Here's an even tricker thing to figure out. Went to a friend's house to test this out as I haven't been able to connect since 8/12/12 and he has the SAME exact ISP and BOOM it connected. So, I got the DNS servers he was connecting to and told my router to use those instead on my network at home NO DICE. The only difference being our IP addresses and the default gateway address. I even renewed and refreshed my IP address and still got the same exact error.
OS: Windows Vista Home Premium SP 2 64-bit
ISP: Charter communications
Alright ladies and gents, I just got off the phone with my ISP, after spending about the past two hours on with 'em! They bounced me from three techs (whom I suspect were based in India) before they finally connected me to a 'Level 3' tech, based right here in my hometown of Orlando.
In a nutshell, this, from PWE Tech Support:
"Hello ,
Please contact your Internet Service Provider about this issue. It may be a good idea to request that your IP traffic be routed through an alternate Domain Name Server (DNS).
If the issue persists, please let us know."
That did not work at all! Yet, hey, I learned how to change my DNS address. So I guess it wasn't a total loss???
I had a lengthy chat with the local ISP tech, describing this problem at length. I even read Escapay14's last post to him, word for word. After our talk, we pretty much concluded that this problem IS NOT RELATED TO OUR RESPECTIVE ISPs. Nor, is it seemingly related to our respective DNS addresses, as I changed mine over to Google's DNS, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Public_DNS
and that made no difference in trying to connect to the patch/login launcher. Yet, I may well try other Open DNS providers and also try not only IPV4, but IPV6 DNS address changes as well. Still, I'm pretty much convinced that's not the root of the problem.
Thing that's been nagging at me since this afternoon is how and why is it that it briefly connected and patched for me earlier this afternoon, when setting the STO.exe's compatibility setting to 'Windows XP (Service Pack 3)', and again briefly with compatibility for 'WXP SP2'???!!
And Escapy14's post is a real doozey!!! I read that to my ISP tech and you could hear his surprise before saying, 'Good luck with figuring that one out!'.
I've got my pal who's been able to connect without problems, about to call me any minute now. We're gonna do a bit more comparative trouble-shooting and then I'll let ya guys know if we somehow find a miracle solution.
"Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man and let history make its own judgments." -Zefram Cochrane
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
Methos, as I said earlier you most likely had the got lucky connect where for a brief window you get through then it all falls apart again, thats why I know its Cryptic and not us. I feel like a rat following a piece of cheese that PWE Support is holding, I keep running but never get the reward i.e. all these "solutions" they keep giving us and we go along and try them. I am not sure I can install STO to a diff directory, last time I tried to install I made a new folder and the game ended up installing itself to C:\Public\Games\Cryptic Studios, nevertheless I am following the cheese and trying this out.
That was the exact response we had. How can my same EXACT computer connect on the SAME EXACT ISPs in the same network area, just the only noticeable difference being our default gateway and IP (now, at the time our DNSs were different, but they are now the same). It even did all the patches and everything when it was connected at my friend's place just on Tuesday. Yesterday and today on my own network at home with the same install it still wouldn't connect.
The only conclusion I can see from that is that Cryptic/PWE is somehow having some issues with certain gateway addresses and/or IP addresses. I have refreshed and renewed my IP to no avail. I even, for the heck of it, uninstalled the game before renewing and refreshing then after that was done rebooted my router and cable modem and reinstalled the game. Still no connection. Still getting the same error and no launcher.
I'm not knowledgeable enough about these types of things to get any further on my investigation than this so I hope this information helps someone who has more knowledge on the subject so we can ALL be connected to STO and be able to play again.
Ack! Should have stated I'm in MI, for any good that does if we're still thinking it could be a regional thing. Which I don't think it is based on what happened with me...
That was the exact response we had. How can my same EXACT computer connect on the SAME EXACT ISPs in the same network area, just the only noticeable difference being our default gateway and IP (now, at the time our DNSs were different, but they are now the same). It even did all the patches and everything when it was connected at my friend's place just on Tuesday. Yesterday and today on my own network at home with the same install it still wouldn't connect.
The only conclusion I can see from that is that Cryptic/PWE is somehow having some issues with certain gateway addresses and/or IP addresses. I have refreshed and renewed my IP to no avail. I even, for the heck of it, uninstalled the game before renewing and refreshing then after that was done rebooted my router and cable modem and reinstalled the game. Still no connection. Still getting the same error and no launcher.
