Repetitious disconnections from MMO.
schw
Enthusiast - Level 2

I have been searching for a solution to this problem for about a week or so, and have finally decided to post.  Let me start by saying that I had Verizon DSL years ago, and I had absolutely zero issues with staying connected to the World of Warcraft servers.  When they released the latest expansion, thousands of DSL users (not just Verizon) began experiencing disconnects about every 20 minutes or so.  After some time, Blizzard technical support board moderators admitted that they changed the way that "their traffic flows" and that some ISP's are tagging World of Warcraft traffic as P2P traffic as opposed to being flagged as gaming traffic.

Here are my statistics:

1)  I am a Verizon DSL user (obviously).

2)  I have a Westell 7500 (A90-750015-07), Modem/Router (combined), with Firmware: Ver:5.01.00.02 (most current).

3)  UPnP is disabled.

4)  QoS is disabled, as per a tech request on the Blizzard forums.

5)  My transceiver status is:

      DSL Speed:            3358 DWN/862 UP

      Margin (dB):            29.8 DWN/15.6 UP

      Line Atten (dB):      18.0 DWN/8.0 UP

      TX Power (dBm):    0.0 DWN/12.8 UP

6)  IP distribution is:

     192.168.1.(15 - 47)

      Lease: 1 day

7)  I am not forwarding any ports, as this only affects Blizzard patching not game play.

😎  All firewalls are disabled, including that in the router and windows firewall.  I run no anti-virus software, nor 3rd party firewalls.

Tracert to verizon.net: ===================================================

Tracing route to verizon.net [206.46.232.39]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  dslrouter.westell.com [192.168.1.1]
  2    36 ms    36 ms    36 ms  L100.ERIEPA-DSL-03.verizon-gni.net [74.106.188.1]
  3    41 ms    41 ms    40 ms  130.81.135.224
  4    46 ms    47 ms    47 ms  as2-0.LCC1-RES-BB-RTR1-RE1.verizon-gni.net [130.81.20.92]
  5    85 ms    85 ms    85 ms  so-4-0-0-0.DFW01-BB-RTR1.verizon-gni.net [130.81.17.41]
  6    85 ms   195 ms    85 ms  so-1-0-0-0.DFW03-CORE-RTR1.verizon-gni.net [130.81.20.157]
  7    87 ms    86 ms    86 ms  po1.ctn-border1.vzlink.com [206.46.225.85]
  8    85 ms    86 ms    85 ms  po121.ctn-core1.vzlink.com [206.46.225.18]
  9    86 ms    86 ms    86 ms  206.46.228.130
 10    85 ms    86 ms    86 ms  206.46.232.39

Trace complete.

====================================================================

Tracert to Blizzard login:==================================================

Tracing route to us.logon.battle.net [12.129.206.130]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  dslrouter.westell.com [192.168.1.1]
  2    35 ms    36 ms    35 ms  L100.ERIEPA-DSL-03.verizon-gni.net [74.106.188.1]
  3    41 ms    40 ms    41 ms  130.81.135.226
  4    42 ms    42 ms    41 ms  so-7-0-0-0.PITT2-CORE-RTR1.verizon-gni.net [130.81.18.254]
  5    47 ms    45 ms    46 ms  as2-0.LCC1-RES-BB-RTR1-RE1.verizon-gni.net [130.81.20.92]
  6    46 ms    47 ms    47 ms  0.ae1.BR1.IAD8.ALTER.NET [152.63.32.141]
  7    59 ms    48 ms    49 ms  192.205.36.141
  8   122 ms   122 ms   120 ms  12.122.81.250
  9   120 ms   119 ms   119 ms  cr1.cgcil.ip.att.net [12.122.18.21]
 10   181 ms   137 ms   119 ms  cr2.dvmco.ip.att.net [12.122.31.85]
 11   120 ms   123 ms   123 ms  cr1.slkut.ip.att.net [12.122.30.25]
 12   122 ms   122 ms   122 ms  cr2.la2ca.ip.att.net [12.122.30.30]
 13   123 ms   123 ms   122 ms  cr84.la2ca.ip.att.net [12.123.30.249]
 14   121 ms   121 ms   120 ms  gar5.la2ca.ip.att.net [12.122.129.25]
 15   196 ms   124 ms   123 ms  12.122.255.74
 16   120 ms   121 ms   120 ms  12.129.193.242
 17     *        *     12.129.211.34  reports: Destination net unreachable.

Trace complete.

