Can't Connect to GWW, GW.com, GW2.com, or GW2W

Apparently Anet doesn't think so with all the stupid crap they want users to try in order to fix the problem. It is almost laughable at this point that a major gaming publisher can have these sorts of issues for this long. Whoever is in charge of their network infrastructure should be out of a job.

Not true.

I haven't had a chance to run the PingPlot yet, but they are quite aware of the issue and it seems to only affect people who connect to American servers (Austin, Texas), and then only a subset of them.

They are not actually causing the problem... AT&T is. This has been known for a few weeks now. Unfortunately, because most players don't bother filing support tickets, and among those who do very few actually submit back the info they've requested (like the PingPlotter logs), they don't have much ammo with which to beat AT&T over the head with.

Since I don't want to repeat the same information I've posted multiple times in the last few weeks, take a look at my posting history for the multitude of posts about this subject... and some work arounds I've posted which players can try so as to get themselves OFF the bad route into the servers. Pretty sure I've even posted them right here in this thread.

Yeah they answered back something about flushing the dns cache and changing to a different dns server, which I did to no avail. Guess I go back to them for round 2.

I wish I had more time to study this... but it seems there is a huge amount of network re-transmission issues which cause the 0% stuckage (see gw-failure-flow-retransmit.jpg).

I also captured wireshark packets from the proxy server and noticed the transmission was near 100% flawless. (see gw-clean-flow-retransmit.jpg)

See attached screenshots... yes I am able to get the 0% stuckage issue everytime and also able to resolve the issue by proxying GW on the same LAN.

I was half tempted to post the wireshark results (when gw was working [thru proxy] and was not) but was anxious that someone would use that information against me.

See my original post here: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...2&postcount=54

My thoughts:
When Axe mentioned flow control and his modem... it makes me believe that it's simply because the network transmission is going too fast for GW or network nodes to handle the request. And oddly enough when he mentioned he got it to work while flow control was off tells me that the hardware/software based communication was dropping packets which prohibited acknowledgement for retransmission (small packets). But when he tried doing -image for larger packets it failed because there was no proper flow control (large packets). I could be completely wrong as the modem age for me was too many years ago...and well I totally forget my CCNA training... lol.

references:
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Modem-HOWTO-4.html
http://kb.iu.edu/data/acad.html

I have a Asus Republic of Gamers Notebook with:

- Intel I7 720QM
- Nvidia Geforce GTX 260M
- 4GB RAM *
- Windows 7 Home

* - Must verify when i get home

As for the problem, seems it fixed alone.

FTFY. Flow control is something you designate that deals with the connection between the two modems. It has NOTHING to do with your connection to a website elsewhere in the cloud. You are confusing your OSI layers. His problem was a layer 2 issue, our problem is a layer 3 issue.

Update... after going through all my windows 7 settings found of course a ton of settings (which seems I changed since the beginning of time) I ended up reading http://www.speedguide.net/articles/w...08-tweaks-2574

and trying the SG TCP Optimizer w/ Optimal settings:
http://www.speedguide.net/files/TCPOptimizer.exe

After zoning in/out 10+ times so far not able to reproduce the 0% error... yet, I have a feeling changing these settings might of meant a con for some other network feature i needed... I hate forgetting things.

Anyways.... give the TCPOptimizer a try using the Optimal Settings... If your anxious about it read the article I posted.

ps. still getting a lot of retransmission issues thou.

And here's why non of that matters dude:

I can connect to the entirety of the rest of the internet without a problem. I have 4 computers on my network, all work fine otherwise. All have different OS's, different configurations, different hardware. There is no way I am going to start mucking around with TCP settings because one domain or IP range is causing problems. If I can proxy through another route and then get to the site . . . the problem obviously is not within my network, so continuing to troubleshoot within my network is fruitless.

Why you keep beating a dead horse is beyond me.

Thanks for hearing me out , I am 90% sure it has something to do with what I discovered, I wish I was more knowledgeable in this area, but from the little I have read it seems that there are settings at THEIR end that tell what protocol to use for sending the data, and its not matching up right.

Its the Error Control setting that makes it succeed or fail. If you have the ability to turn off Error Control in your modem settings using the Optimizer or anything else GW.Exe will connect, -Image will not work unless you switch it back.

Its an easy fix for me on dial up, I attempted a -image with error control off last night (6th year Anniv. patch) and it failed, switched error control on, -image went through, tried to log in error control ON, failed stuck at connecting, turned error control OFF, logged in no problem.

I tried through support to make them aware of these setting changes to fix this issue, but I am not sure if this info got into the hands of the right people.

and YES to everyone else saying this is a worthless fix, it IS, because EVERY SINGLE PIECE of software I have works fine without fiddling with this setting, but for the time being I must do this every time with GW to get it to work.

If anyone that has knowledge of the error control protocols or settings, please look into this, it definitely has something to do with this issue

Why exactly are a lot of people posting their game issues in this thread?

I mean it's really about the anet-websites, from what i can tell there is no real connection between the two problems.

I ONLY have issues with the sites not with the actual game.