I'm not knowledgeable enough about these types of things to get any further on my investigation than this so I hope this information helps someone who has more knowledge on the subject so we can ALL be connected to STO and be able to play again.
Ack! Should have stated I'm in MI, for any good that does if we're still thinking it could be a regional thing. Which I don't think it is based on what happened with me...
Intriguing stuff Escapay14! No idea what to make of all that myself. And I'm absolutely certain that we can eliminate this being a geographically regional problem, as those of us who've been struck by this bug seemingly reside all over the place.
"Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man and let history make its own judgments." -Zefram Cochrane
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
For what it's worth I am downloading the Unofficial mac version of the game to test it out on my MBP and see if there are some different results. Going on the same network I use my pc on, just with my mac. Who knows! I'll let you all know what happens once it's all downloaded.
Bannon3, old pal, I can already tell ya that none of those suggestions are likely to work, sadly.
Oh I know my friend, but I got nothing to do so I will try it then throw it back at Tech Support when it fails. 4 Days to Mass Effect 3 Leviathan DLC!! Then I will stop caring about this for awhile, its getting old and tiring.
There we go, have it installing to C:\Program Files\Cryptic Studios, not that it matters
Still waiting on my friend's call. And I'm really, really hoping that he does call soon, 'cause he's packing the family off to 'Star Wars Celebration', here in Orlando, as of tomorrow.
Yet, I just noticed something interesting, based on a suggestion my friend had made. He suggested that perhaps this new 'Account Guard' system might have something to do with all this. So, I just popped up to the top of this screen and accessed the 'My Account' link, via Google Chrome (haven't tried it via IE yet). Anyhow, upon getting there, I ignored the fact that it's showing me having a Zen balance of zero and clicked on 'Account Guard' and Chrome came back with 'The webpage is unavailable'.
So, then I did a tracert on that webpage and here's what it came up with:
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\Users\Javier>tracert secure.crypticstudios.com
Tracing route to secure.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.60]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 6 ms 8 ms 6 ms 10.110.0.1
2 14 ms 20 ms 10 ms ten0-2-0-6.orld01-ser2.bhn.net [72.31.195.94]
3 15 ms 23 ms 11 ms ten0-15-0-9.orld71-car2.bhn.net [71.44.60.186]
4 9 ms 15 ms 15 ms hun0-7-0-0.orld71-cbr3.bhn.net [72.31.193.24]
5 18 ms 19 ms 18 ms ae-4-11.cr1.atl20.tbone.rr.com [66.109.10.14]
6 24 ms 23 ms 23 ms 107.14.19.36
7 27 ms 19 ms 16 ms 107.14.19.13
8 36 ms 207 ms 208 ms te3-4.ccr01.atl02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.12.
109]
9 32 ms 31 ms 31 ms te0-3-0-3.ccr22.atl01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54
.83.201]
10 31 ms 31 ms 34 ms te0-3-0-2.ccr22.dca01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54
.1.122]
11 39 ms 39 ms 36 ms te0-5-0-2.ccr22.jfk02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54
.42.26]
12 43 ms 43 ms 47 ms te0-1-0-5.ccr22.bos01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54
.44.54]
13 43 ms 48 ms 44 ms te4-2.ccr01.bos06.atlas.cogentco.com [66.28.4.25
4]
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * * Request timed out.
26 * * * Request timed out.
27 * * * Request timed out.
28 * * * Request timed out.
29 * * * Request timed out.
30 * * * Request timed out.
Trace complete.
C:\Users\Javier>
Note that it times out just like the tracert to patchserver.startrekonline.com.
Not sure if that means anything, but I found it curious.
"Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man and let history make its own judgments." -Zefram Cochrane
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
There is something funky going on with these sites and how certain browsers access them, I cant get into these forums on IE but Firefox is fine. Remember I had this problem in May before the whole account merge or account guard nonsense so I doubt thats it. I WISH WE COULD GET A COMMENT FROM A CRYPTIC EMPLOYEE!!! I would settle for a comment from the kid they sent to get coffee, just somebody for the love of God!
