if it is disabled." This is not the same thing, and for one very good reason...

Many of these products (Norton in particular) have begun to include features under the name of "Internet Worm Protection" or something similar, that (even if the firewall is disabled) react to unusual threats; high bandwidth transfers, multiple server connections, access to and from the computer on multiple ports...

In other words, Second Life.

I'm one of the two people at Linden that handles all the complaints post-updates. There's always plenty of them, they all have the same symptoms, most of them insist "it was fine until you updated", and they're always very sure that nothing on their setup has changed.

And they all have a software firewall.

Disabling the firewall doesn't usually work (because, as I mentioned, they don't actually cease their actions unless they're unloaded from memory). If the icon is still in the tray--if the firewall process is still in the Task Manager--you haven't effectively troubleshooted the firewall by telling it to disable itself.

The most effective actions I've seen (short of uninstalling such software) is to:
1) Remove any exceptions in the firewall for SL. If there's not an exception listed already, that may be the problem.
2) Uninstall Second Life.
3) Download and install the latest version from the website.
4) Manually add Second Life as an exception, trusted program, "Permit All", or however your software is configured. This is a better solution than waiting for a popup.

Despite the fact that I always open with firewall questions and recommendations, I do keep an eye out for any problems with each latest release, and pass anything along that I feel we should look at to make sure we're doing things right. So far, though, this doesn't sound any different than what I hear the first few days after release, and I really haven't had anyone call back after I walked them through the steps above...

Hi Lee. No offense, but we've danced this dance before... I'm very computer literate and I assure you, my firewall is not TSR in any fashion and is not active in any way, shape, or form and this issue continues.

It would be very nice to not have you continue to insult my intelligence by implying that I somehow don't know what I'm talking about on this.

Consider me 'calling back' because those steps do not resolve the matter here.

Perhaps you would like to monitor my session and see for yourself what is happening. It is an on-going problem and very easy to recreate.

I run 5 computers with diffrent firewalls
Zonealarm (god this thing is wonky)
Norton Systemworks (craaapola)
WindowsXp Firewall (easy enough, silly dummy mode)

Every SL update they usually ask for new permition, sometime they dont, guess what happen ingame?, i log on, stand..freeze ,, duh firewall.

and every update theres always someone who claims its the update that did it, well you are right, cause the first thing a firewall do is notice a change in .exe file/norton usually autoblock it silent thinking its a worm (do yourself a favour if you have norton installed, ~uninstall~

And about zillion other things it seems to be the cause not the other peoples pc's or configs, how come i have never experienced any of the client "issues" you have?, its either isp, firewalls, spywares, trojans, virues, bad nic's, wireless, i even had some nic's that are "shut down" to save power (go check if you dont belive me, funny power saving on default in windows^^)

Ping, Tracert can show all clear the way , and SL still will still play wonky as hell, i had 15-45% packet loss to SL quite a few times cause of my Isp (and i have a 2mbit/up/down cable and a 155mbit/up/down line.

I know if that thing was ticking me off id completly wipe my windows drive , reinstall, some drivers i have had installed messed me up quite a few times in the past ~.~ id rather reinstall then find the problem anyway.


If your problem was a client / SL issue, how come i dont have it at all with any of my machines?, and i live in norway so im i got some distance from me to SL servers.


When you do anything in SL keep debug up, if you notice no activity in Pending up/down when you pick up things and save you already been booted out, i dont build anything without ctrl-shift-1 up, so easy to notice when Sim kicks you out, or you can build forever and try to link/save something and it wont cause Sim already died on you, but didnt boot you out of sim -.-

Some isp have firewalls on their end , i have yet to be with one that has, but aggressive programs , like p2p is banned on my isp , seems they dont keep their own rules tho, some isp call SL abusive to (someones forum post awhile back) cause its so heavy up/down, rawr,, they should see my dc++ logs

(359 gig down / 93 gig up)

Hi Thili. I know this is hard to grasp for some people, but it is actually possible for me to have a problem you've never seen before.

Thanks for playing.

To Lee -- I believe I have finally been able to isolate the problem. I'll post another thread to explain it, since this one seems to be attracting every know-it-all in the universe.