At first it started with 1 toon staying logged in while the other DC'ed to often to count; this happened for a couple days. Then it progressed to having one toon be able to log on, but the other just DC'ing on a black screen after selecting a character. Now, going on over a week, I've not been able to log on either character.

I can open the launcher and it loads just fine. It says that tranquility is online and the server is running. I log in and the game loads up slowly to the character selection page. I select my character and get a loading icon. The screen goes black and I get a socket closed message after 2 mins of being on a blacks screen.


To add some more information, I lived in China (I'm not Chinese so no I won't play on Serenity servers) for 3 years now and this is the first time I've had this issue. I get the occasional DC to the stupidly slow internet speeds, but this is the first time I've not been able to actually log on. Also, the whole contact your ISP and get them to come out isn't plausible (you think customer service is bad back home....) considering the network requirements and language barrier.

Please help, I'm having EvE withdrawls....

Very frustrated with this issue and the virtual silence from CCP.. Has been going on for over 2 weeks now and nothing! Tonight it took me 6 log-ins just to update my skill queue and barely got that off before my socket closed.

Well update time:
I've multiple times throughout each day to connect. This evening I attempted to log in, same thing showing as above showing that everything should be working fine, except now it's gotten even worse.

Now, I open the launcher and log in (says Tranquility server is online and doing well), the game client opens but I'm DC'ing before the character selection screen now

VPN
which is search and install ... very slow but will let u get in game
HALP!!!!

Definite bingo on port 3724 and that more or less confirmed my suspicion on a CCP client NAT (burrowing) issue. Thanks.
The _root_ problem is highly unlikely a carrier issue, because if it is, I'd be hearing a collective uproar coming from my side of internet.

Swapping to port 3724 resolved my _persistent_ black screen then socket closed after character selection issue.
No VPN workaround necessary atm. Now, let's see if port 3724 is stable.

Atm, I'm trying to figure out why port 26000 (Quake and other games also use this port) suddenly stopped working. My connection on port 3724 is robust and is back to normal as before.
This socket closed issue (right after the character selection screen) is 100% replicable (Rubicon patch 1.3.4 made no difference).

Quick check on a few online resource (gric.com/canyouseeme.org) confirms they were able to detect changes to port 26000 when in open state (port forwarded)/closed or stealthed state (dyn NAT). So, incoming/ongoing TCP/UDP traffic isn't likely blocked by the ISP. I can't confirm if there's any traffic shaping, but imo, it's highly unlikely that any would affect the EVE client. EVE is low bandwidth, latency tolerant (or did they tighten this timing in the client recently?). The major issue here is you simply can't get a proper test done since you have to eliminate routing due to the different paths. It's not 100% reliable. Calling the ISP is a ping-pong affair, I only do this if there's enough grounds/proof to show it's their problem, else it's generally a waste of time.

The most reliable test can only be done thru the route taken by the EVE client, SIMULATING its typical data transfer requests.

That brings me to this question. Now, I don't know if the EVE client has a built-in network diag tool that logs all messages under the log server. Thus far, CCP have relied on simple PathPing to troubleshoot network issues (afaik for their L1 support). Whats mind boggling, despite the long standing socket closed issues reports, no one at CCP has thought about writing a simple public test program that simulates & evaluates the typical client communication - everything from packet length, headers used, typical time outs etc. to HELP customers TROUBLESHOOT their issues.

Can it be that hard to write a simple custom network test program, preferably with its own dedicated CCP test IP?

Edit:
I'm sure this is already obvious, there are a couple of applications out there that can be used as a base or even code base for apps. Netcat and Ncat respectively.
Unfortunately, you need the proper public list server to reply to queries, else they're about almost useless. Various references seem to recommend Firebind (firebind.com) to fill this void, but again, it's limited to the pipe between Firebind's server and your client. It can probably serve as a base reference.

I pulled out Wireshark to check on the network traffic. Port 26000 is giving out multiple TCP Dup Ack (source 87.237.38.200) on one particular data frame. Earlier frames are fine, which would imply port 26000 to be working and valid. This isn't making complete sense atm. In comparison, Port 3724 traffic is as clean as a whistle (i.e. no errors that would imply TCP delivery issues). That deepens the mystery.

[
would you mind sharing a typical wireshark log (edited for confidentiality if required) so we can see and go deeper on this issue?

I'm suffering the socket closed problem recently. I thought it was caused by the submarine fiber cable disruption .
After I investigated this issue for a few days I found out that it should be blamed on ldn-b3-link.telia.net whose IP is 80.239.193.141. It's extremely unstable. The latency of it alternated between 210ms and 320ms. Sometimes it has no response.
And all the time out issues happend during the latency of 320ms.
And I also found out it happend many times before. There seemd no solution.

Best I'm willing to share publicly is a screenshot

http://i.imgur.com/AQjZp0O.png

one more thing, port 3724 data is mostly done using the WOW network protocol (apparently the old Wireshark version I was using didn't see this).
[see - http://dvlabs.tippingpoint.com/blog/2007/06/28/decoding-the-world-of-warcraft]

that's a significant difference!

Traffic shaping is still on the table, but here's the thing, my BitTorrent on port 26000 works as per normal when tested (it's usually on another port).
It also doesn't make any sense when you consider it fails persistently after every character selection screen, not randomly.

Can anybody tell me where prefs.ini resides on Windows 8?

thx, exactly what ithought it would look like, sorry if i missed this, but did you check your path to the eve server, and if at some point, one hop is having massive packet loss? (could be interesting to do while playing eve and look right after you encounter the issue).

you could use pingplotter wich is easier to manage and see issues on long runs