Oh I know my friend, but I got nothing to do so I will try it then throw it back at Tech Support when it fails. 4 Days to Mass Effect 3 Leviathan DLC!! Then I will stop caring about this for awhile, its getting old and tiring.
There we go, have it installing to C:\Program Files\Cryptic Studios, not that it matters
Pretty please don't give up on being persistent in resolving this matter Bannon3! Having been a daily reader and occasional poster on these forums since January, I've noticed that the only manner in which any tech issues get resolved around here is when players are united in their persistence to either find a solution or persistent enough to pressure the Devs and Techs towards resolving a problem.
We must remain persistent and vigilant, 'cause it's certainly not looking as though the folks at Cryptic/PWE have been!
"Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man and let history make its own judgments." -Zefram Cochrane
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
Hey here is what I get, its alot different than your results:
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\Users\Chris>tracert secure.crypticstudios.com
Tracing route to secure.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.60]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms Wireless_Broadband_Router.home [192.168.1.1]
2 5 ms 4 ms 4 ms 10.9.44.89
3 6 ms 6 ms 6 ms G11-0-2-790.BSTNMA-LCR-07.verizon-gni.net [130.8
1.109.48]
4 7 ms 6 ms 6 ms so-0-3-0-0.BOS-BB-RTR1.verizon-gni.net [130.81.2
9.252]
5 10 ms 9 ms 9 ms 0.so-0-2-0.XL3.BOS4.ALTER.NET [152.63.16.137]
6 10 ms 9 ms 9 ms POS6-0.GW5.BOS4.ALTER.NET [152.63.25.69]
7 12 ms 11 ms 9 ms internap-gw.customer.alter.net [65.207.236.58]
8 12 ms 9 ms 11 ms border11.te8-1-bbnet2.bsn.pnap.net [63.251.128.1
04]
9 22 ms 16 ms 16 ms cryptic-3.border11.bsn.pnap.net [216.52.61.78]
10 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms secure.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.60]
...
12 43 ms 43 ms 43 ms te0-2-0-1.ccr21.bos01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54
.44.10]
13 42 ms 46 ms 43 ms te4-4.ccr01.bos06.atlas.cogentco.com [66.28.4.42
]
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
...
Suggestions Grouchyotaku?
Hard to say... You're making it to same gateway as my Trace Route did, but.... (it almost seems like your ISP is throttling the connection... Now, if they were actually throttling the connection, would you expect them to tell you this???)
There is something funky going on with these sites and how certain browsers access them, I cant get into these forums on IE but Firefox is fine. Remember I had this problem in May before the whole account merge or account guard nonsense so I doubt thats it. I WISH WE COULD GET A COMMENT FROM A CRYPTIC EMPLOYEE!!! I would settle for a comment from the kid they sent to get coffee, just somebody for the love of God!
Funny ya should mention the forum and browser funkiness. Despite the fact that I was last able to properly log into the game on 8/12 and didn't try logging again until 8/17; I was still checking these forums on a daily basis.
And, on one of those days, between last Sunday and last Friday (either last Tuesday or Wednesday methinks), I did notice that suddenly my usual Chrome bookmark to this forum stopped working altogether. Tried it then on IE and it still wouldn't connect.
I had to use Google search to find the latest site address, indicating that the address for this forum had somehow changed, without my knowingly doing a thing.
Might have something to do with the root of this whole problem.
Well, just off the phone with my pal and we won't be able to do more comparative troubleshooting until early tomorrow morning. I was lucky enough to get him to commit to some more troubleshooting in the A.M., before he and his family make their way to 'Star Wars Celebration'. After that, no more comparative analysis until at least Monday here.
Not that there's much left to do. I only got three other areas to extensively compare with him. At that point, I'm pretty sure that option of troubleshooting will have been exhausted.
"Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man and let history make its own judgments." -Zefram Cochrane
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
Hard to say... You're making it to same gateway as my Trace Route did, but.... (it almost seems like your ISP is throttling the connection... Now, if they were actually throttling the connection, would you expect them to tell you this???)
Grouchy, do I have to pull out that Samuel L. Jackson Youtube clip again??!!:P Could you kindly and specifically speculate on why my ISP would be "throttling my connection" or why they wouldn't tell me as much?
