Possible Login Server Issue

[Angelox]

Here's some web tests that may or may not be of help;
http://www.indeep76.com/eqemulator.net/
http://www.indeep76.com/checks/eqemulator.net/6851/
I reported the problems starting a few days ago because that's when they started. I mentioned it was after you did maintenance work, as an observation that might be of help to you; Prior to that date, everything was running fine, and I haven't changed a thing. I noticed an impressive amount of servers with the same situation, so I deducted the problem was LS server side.

My best guess so far is that the problem is somehow related to the fairly new (6 months old or so) code that allows servers to connect to multiple Login Servers at the same time. I know that when I removed the config to connect to LSs other than the EQEmu one, my server was suddenly able to stay connected to the EQEmu LS much better.

Not that it matters, but I can guarantee you this is new, as of a few days ago. currently, I'm only single connected (to AXCLassic LS) , because I can't keep a stable connection to EqEmu LS anymore. When I try to "Single LS" connect to EqEMu, it lasts a few mins and drops.

[Tabasco]

The host for my primary server (running 1771) reported packet loss issues from an over-utilized circuit, but are in the process of resolving the problem.
I've been connected for around 24 hours now with no problems so I'm inclined to think my issues were purely host related and just coincidentally timed, but I'm keeping a close eye on it.

I've updated my test server (completely different host) from 1771 to 1777 to see how it behaves.

[Astal]

Im also experiencing this problem

Ive changed nothing in my exes or anything, was working fine a few days ago.

[trevius]

Originally Posted by Angelox

Not that it matters, but I can guarantee you this is new, as of a few days ago. currently, I'm only single connected (to AXCLassic LS) , because I can't keep a stable connection to EqEmu LS anymore. When I try to "Single LS" connect to EqEMu, it lasts a few mins and drops.

Yeah, I agree that this is a very new issue. My theory was that with the addition of multiple Login Server connections, it might open up new possibilities where one Login Server could potentially bleed an issue into another Login Server. I don't know the details enough to really know if it is possible or not, but I think it could be something like this:

1. Login Server A is up and running perfectly fine without an issue.
2. Login Server B starts to experience an issue that is causing it to constantly drops world servers.
3. Multiple servers are configured to connect to both LS A and B.
4. As the servers start getting disconnected from Login Server B frequently, they start sending reconnects for both A and B at the same time even though A has remained stable.
5. Login Server A reacts badly to servers trying to register again that are already connected and registered. Somehow this causes all external servers (not on the same LAN as LS A) to experience connection issues with LS A.

Now, that example is probably not possible at all, but if nothing has changed to cause this problem, I am grasping at straws.

No servers have the info Rogean wants, because from a network perspective, everything looks perfect as far as I can tell. I never drop a ping to eqemulator.net and traceroutes and response times look great. I get about 35ms response time consistently, so that is not the problem.

I think part of the problem is that P1999 and PEQ both run on the same host as the LS, so they will never experience this issue if it is only from external networks, which is what it appears to be. And without P99 having this issue, I am sure it is harder for Rogean to troubleshoot from his end, or to even verify there is a problem at all. If P99 was experiencing this issue as well, it probably would have been resolved already.

Considering that so many servers are experiencing and voicing issues with the EQEmu LS only, I think it is pretty clear that the problem is there. Since PEQ and P99 don't have this problem at all, and all other servers seem to be having at least some sort of issue (some worse than others), I think that points to some type of issue with networking internal vs external. It could be a port issue, a routing issue, a DNS issue, or just about anything coming into the EQEmu hosting or anywhere up to that point. It could even be something related to the recent DDoS attack on P99 and related to how the hosting service assisted in mitigating the attack (assuming they did something).

Considering there was "hardware maintenance" on the 15th and a recent DDoS attack, it seems like one of those issues/changes could be to blame. Without us knowing exact details on issues/changes like that, it is hard to assist in possible suggestions for the cause and resolution of the issues.

[erik_llewellyn]

That makers a lot of sense actually since the easiest way to combat a DDoS attack is to only allow so many connection attempts from an address in a given amount of time before either banning the address or temp banning it. If the our external world servers loose sync and keep trying to reconnect, the LS may be seeing that as a DDoS attack and causing issues. Even more so if as you hypothisized about having multiple LS's syncing to one world server and if one goes out of sync it resend the world server login request back to all LS's in it's list.

[Akkadius]

I've mentioned these things to Rogean before this thread started. I've had all the same issues on two servers and I've seen them consistently. Not that they are ultimately keeping people from playing, but there still is a definitive difference AFTER whatever 'maintenance' happened. As far as what has changed specifically, that will have to be on Rogean's side. And I'm sure it's one of those problems that is very hard to reproduce or trace on his end.