Optus Direct and Disconnects

[Palathas]

Hi all,I live in Australia and my ISP is Optus. I've been with them for close to 12 months now and about 6 months ago my troubles started. The problem is that a good portion of the time I try to transition between zones I get dumped to the character selection screen.After troubleshooting the problem with the helpful SOE Support staff we found that from me to SOE servers is all good, from SOE servers to me though and a SingTel hop was having a 100% packet loss issue, which to me screams port blocking. I sent all the tracert and pathping info to Optus support staff and they said that the hop wasn't on their network and there was nothing they could do about it.My question to any other Australians is to ask if anyone else that is with Optus is having a similar problem?It's pretty much made EQ2 unplayable for me, it's also only happening with EQ2 and no other SOE game that I have nor any other game at all. It's just very frustrating that the Optus staff just blew me off with out any sort of resolution attempt. Surely they are customers of who ever controls that hop and can ask them to look in to it.I know that after my contract with Optus is over I will be dumping them and going to either Telstra or Spin as I know both of those ISPs have no problems connecting. It's just that I'm not going to pay the $AU450 to terminate my phone and internet connection early.Note to self - read the fine print very carefully before agreeing to any sort of term.

[TSR-JasonC]

The Internet is a fickle beast.  It was designed with relatively limited growth and functionality in mind and retrofitted with more and more parts to handle the stress and strain of modern use.  To handle inter-continental and inter-national communication, routing is performed "semi-automagically" using a combination of the Border Gateway Protocol (IETF RFC 4271) and numerous variations on the venerable Routing Information Protocol (IETF RFC 2453).  Sad to say, none are without fault - as you are painfully aware.I wish that I had good news to give you, Wardari.  Unfortunately, the issue rests squarely on one or more Internet Service Provider(s) that are seemingly playing by their own rules.  Since there is no central governing body for the Internet, it's entirely within an ISP's rights to block, deny, sniff, analyze, or decrypt any data sent to or through them (except in some countries where there are laws specifically governing intra-national communications, such as in the USA and Germany).  To top it all off, Australia always seems to get the short end of the proverbial "stick" when it comes to computer gaming and the Internet, but rest assured that this is neither intentional, nor is it really that much worse than anywhere else when all aspects are taken into account.Don't lose hope, however.  There are a few ways to get this issue resolved:<ol><li>Talk to your ISP and see if they can work with the other ISP(s) to clear up the blockages.  If that doesn't work, then maybe your ISP can implement some BGP changes in their own routers to effectively "sweep" the problem under the rug.</li><li>Investigate other ISPs like Telstra, TPG, and AT&T (just to name a few).  I suggest asking about a "test drive" of the connectivity.  Most ISPs in the United States offer this type of service for a short period (about a month or so) and if you are not completely satisfied, there is no cost to disconnect.  Make sure you read the fine print before agreeing to anything, though!</li><li>Take the IP address of the "hop" that seems to fail and enter it into the <a rel="nofollow" href="http://wq.apnic.net/apnic-bin/whois.pl" target="_blank">APNIC</a> database*.  It will return some gibberish-looking data, but there will likely be an email address to the Network Administrator.  The Network Administrator for that particular IP address will likely be the best person to correspond with regarding packet blocking or poor routing.  Having a "trace route" from both your side and the SOE side will help that administrator in tracking down the root problem.</li></ol>I hope this helps track down the most effortless and least aggravating resolution for you, Wardari.  If you need any further help, please feel free to contact our Technical Support staff via the methods available in this knowledge base article:<a rel="nofollow" href="http://help.station.sony.com/cgi-bin/soe.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=10404" target="_blank">http://help.station.sony.com/cgi-bi...p?p_faqid=10404</a>* Keep in mind that since there are at least five major Address Space registrars (ARIN, LACNIC, APNIC, AfriNIC, and RIPE), you might need to look around at the various registrars' databases to find the information you are looking for.  The <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.iana.org./numbers/" target="_blank">IANA</a> has nice links to all of the major registrars, thankfully.

[Palathas]

Thanks for the response.I've already talked to the tech staff and they were quite helpful. If it wasn't for them I wouldn't have gotten as far as I have with this problem. Unfortunately my contract goes for another 12 months and has a very large disconnection fee if I terminate it early. I didn't think too much of it when I signed up as I've never had this sort of problem with an Australian ISP before, so I went with a 2 year contract. That means that I'll have to wait at least another 12 months before switching.I was mainly interested in seeing if there was anyone else having the same problem though. It just seems odd that it is happening to EQ2 only. Oh well, I can still play EQ1, Vanguard and Pirates of the Burning Sea. I'll just take a break from EQ2 for a little while until I can get it sorted out.Thanks for the tip about the APNIC database, I'll give it a shot.