Update:: Never mind Grouchy, I did some digging about this 'connection throttling' nonsense and it's likely just that...nonsense that's not at all germane to this problem . And we've lost enough time and patience in dealing with nonsense. So, kindly, in replying to any tech questions Grouchy, please bear in mind that while some, like myself, are multi-lingual (English, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese here), the bulk of us likely don't speak 'Techy' or 'Silicon Valley'. Explicit, non-technical, plain English would do nicely, if ya care to contribute, please.;)
"Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man and let history make its own judgments." -Zefram Cochrane
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
If it's of any help I cannot pull up the crypticstudios.com page on either my mac or my pc in any browser. It's very weird that I cannot even pull up their site.
With all this uninstalling and re installing going on - have you guys checked to see if your conducting proper registry key removal? As well as things like deleting old user app data, which may be set to hidden. A pain in the head I know.
Please contact your Internet Service Provider about this issue. It may be a good idea to request that your IP traffic be routed through an alternate Domain Name Server (DNS).
If the issue persists, please let us know.
Customer Support
Perfect World Entertainment
Basically they just told me to go away and quit bothering them so I will, good luck guys I hope you are able to connect soon.
With all this uninstalling and re installing going on - have you guys checked to see if your conducting proper registry key removal? As well as things like deleting old user app data, which may be set to hidden. A pain in the head I know.
Nynik, what steps or program might you recommend for cleaning one's registry? I haven't had to deal with any of that nonsense in nearly a year. I paid pros (genuine and well respected local professionals, not 'Geek Squad'/'Best Buy' dolts) to rectify and bring my system back to life, last December. I have literally not had a single PC related issue since they worked my system over last December, until this bug here reared its ugly head to me last Friday morning.
In fact, due to the apparent and inarticulate incompetence of PWE's Tech folk (with their dirge of useless form responses), I've been left to trouble-shoot this problem on my own. And, amidst all my troubleshooting and tweaking, I fear I have perhaps inadvertently caused more harm to my system than healed any existing issues, within the past week.
An example being my download and subsequent use of 'CCleaner' earlier today. It mysteriously zapped about 2.5GB of who knows what. Thankfully no apparent fallout from that...yet.
So, how might you suggest I go about getting rid of any and all references to STO, in my registry, if I do another uninstall/reinstall?
Basically they just told me to go away and quit bothering them so I will, good luck guys I hope you are able to connect soon.
Yeah Macfelly, if you read some of my more recent posts in this thread, then you would have seen that I too received the same message from PWE Tech Support. Called my ISP. Spent roughly two hours on the phone with them before I got their highest level tech, who was based in my home town. He walked me through changing Domain Name Servers. And, as I'm sure you've already discovered, that made no difference at all in resolving this issue.
"Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man and let history make its own judgments." -Zefram Cochrane
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
Tried changing the DNS, tried doing the compatibility mode, nothing is working. I dont want to give up but is it worth this much hassle for a game. Cryptic/PWE dont care about a few players losing connectivity to the game they just see 99.7% of the player base are fine and still spending
I really want to get back in game but I'm thinking they're just assuming the issue is our end now I have completely wiped a laptop, downloaded from a torrent and theres nothing but my internet security, which has everything for sto set to open access and still nothing. I'm using the laptop as a test bed for new things we come up with.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Original Join Date May 2009 - Real 1000 Day Veteran
Funny ya should mention the forum and browser funkiness. Despite the fact that I was last able to properly log into the game on 8/12 and didn't try logging again until 8/17; I was still checking these forums on a daily basis.
And, on one of those days, between last Sunday and last Friday (either last Tuesday or Wednesday methinks), I did notice that suddenly my usual Chrome bookmark to this forum stopped working altogether. Tried it then on IE and it still wouldn't connect.
I had to use Google search to find the latest site address, indicating that the address for this forum had somehow changed, without my knowingly doing a thing.
Might have something to do with the root of this whole problem.
If the Physical IP Address has changed, then a simple flush of the DNS cache would solve the problem... ( from a Command Prompt window, enter 'ipconfig /flushdns' though some versions of windows require Admin rights for this to work)
Now its known that some Network providers with limited bandwidth, want to reserve their resource for high paying business contracts (usually with a quality of service guarantee) and discourage 'trivial' uses of valuable bandwidth (which includes Internet MMORPG) Comcast itself had a long history of trying to throttle Bit-Torrent use (which competes against their Cable content) while constantly denying they were doing so. And their attempts to hide their throttling resulted in connection quality issues playing MMRPG games, including STO. This didn't stop until the FCC ordered them to do so as part of the requirements for their proposed merger of the NBC Television network. Since then, Comcast high-speed Internet has been problem free, as Comcast wouldn't want something to happen that could endanger the ongoing NBC merger.