The problems are actually one and the same, which has been known for about 5 weeks now. They do not necessarily affect all players, all ways, all the time.

For example - do you use the Euro/International/Asia servers in-game instead of the American? If so, the in-game issue would not affect you... but you still wouldn't be able to access the sites if you are routing through the bad AT&T bridge. Unlike the various district options in-game, which physically change the destination of your connection... the destination to access the websites is the same for everyone. Point of origin determines what path one takes to the destination.

It's all one issue, all caused by a bad bridge from AT&T. The effects may differ, but the cause is still the same.

Guess you're right.

Now I'm stuck on "Connecting..."

I wonder why it's taken them a month to not fix this yet.

My guess is that AT&T is dragging their heels. I swear it takes an act of god to get companies like AT&T to actually look for a problem, let alone acknowledge it exists and fix it. That's part of why I keep nagging people to send in support tickets & the tracert information... because NCSoft needs to be able to take all those tickets, all those logs, and rub AT&T's face in it every time they say, "it's not us, everything is working fine here."

You'll probably be able to get on again shortly... overall, my ability to connect improved greatly after I forced my ISP to roll me a new IP address a few weeks back, but I still get intermittent issues where I'm stuck on "Connecting" as you are. It's happened to me a few times while moving from zone to zone in-game as well, usually at the absolutely most inconvenient time possible - like while I'm zoning in and out for Vaettir farming. LOL

Same issue but Virgin Media in the UK. Works from my office connection.

Asia servers are now located in America. Not sure about International but they may also be in America - canadian guildie being affected by this cannot play in international consistently and must hang out in Europe.

That's good to know. Euro was the one I used when I couldn't connect to American... never had any reason to try the others at the time. Thanks for the added info!

same issue here in Italy, my ISP is Fastweb. The game works from the office.
I get stuck at "connecting...." before the character selection screen.
Everything else works

I think this problem might be resolved, but I haven't had an opportunity to try. I got the following just now from ncsoft support.
I live in Dallas so the servers were in my neighborhood, but had the same problems. I've been spending most my time on the Euro servers, and then occasionally testing my luck with PUGs on American servers.

No, it has not been resolved. At least not for me.

My thoughts...

I totally agree with you that since the game worked before why bother doing anything else until they fix it. However, since my friends computer (winXp) can play the game without any problems through my network, while (win7) I can't and another (win7) computer can't - makes me wonder what the hell is going on. After going through some network logs (early morning off peak hours) decided to see if ECN and other TCP OS options may help in the retransmission issues. In my experience so far it did help -- And yes I like beating a dead horse "over-and-over" because it's better than not playing the game at all. Whether these band-aid temporarily fixes or not I rather post my stress here in hopes helping others find other work arounds.

On a further note, some of the settings in TCP Optimizer do in fact help other games like WoW crap in latency. On the other hand, could end up resulting in poor performance when transmitting large files.

Regarding AT&T node issues I would say it really is AT&T and there crappy support to resolve the issue quickly. Way back before GW became popular I remember playing WoW having a very similar problem and took a couple weeks to finally tell AT&T that there routers are complete garbage. What makes the situation worse is that the problem isn't always persistent and is intermittent for the most part. Another thing is the problem also seems to occur more frequently with newer systems with Windows Vista and higher. That right there lead me to believe it had something to do with the new TCP Optimization algorithms in Vista and 7 verses WinXP etc (TCP Auto-Tuna + Compost TCP throughput + ECN, etc).

Im not sure if this was posted or not but just got an update on my ncsoft support ticket. Let's hope this has done something...

lol so they finally stopped blaming the hundreds of thousands of customers saying it was their fault and finally admitted that it WAS ON or NEAR THEIR END. Wow...

Multilaunch of game clients would allow some to access into the game and some not all would stuck at "connecting"

*sigh* this is really getting me paranoid everytime wanting to zone

Hello Fellow Downtrodden,

I went two weeks without a problem after Comcast came and repaired "weak signal" somewhere down the street... I was almost ALMOST willing to admit that the problem was on my end (as far as my neighborhood at least) and today... WHAM, froze at 0pct loading in pvp... I just surrendered and turned it off, then wanted to check something on the wiki... it wouldn't connect. (standard AT&T route issue. Verified w/ tracert)

So i started piddling with settings as many of us have: Note: its been a long long time since I got my certifications during the NT-Win2k changeout... and a good 90% of what I was messing with made absolutely no sense to me.

It has been stated whether truly or not:
Older computers are having fewer connection problems
Dialup has no problems other than speed
Problem exists at or around AT&T hops in or around Dallas (confirmed on my computer)
Forcing mac address changes / dns server / thereby altering path resolves problem

So my goal was to fidget with stuff hoping to disable as many new fangled or useless windows 7 functions as possible. Hypothesis I may sacrifice ultimate performance for stable predictable connections as per older computers which may be miraculously unaffected by bad packets/info/routing from the AT&T switches. What I did: my card and drivers are from Broadcom ----

Disabled:

• Netbios over TCP/IP (already disabled from habit) mostly LAN Related, but I may consider re-enabling this in the future if the problem arises again though in yon olden days this presented intra-lan vulnerabilities that honestly I don't know how "vulnerable" WAN connections are to said old exploits.

