Corrupted map tile?

[StarChaser]

I will check my router settings and see what I can do about stopping it. I think I saw a setting to stop that.

[Sean_Mirrsen]

I found a different culprit.

If anyone else runs Kaspersky Internet Security, or anything else that actively scans incoming web traffic - add the IP of the server into the trusted IP list of the thing. I may be wrong and it was something else that got fixed, but ever since I did that I never got the black screen problem again.

It doesn't actually "block" or "drop" fragmented packets, but it wants to check the whole thing before passing it on, and that disrupts the game's workings.

[StarChaser]

Oh dear. I didn't mind not being able to see the bottleneck but since I live in Camp Noctis it is a bit annoying since I can't play at all now... Would it be hard for you guys to reduce the size of each tile, like divide each tile up into several smaller tiles? I know Camp Noctis intends to move soon but until then I can't play at all.

[loftar]

Would it be hard for you guys to reduce the size of each tile, like divide each tile up into several smaller tiles?

That already happens; map transfer happens in smaller tiles than the maps' natural size, and the size of those tiles could be changed; however, it would probably be easier to just introduce manual fragmentation in the transfer protocol, which is how I intend to fix it.

[Malicus]

Ooh, yay, an intended fix! ...even though it's not your fault. *mutters at his piece of crud router*

...though the other computer in this house suffered HD death last night, and so I'm not using my router. I suppose that's sort of good for me being able to do stuff?

[kobnach]

I am painfully well aware. The problem seems to be caused by some map data packets being larger than others, and some are large enough that they are fragmented. To my great surprise and disappointment, it seems that there are a lot of routers (consumer-grade equipment, that is) that drop fragmented packets. Dropping fragmented packets is stupid, needless and in violation of IP specifications, but they do it nonetheless. I'm quite frustrated at it, because I hate those kinds of incompetent people destroying the 'net for all of us.

It seems there are some software "firewall" programs that do the same thing as well. If you have one of those, please check its settings. (I might also recommend that you remove it. Such programs are, nine times out of ten, written by the same kind of incompetent imbeciles who think they have some idea of what security is, messing everything up. And I can almost guarantee you that it's unnecessary to begin with.)

Obviously, because of these things, I'll have to revise the map-data transfer protocol, but I haven't been able to think of a good alternative yet.

I had this problem due to a packet filtering firewall, and was able to solve it. Here's how.

First the theory: (1) IP fragments of UDP datagrams do not repeat the source and destination ports. They do repeat the IP addresses, but the ports are only in the first fragment. (2) Routers do not tend to reassemble fragmented packets, unless they are doing "NAT", where they need the whole packet to check the checksum and such. (3) This means that a filtering rule based on source or destination port probably won't work for fragments. In particular, it won't work for (some?) firewall-routers based on linux's ipchains.

Then the practice: from the PAQ, I figured that all of havenandhearth.com had a single IP. I allowed all UDP packets from that IP, rather than giving permissions based on the port. End of problem. (Since it is a single IP, I could get it with nslookup or dig; this might not have worked so well for a large site with multiple hosts, especially if it was doing load balancing.)

[provo]

i have the same long load problem.

i checked my router setting and could find nothing about packets.

however when i disabled a function called "WAN Ping Blocking" designed to "Computer hackers use what is known as "The Router can be set up so it will not respond to an ICMP Ping from the outside. This heightens the level of security of your Router. As computer hackers use what is known as "Pinging" to find potential victims on the Internet. By pinging a specific IP address and receiving a response from the IP address, a hacker can determine that something of interest might be there."

When i disabled the ping blocking i had inproved performance in that long loading screans were reduced. Although continue to make game play impossilbe.

Additionally whilst playing Haven and Hearth my router security report is filled with reports of a "Probable ASCEND Probe". every couple of seconds.

Im no computer whiz but this might help those who know what they are doing find a solution to this problem.

thanks provo