So you have to keep a open mind that cause of your issue could be ISP throttling. And of course they wouldn't tell you about it, for fear of adding credence to the various Open Network Initiatives that is being pushed by a certain political party in Washington... As these things have occurred in the past. And as long as its not outlawed, will happen again in the future...
Hate to put my name in this hat...however...after successfully downloading today's patch and logging in to accept and resend my doff's back out on duty...I logged off and played swtor for a bit...when I came back and tried to log back in. I get the same Launcher error and my browser was unable to connect to STO or CO's websites. I actually got to CO's website off of a link on the CO-WIKI and from there used PWI's drop menu to reach STO.....
I've hit the same problem. Seems like a networking issue, but such a range of users having the problem, I doubt it is at the users end. Seems like something triggering a firewall response at STO (or their data-center ISP), possibly their gateway is blocking users or dropping overloaded packets by IP and seems to die after sprintlink.net, I assume that's where their servers are at.
Doubt it's local ISP,
startrekonline.com (208.95.185.44) and secure.crypticstudios.com (208.95.185.60) are on the same network, perfectworld seems on a different network. This suggests gear problem and they either know about it, or are in denial (can't say I blame them, 95% of issues are users).
If it's the case of IP block, a router reset may help if you get a new IP from the pool, unless they block by pool. Unfortunately I can't test this.
Tracing route to secure.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.60]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 44 ms 99 ms 99 ms local IP (removed by me)
2 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms local IP (removed by me)
3 13 ms 11 ms 11 ms p69.pool-82.callplus.net.nz [202.180.82.69]
4 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms vlan7-cpcak3-s1.tranzpeer.net [202.180.81.49]
5 11 ms 11 ms 25 ms x7-1-0-101.akbr5.global-gateway.net.nz [202.50.234.61]
6 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms xe3-1-0.tkbr9.global-gateway.net.nz [202.50.232.74]
7 137 ms 135 ms 135 ms ae2-3.labr5.global-gateway.net.nz [203.96.120.142]
8 136 ms 143 ms 138 ms ae0-3.lebr6.global-gateway.net.nz [203.96.120.86]
9 137 ms 140 ms 141 ms ae0-3.lebr6.global-gateway.net.nz [203.96.120.86]
10 138 ms 141 ms 138 ms sl-crs1-ria-0-3-2-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.24.42]
11 142 ms 142 ms 145 ms sl-crs1-stk-0-11-2-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.25.241]
12 172 ms 172 ms 172 ms p4-0.sprint.mlpsca01.us.bb.verio.net [144.232.8.166]
13 176 ms 176 ms 176 ms sl-crs2-oro-.sprintlink.net [144.232.1.3]
14 179 ms 179 ms 179 ms sl-crs2-oro-.sprintlink.net [144.232.1.3]
15 213 ms 218 ms 218 ms 144.232.1.74
16 244 ms 226 ms 225 ms sl-crs2-akr-0-3-3-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.20.186]
17 237 ms 253 ms 237 ms sl-crs2-spr-0-4-5-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.18.109]
18 239 ms 237 ms 239 ms sl-st20-bos-0-0-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.8.48]
19 240 ms 241 ms 241 ms sl-st20-bos-0-0-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.8.48]
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
I also cannot get in. This is the first time I have had any trouble. The game did patch on me last night -- the last time I played. So I suppose it is possible that the patch killed it somehow, but I am not so certain.
And the reason I am not so certain is the fact that www.crypticstudios.com is giving me a 'connection has timed out' error. And the patch server the game attempts to connect to (according to my logfile) is: stohttppatch.crypticstudios.com So it seems there is an issue at crypticstudios.com regarding their pipe to the internet.
Having run my own web hosting company for 6 years, my guess is crypticstudios.com may have changed its DNS entries for it's servers. And while the command "ipconfig /flushdns" does flush your own local machine's DNS cache, it does NOT flush your ISP's dns server's cache. Only time can do that in most cases -- unless you have a really small ISP and some really eager-to-help admins.
