Marcus Ratz
Ascendent.
Systematic-Chaos
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Posted - 2010.04.09 11:44:00 -
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I think you'll find that the socket closed problem is not caused by anything at the client (your) end, or the server (CCP's) end. If you look at the tracerouts people provide, you'll see telia.net listed. Now, a google search of Telia.net will reveal hundreds of complaints about this company and it's high latency and packet loss problems. Players of many MMO's and any other statefull services have posted so many complaint on forums the world over, you couldn't possible read them all.
You can look up their routers at Router Watch and see the problems they are having on a day by day basis. They had packet loss as much as 96% for data travelling through some of their routers yesterday.
Take a look at this report for the April 8th 2010:
http://www.dslreports.com/routerwatch/hbg-bb2-link.telia.net
So, why do the major backhaul providers use Telia? Because they are cheap. Their crappy service is fine for stateless connections (browsing web sites, transferring email etc), but lousy for statefull connections such as VoIP, streaming video, and you guessed it, MMO's.
Changing your ISP can help because of where they get there upstream data routed from. But, finding an ISP that is working today, doesn't mean they wont have trouble tomorrow. Backhaul data is often traded like a commodity, especially excessive backhaul that a company may have. It very similar to you shopping around at different petrol stations when it's time to fill your tank.
What will help this situation in the future is the growing number of streaming applications such as video on demand and VoIP etc. As more and more people use these services, and complain about them not working, videos pausing all the time, VoIP phone calls dropping out, MMO games that keep disconnecting, the ISP and service providers selling these services to the public, and coping the abuse from their customers, will force their upstream providers to provide a better and more reliable service.
In the mean time, the best thing you can do is try and route your traffic around the problem areas your self. Now, what works for one person, may not work for another because of many factors such as location, ISP used, connection types etc. As an example though, I'll tell you what I do.
I live in Australia, so we suffer from the tyranny of distance, so we have very high pings to anywhere over seas, plus very limited choice in how our data gets routed to overseas destinations. So I use a proxy service called PingFu. Google it if you like.
The connection from the PingFu servers to the EvE servers do not go via Telia. And, In my case, a connection from my computer to PingFu, also doesn't go via Telia, so for me, the five bucks a month it costs is worth it. No more socket closed errors. And a greatly reduced ping time. Because it is the PingFu server that connects to the EvE server via high speed connections, and not a standard home type connection, it is very fast, very low latency. Plus, they buffer the data travelling from EvE to your computer, and keep the connection to the EvE server open while waiting for your computer to send it's data. As far as the EvE servers are concerned the PingFu server is your computer.
The problem is though, if you can't keep a connection open to the PingFu servers, say, because the data path to them is via Telia, then, they can't help you. However, there are several other companies that offer a tunnelling service, just look at all the adds for them when you search for PingFu, and you may very well have better luck with another company due to where they are located and the path your data takes to get to their servers.
No doubt there will be people that will say I'm spewing garbage out of my bottom, but, it's easy enough for you dear reader to do some research your self about what I have written here. And I would encourage you to do so. And keep complaining to your ISP especially if using a Tunnel service fixes your problem.
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