Can't connect to lobby (Dplay session terminated)

bluebottle · Post by **bluebottle** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 5:30 am

Hi,

Well, Alleg worked for me four days ago, I went on a three-day holiday, come back, and it's now broken. ASGS logs in fine, but Alleg can't connect to the lobby.

Although this stuff is irrelevant:
Windows Version (and Service Packs): XP SP2
Processor Speed: 2GHz
RAM:1GB
Video Card (Make and Model#):NVidia
Sound Card (Make and Model#):Creative Audigy NX2
Connection Type (Dialup, Cable, DSL, other):DSL
Modem (Make and Model#): YahooBB provided
Router (Make and Model#): Linksys WRT54G (OpenWRT Linux installed)
Internet Service Provider(company name): YahooBB
Location(State/Province/Locality, and Country): Japan
Installed Mods: None

Problem Encountered at Step #: Connecting to lobby
Which Program (ASGS/Allegiance): Alleg
What Error Message: Dplay session terminated
Comments (What you tried, description, etc):

I even tried my backup router (a proprietary Buffalo thing) and got the same result, so the error ain't in my router, which didn't change anyway. Like I said, I went on holiday and Alleg broke while I wasn't here.

Looking at tcpdump, there's a lot of unanswered UDP traffic going on port 2302 to 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com. I thought R3 was supposed to get rid of all this Directplay stuff? In any case, I didn't change anything, nothing was updated (ASGS stayed at 145) but now it doesn't work. My ISP ain't fiddling with UDP since I run a UDP VPN daemon (OpenVPN) and that is fine.

/unsure.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":unsure:" border="0" alt="unsure.gif" />

Oh, I fired up the old FAZ beta from last year, and that could connect to the beta lobby, not that that was of any use to me.

EDIT: I should mention that the first things I did upon having a problem were to re-install the latest DirectX runtime and Allegiance itself. No improvement.

ImmortalZ · Post by **ImmortalZ** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 5:55 am

FAZ R3 doesn't remove Dplay. It just has it working through NAT.

Maybe the quake in Taiwan that ripped apart half the submarine cables in Asia might have something to do with this? Could you run a tracert for me and see?

bluebottle · Post by **bluebottle** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 8:41 am

ImmortalZ wrote:QUOTE (ImmortalZ @ Jan 3 2007, 02:55 PM) FAZ R3 doesn't remove Dplay. It just has it working through NAT.

Maybe the quake in Taiwan that ripped apart half the submarine cables in Asia might have something to do with this? Could you run a tracert for me and see?

I'm in Japan, so we go direct to the USA from here:

1 [router-internal] (172.16.2.254) 0.848 ms 0.673 ms 0.648 ms
2 [router-external] (221.33.142.254) 14.428 ms 14.466 ms 14.534 ms
3 10.11.42.33 (10.11.42.33) 14.898 ms 15.215 ms 15.048 ms
4 10.11.1.65 (10.11.1.65) 16.104 ms 15.448 ms 15.359 ms
5 10.11.1.57 (10.11.1.57) 16.959 ms 17.106 ms 16.687 ms
6 10.4.2.9 (10.4.2.9) 23.006 ms 22.387 ms 21.837 ms
7 10.0.61.25 (10.0.61.25) 27.773 ms 27.072 ms 27.016 ms
8 10.0.192.141 (10.0.192.141) 27.870 ms 27.882 ms 27.945 ms
9 10.9.192.6 (10.9.192.6) 27.241 ms 26.817 ms 26.842 ms
10 10.0.128.182 (10.0.128.182) 30.676 ms 26.871 ms 27.791 ms
11 59.128.14.21 (59.128.14.21) 31.719 ms 26.519 ms 33.402 ms
12 otejbb204.kddnet.ad.jp (59.128.7.66) 27.245 ms otejbb204.kddnet.ad.jp (59.128.7.2) 28.072 ms otejbb203.kddnet.ad.jp (59.128.7.65) 27.783 ms
13 59.128.4.162 (59.128.4.162) 27.378 ms 27.740 ms 27.539 ms
14 lacbb002.kddnet.ad.jp (203.181.100.166) 140.695 ms 141.570 ms lacbb001.kddnet.ad.jp (203.181.100.158) 136.793 ms
15 tr-la6.kddnet.ad.jp (59.128.2.86) 143.611 ms tr-la6.kddnet.ad.jp (59.128.2.66) 135.468 ms 138.700 ms
16 so2-1-0-622m.ar3.LAX1.gblx.net (208.50.13.17) 141.345 ms 141.241 ms 143.145 ms
17 * * *
18 The-Planet.GigabitEthernet7-3.ar2.DAL2.gblx.net (64.208.170.198) 214.711 ms 223.232 ms 228.363 ms
19 te9-2.dsr02.dllstx3.theplanet.com (70.87.253.30) 212.002 ms 223.117 ms 222.701 ms
20 vl21.dsr01.dllstx2.theplanet.com (70.85.127.67) 219.218 ms 213.833 ms 219.415 ms
21 po2.car03.dllstx6.theplanet.com (12.96.160.37) 225.789 ms 224.742 ms 220.916 ms
22 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com (69.93.201.146) 219.140 ms 222.768 ms 216.595 ms

That quake was weeks ago, BTW, and I was able to play on December 30. In any case, I can ICMP-ping the Alleg lobby server, but it just won't let me into the lobby.

The only thing that has changed AFAIK is the date:
December 30: could play
January 3: can't play
/huh.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":huh:" border="0" alt="huh.gif" />

And yes, those are my horrendous pings. Do you get better/worse in India?