• LMHOST lookup LAN Related, disabling this and netbios cause visual network mapping to not function properly in windows networks.

• Link-Layer Topology (mapper and responder) more windows networking bs

• Mac Address - RESET it appears either comcast or windows update OEM drivers set both tunnel and nic card mac addresses to 00-00-00-00-E0 possible conflict, forced a hard reset of these in Control Panel->device Manager->Network Adapter->Configure->Network Address: Note: Wireless Card Mac addys might be under different category than "network address" (select value type in new mac address here if you had same or similar issue no dashes or ":".) If this issue persists after this step google altering mac address in registry but make a backup first http://www.windowsreference.com/netw...dows-registry/

• Disabled IPv6 (not required for web browsing or gaming)

• ARP Offload/NS Offload (Nic Card power management / wake on Lan management within drivers sometimes clashes with programs not reporting idle status etc) disabled both

• [email protected]: had to look this one up...seriously? (Broadcom's [email protected] technology enables equipment manufactured using the BCM5421S to automatically select the maximum speed possible based on channel conditions, even over impaired cable plant, regardless of the maximum speed advertised by the end-equipment.)

• Flow Control: see http://virtualthreads.blogspot.com/2...w-control.html Disabled it for now some claim better ping's I'll post later with my results.

• Interrupt Moderation: (saves CPU time by caching packets, problem is packet loss, willing to sacrifice cpu performance for test purposes)

• IPv4 Checksum and all Large Send Offloads (these functions appear to be more aimed at server application but also serve to locally handle TCP segmentation and checksums at the Nic layer taking load off the CPUs... as part of my hypothesis being new fangled = bad. These 4 options are disabled. Note: some companies running various Domain Controllers and or GC's have noted problems with these functions causing lost /damaged packets on their networks. While these are serverside functions in their case, why not dump them from our clients anyway and see what happens?) Source: http://blogs.technet.com/b/maweeras/...d-offload.aspx

Still Enabled

Everything else... i'm not going to describe them all but i didn't see many issues with them. though if the problem still persists... i'll toy with them to see if there is something on my end I can do to compensate for the AT&T debacle.

Fun read's, tweaks, and references:
http://lifeandcode.net/2009/05/reduc...ws-7-or-vista/
http://virtualthreads.blogspot.com/2...w-control.html
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=317347
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r171...router-issues- (not just us)
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r188...et-loss-issues (not just guild wars or even PC games)

Good, would love to see this "connecting" issue resolved. I use the wiki a lot and when it's done, it seriously hampers my progress in what I'm using the site for to begin with!

I'm still unable to access these websites, ncsoft still too but the game and offical site are fine.

I kinda found a workaround though......

I've been using google cache to help me view wiki pages I want to view on the wiki. All you have to do is google the page and select the cached version. Google can obviously obtain copies of websites because google is everywhere and cached copies reside on servers everywhere. Try it sometime. At least until this thing is sorted out.

An easier way is to use something like anonymouse.org
It's a proxy, so your route into the servers is different, bypassing the bad AT&T hop. And unlike the cached versions, you're seeing the page as it is right this second... which if you're looking for info on the current Zaishens and such could be important.

You can also then navigate by clicking links within the Wiki, including doing searches, with no trouble. The anonymous.org proxy remains in the URL until you navigate somewhere else or close the browser tab/window.

Didn't think about using proxies. Thanks for sharing this!

Either I am really really tired or guild wars really does work on port 80 and port 6112 blocked... can someone confirm this? Also, does it provide a work around when 0% stuck?
Just curious.

UPDATE/EDIT: I have confirmed guild wars does work with just port 80. This makes me wonder if the problem lies with computers connecting to port 6112 and not port 80. Strange!
Reference Post: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/m...t10273386.html

WAs able to play all Friday and Saturday. Today? Stuck at connecting. At least it's resolving a bit? And at least they're working on it.

Hey just steal my hint

Have you tried blocking port 6112 temporarily and seeing if the game can work on port 80 as a fallback when the game becomes stuck? Make sure you exit and launch the game prior from firewall changes.

http://free-proxy.me proxy seems to work a lot faster than anonymouse.org. However, anonymouse.org allows bookmarking.

Also check out: http://proxy.org/cgi_proxies.shtml which is a list of popular web proxies.

Update! Now im getting 058 errors... OMG... Guild Wars SUCKS! @ 10.15 PM EST. And the website keeps having the same issue....

Edit: It's official I give up! ... all routes to 64.25.32.0/20 are trouble.

Here you go - word from the team on twitter. I hope this offers help/insight

For the first time in weeks Guildwiki is working for me again.
UK - Virgin Media.

Here is the latest from NCSoft support:

It hasn't been fixed entirely, there seem to be some random dropouts.

"Waiting for wiki.guildwars.com..."

Yesterday it did seem really fast though.

Got AT&T of my path now going though level3 and it works great.