I've spent all of the last two days trying to figure out the disconnections that some people are having. In case you missed my other post, starting yesterday, I also started getting the disconnects. I went from never getting a disconnect of this type in 3 years of playing to disconnecting every 30 seconds over night, and I can attest that I had no changes in hardware or the client or the server. And then right at 7pm Pacific time, the disconnects went away. Same thing happened today. I couldn't play at all and then once peak time was over, I could play just fine.

I have Comcast, and I think most people that have also reported this problem have either Comcast or one of their subsidiaries as their ISP. I am starting to really suspect that these disconnects area result of Comcasts port shaping that they keep tinkering with. The fact that it works fine in off peak hours and doesn't work at all during peak hours points to it. Also, now that it happens to me, I can see better exactly what is happening. Basically the server is getting a reset packet on the port which makes it no longer able to send packets to the client, so the server closes the port. The client, which never sent a reset packet by the way, doesn't know what's going on, but stops getting packets and then sees the port close when the server closes the port on its side. At that point, the client reports the :virtual circuit was reset" error message and re-logs in.

I called Comcast and was totally stonewalled on this. I'm going to try again tomorrow and also do more research on this. Today I tried running the test server on a bunch of different ports including 8080 and the ports that WoW uses to see if any of them worked better, but they were all the same.

For now, I would ask that the people who are getting disconnected with the "virtual circuit" error message pay attention to what times of day they're getting disconnected to see if you it is fine in off-peak hours but totally broken in peak hours. Also, I noticed that I can fly around fine, but doing battle in a DG against multiple enemies with tractor beams and with a bunch of drones deployed would almost instantly get me kicked every time, so try to pay attention to what sort of circumstance gets you kicked. My guess is that Comcast may be allowing a certain amount of traffic through any given port or else a certain rate of traffic through, but any time you exceed that, they send their faked reset packet in that breaks everything.

Any information that can help me confirm if this is Comcast and their subsidiaries would be helpful. If you get regular disconnects with the "virtual circuit was reset" error message, post your ISP and keep track of what time of the day it happens or doesn't happen. We will keep working to try to resolve this, of course.

And just as important imo. Call your ISP and complain! They shouldnt screw their customers over like this.

:*( the world hates us

I started a thread in the comcast forums here

I was hoping others would log on and complain, just so it will show that it is not just my computer.

I've only just recently started to get this problem too and I have Comcast too. One place I seem to get it is when Im on AP and fly near the asteroid mining operation in Gacrux (happens 80% of the time). Nearly all other instances of it are when I'm in a fight. I haven't really noted a specific time of day when it happens because I play at odd times but there are definitely times where it seems to happen more, next time I play I'll write down when each disconnect occurred and what I was doing and I'll post it here. I hope this helps and that you figure out some way around the problem, you're awesome Jeff

Oh, and I've noticed that when I get disconnected other people who have the problem seem to also (based on their comments in All), might be worth looking into.

Jeff, I wrote a long reply to the ticket yesterday, but it took me so long that my login timed out and I lost the whole thing. I've gotten 1/2 of it rewritten and I'll reply again (not going to post it here because it contains specific packets that might have info you would rather not be on the forums). Its not quite that their sending out resets in my opinion, I'll explain it further in the ticket. I'm at school atm, I'll be able to whip it out in about 7 hours.

On a side note, can you set the logout time (cookie lifetime) on the ticket system to like 4 hours, I think its currently at 1 hour.

I also have these problems now.

I talked with the Comcast representative who told me that they "stopped doing any type of traffic management (e.g. port shaping) a month ago."

I called BS on that, but the woman was adamant that it was true. So I had a technician come out and my lines were all fine. Since jeff is even getting the problems I think its safe to say it isn't something he changed on the server. And the only connecting thread here is Comcast.

When i spoke with the Customer Service rep, I mentioned the name of the game to her and she put it into my support ticket, so if anyone else calls be sure to cite the name of the game so all the tickets will connect during a search. She said that no one else has even mentioned Star Sonata or at least it was never put in a support ticket. I made sure it was in mine.

-ERMAN

Why would it effect people on this game when you tried the WoW port and not people on WoW? or is it? O.o hmm

i got the virtual circuit thing once a while ago.. but havnt got it since.. but that info probably doesn't help

Could it be that the internet keeps trying too connect you to the game, but your already connected so it keeps connecting you? Or it could be the server itself...

P2P data can be going across any port, so its probably likely they are cutting virtual circuits dependent on the actual packets.

my isp Charter.net is constitanly saying they dont port ship in "MY AREA" bc there is enouof bandwith to go around, but in other areas are doing it to keep up wiht the demand, as there are gettin more servers in...NOw who knows if there not doing it in my area...

i have comcast and just starting getting these DCs at 12:00am on 4/17/08, happend 3 times in about 15-20 mins

Well I thought I would say as one of the options to use UDP? Now I know it's not that simple so fill free to tell me what's wrong with that idea.

This is something I was wondering myself. If I knew that going UDP would solve the problem, I would do it, though it is no trivial task to rewrite all the networking. But if Comcast is disrupting TCP connections, what's to stop them from disrupting UDP connections? Unfortunately, I don't know much about networking, so this is a difficult task for me to address.

Funny udp was mentioned because I was going to mention it too. UDP is the way to go IMO. Also, the college im at does NOT allow the packets that SS uses, however it DOES allow UDP i.e. I can play WoW but not SS.

Also I got that circuit error 3 times at around 1:30am Central. It was at the restaraunt I go to, to play SS (since I can't play at the dorms)

Many places of business and public WLAN's are blocking bittorrent/SS style packets, but not WoW's; I've witnessed this personally.

I understand that it would be a major task to change the networking, but I think a great many people would be very happy with the change i.e. being able to play from libraries, etc. Not to mention, it looks like SS is going downhill with comcast.

We're rooting for you Jeff!