ImmortalZ · Post by **ImmortalZ** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 9:32 am

Mine are in the 370ms range at most times. So you have it better there /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

I'll ask aarm whether anything changed in the last two weeks.

bluebottle · Post by **bluebottle** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 12:26 pm

Thanks.

ImmortalZ wrote:QUOTE (ImmortalZ @ Jan 3 2007, 06:32 PM) Mine are in the 370ms range at most times. So you have it better there /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

Wow, pings like I got back in New Zealand!

EDIT: I saw TE mention that the DPlay port redirections should be disabled now, with R3, so I tried that but the error is the same. /unsure.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":unsure:" border="0" alt="unsure.gif" />

ImmortalZ · Post by **ImmortalZ** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 5:01 pm

Well, word from the backend people is that nothing changed on their end. Since you say that nothing changed on yours too, my only conclusion is, call your ISP.

bluebottle · Post by **bluebottle** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 11:09 am

ImmortalZ wrote:QUOTE (ImmortalZ @ Jan 4 2007, 02:01 AM) Well, word from the backend people is that nothing changed on their end. Since you say that nothing changed on yours too, my only conclusion is, call your ISP.

Well, I'll try, but they have no English capability, my Japanese is pretty crap, and no Japanese person around here has any chance of understanding the problem. I'm not living in Akihabara, after all!

It's worth mentioning again that my UDP-based VPN is fine and my bittorrent (also largely UDP) is fine too. It would be *very* odd to pick on the DPlay ports, right?

Here's a tcpdump, for interest's sake:
10:04:13.199550 IP me.2302 > 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302: UDP, length: 21
10:04:13.384286 IP 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302 > me.2302: UDP, length: 106
10:04:13.457221 IP me.2302 > 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302: UDP, length: 16
10:04:13.642954 IP 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302 > me.2302: UDP, length: 16
10:04:13.643860 IP me.2302 > 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302: UDP, length: 16
10:04:13.644130 IP me.2302 > 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302: UDP, length: 8
10:04:13.644533 IP me.2302 > 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302: UDP, length: 126
10:04:13.828753 IP 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302 > me.2302: UDP, length: 8
10:04:13.831993 IP 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302 > me.2302: UDP, length: 256
10:04:13.833067 IP me.2302 > 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302: UDP, length: 8
10:04:13.833635 IP me.2302 > 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302: UDP, length: 405
10:04:14.031778 IP 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302 > me.2302: UDP, length: 12
10:04:14.412255 IP me.2302 > 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302: UDP, length: 405
10:04:14.991356 IP me.2302 > 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302: UDP, length: 405
10:04:16.139564 IP me.2302 > 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302: UDP, length: 405
10:04:17.857617 IP me.2302 > 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302: UDP, length: 405
10:04:22.867516 IP me.2302 > 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302: UDP, length: 405
10:04:27.872529 IP me.2302 > 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302: UDP, length: 405
10:04:32.877532 IP me.2302 > 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302: UDP, length: 405
10:04:37.887432 IP me.2302 > 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302: UDP, length: 405
10:04:41.679340 IP me.2302 > 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302: UDP, length: 8
10:04:41.874725 IP 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302 > me.2302: UDP, length: 16
10:04:42.892486 IP me.2302 > 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302: UDP, length: 405
10:04:47.900428 IP me.2302 > 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302: UDP, length: 405
10:05:09.893560 IP 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302 > me.2302: UDP, length: 8
10:05:10.465134 IP 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302 > me.2302: UDP, length: 8
10:05:11.036278 IP 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302 > me.2302: UDP, length: 8
10:05:12.173852 IP 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302 > me.2302: UDP, length: 8
10:05:13.873254 IP 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302 > me.2302: UDP, length: 8
10:05:18.878496 IP 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302 > me.2302: UDP, length: 8
10:05:23.883400 IP 92.c9.5d45.static.theplanet.com.2302 > me.2302: UDP, length: 8

That is tcpdump looking at UDP only, with a grep filtering out any non-"theplanet" stuff. It looks like all UDP packets >= 405 bytes are being dropped somewhere. I may very well be locked out of Alleg permanently. /mad.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":mad:" border="0" alt="mad.gif" />

ImmortalZ · Post by **ImmortalZ** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 1:28 pm

It may be some kind of anti-P2P thing that they have installed that has knocked out Alleg as well. I'll pass this on to the dev team, but short of finding an english tech. support, you might be out of luck

EDIT : Did you try connecting straight to your Internet connection and trying to connect to the lobby?

bluebottle · Post by **bluebottle** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 4:12 am

ImmortalZ wrote:QUOTE (ImmortalZ @ Jan 5 2007, 10:28 PM) Did you try connecting straight to your Internet connection and trying to connect to the lobby?

Well, I tried my backup router, which is a completely different brand and OS, and got the same result. I've got four machines on my LAN here and no internal security measures (because the external firewall is good), so I'm not keen to cut everything else off. Not just yet, at least.

Thanks for your time.

bluebottle · Post by **bluebottle** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 6:00 am

You're not going to believe the ugliness of the hack I have to do to get it working. This is something I just discovered on my own - no answer from tech support.

If I log on to my firewall/router and set the MTU (largest packet size) of my internet link to 300 bytes, then I can log on to the lobby server. After that, I can reset the MTU to 1500 bytes and play, at least until I CTD. If I leave the MTU at 300 bytes, then Alleg will quickly CTD or Windows suddenly BSODs and reboots.

Again, that MTU mod must be done on the router itself, not on my Windows box.

What it *very* strange is that only the lobby server is affected by any MTU problem. The game itself or the game servers are not. Maybe the problem is not my ISP? I mean, they have something like 20 million customers, maybe 5-10 of us play Alleg, the very definition of under-the-radar.