====================================================================

If anyone has any idea what may be going on, or who I should contact about the supposed "traffic labeling" it would be greatly appreciated.

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1 Solution

Correct answers
Re: Repetitious disconnections from MMO.
spacedebris
Master - Level 2

Well your tracert's look fine, no issues that I can see with those.

Your right in that it happened after the blizzard update/patch and also after the expantion. Its happening just about everywhere.

I had not heard that they admitted that they changed the way the traffic flows. If it is true that they did indeed change the traffic flow to use some of the P2P resources and transmisions, then it will take another patch from blizzard to fix that.

The ISP's are not going to change the way they flag the data traffic. There are several reasons that they want to flag that and also some reasons they must flag P2P traffic.

P2P takes up a lot of bandwidth and is considered "unfair" to regular users to have a few P2P users use up all the bandwidth. At least that is the way the ISP's are spinning the reason they track it. Many ISP's use traffic shaping to slow down P2P to keep the bandwidth open for other users. In addition the RIAA and other Legal entities are cracking down on illegal file sharing. And while most ISP's do not share that info openly, they do have to track it so that if they get a supena from the courts, they can then provide that info. So getting ISP's to change the way they flag info is not likely going to happen.

What blizzard will have to do is change the way the traffic flows to get it back into the "normal game traffic" classification. 

At least that is how I would see it because I really dont see ISP's changing the way they do things for a single video game.

All assuming that what Blizzard said is correct.

View solution in original post

Re: Repetitious disconnections from MMO.
spacedebris
Master - Level 2

Well your tracert's look fine, no issues that I can see with those.

Your right in that it happened after the blizzard update/patch and also after the expantion. Its happening just about everywhere.

I had not heard that they admitted that they changed the way the traffic flows. If it is true that they did indeed change the traffic flow to use some of the P2P resources and transmisions, then it will take another patch from blizzard to fix that.

The ISP's are not going to change the way they flag the data traffic. There are several reasons that they want to flag that and also some reasons they must flag P2P traffic.

P2P takes up a lot of bandwidth and is considered "unfair" to regular users to have a few P2P users use up all the bandwidth. At least that is the way the ISP's are spinning the reason they track it. Many ISP's use traffic shaping to slow down P2P to keep the bandwidth open for other users. In addition the RIAA and other Legal entities are cracking down on illegal file sharing. And while most ISP's do not share that info openly, they do have to track it so that if they get a supena from the courts, they can then provide that info. So getting ISP's to change the way they flag info is not likely going to happen.

What blizzard will have to do is change the way the traffic flows to get it back into the "normal game traffic" classification. 

At least that is how I would see it because I really dont see ISP's changing the way they do things for a single video game.

All assuming that what Blizzard said is correct.

Re: Repetitious disconnections from MMO.
schw
Enthusiast - Level 2

Here is my source, it is I believe the first blue response from a moderator in that particular thread:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1021053250?page=3#46

I thought everything looked fine on my end, I just wanted some verification that I'm not crazy.  Ah well, I'll just let my subscription run out until they release a patch.  This particular issue was reported back in mid-November, I'm surprised that they're not stepping up.

... wait a minute, no I'm not.  LOL.

Also, they cite this thread in their response.  It may more clearly state I what I was trying to relay.

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Broadband-down-your-phone-line/World-of-Warcraft-Issues-Updated-...

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Re: Repetitious disconnections from MMO.
TCBush
Enthusiast - Level 1

I have a quesetion since this post was specifically about WoW. I am unable to figure out why I can't connect to the game thru my network connection. When i use a public none WEPed conneciton i ahve no issues but using this DSL connection I get a patching error and to check my internet configuation. I have emailed blizzard and done several tries to add ports and even gone so far as to completely disable my Firewall and still i can't connect! They say that it is an ISP issue. have you ever deal with this??

Re: Repetitious disconnections from MMO.
smith6612
Community Leader
Community Leader

Double check to make sure even the modem's firewall isn't enabled, and if you are using your own router, that it has updated firmware. A patching issue would suggest an issue regarding blocked ports/services, not Blizzard changing the way the game sends/receives data. If you do need patching, Blizzard's FTP along with many public download sites such as FileFront have the patch files available, since the main Blizzard Updater uses Akamai/Limelight Networks for HTTP and P2P (TCP) to go along with the HTTP download.

Re: Repetitious disconnections from MMO.
mpb4
Newbie

I have the same problem and it is very annoying when you are doing a skype call. It also only start to happen more 3 months ago

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