DNS servers resolve the alpha-numeric name of an address into it's numeric IP. For example, it is what converts 'www.crypticstudios.com' into 208.95.185.46. When you first go to such an address, your computer checks to see if it knows what that address resolves to. If it does, no lookup is necessary. Otherwise, it then passes the request on to your ISP's DNS server, which does the same -- if it knows it, it tells it to your machine, and the process ends there. If it doesn't know what it is, your ISP's dns server reaches out and grabs it from the authoritative DNS server (NS1.crypticstudios.com and NS2.crypticstudios.com) on file for the domain address you're looking up.
When you register a domain name, you also have the ability to set the DNS record for the domain. Inside that record is a DNS EXPIRE setting. This variable is key here. It basically tells the entire DNS lookup-system how long to wait before attempting another lookup on the authoritative server. And your internet provider's DNS server will wait that long before it resends the query to the authoritative server to freshen-up the numeric IP associated with that domain name. Most places set that at 6 to 12 hours, and sometimes even 24 hours. It just depends.
My guess is that cryptic is changing around its IP addresses. And they're doing it in a very unprofessional manner. Whenever they do such a thing, they should change that EXPIRE variable on the domains to something like 5 or 10 minutes....rather than 6, 12, or 24 hours... OR, one of their routers has gone nuts and needs to be reset.
It is quite possible for some people to be able to get in, and others not get in, simply because of a server or router crashing. There's some magic that can be done at the nameserver level -- namely round-robin DNSing... Basically, that's when multiple physical machines are all responding to a single domain name. The first query to the dns server might be told that somesite.com resolves to 1.1.1.1 and the subsequent query is told that it's 1.1.1.2 That way, one server isn't forced to handle all the traffic of an entire domain. Those of us who are given a resolution via round-robin DNSing to a dead IP address would simply be SOL -- and I don't mean the star system... =]
If someone wants to give them a call, it appears their phone number is 408-399-1969
I'd call them, but I don't have free long distance.... And if they're in California, they might not even answer for another 2-3 hours... *sigh*
Some very interesting and hopefully constructive feedback this morning!
Grouchyotaku, I appreciate your specificity in responding this go around. Regarding 'ipconfig/flushdns', I can assure you that I have done that more times than I recall throughout the past week. As for 'connection throttling', I did a bit of research on all that last night and even ran a number of diagnostic programs to determine whether or not that might've been the case. All diagnostics came up clear. My ISP is Time Warner Brighthouse Roadrunner. I've been subscribed to their cable internet service for about twelve years now and, in all that time, I've barely ever had any problems with them whatsoever. Pretty darned sure that 'connection throttling' is not at issue here.
Aamche, you brought up some interesting points that have flitted about in my mind over this past week. Failure to connect at the network server level, on Cryptic/PWE's end, has likely been my chief culprit in all this. And I completely agree with your take on this problem having little, if anything to do with our respective ISPs. With regard to the possibility of an 'IP block', at our end: I don't have a router at all, as my desktop PC's ethernet card is directly connected to my cable modem. I have, however, both completely powered down and unplugged my cable modem and run 'ipconfig/release', 'ipconfig/renew' and 'ipconfig/flushdns' several times throughout the past week.
Captainepi, thanks for your wonderfully thorough analysis! Your detailed explanation of the nature of DNS servers has shed some light on theories that have been nagging at me throughout the past week. And thank you ever so much for giving us Cryptic's phone number! I do have unlimited long distance calling and I'll most definitely be giving them a call in a little over two hours!
"Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man and let history make its own judgments." -Zefram Cochrane
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
DNS servers resolve the alpha-numeric name of an address into it's numeric IP. For example, it is what converts 'www.crypticstudios.com' into 208.95.185.46. When you first go to such an address, your computer checks to see if it knows what that address resolves to. If it does, no lookup is necessary. Otherwise, it then passes the request on to your ISP's DNS server, which does the same -- if it knows it, it tells it to your machine, and the process ends there. If it doesn't know what it is, your ISP's dns server reaches out and grabs it from the authoritative DNS server (NS1.crypticstudios.com and NS2.crypticstudios.com) on file for the domain address you're looking up.
When you register a domain name, you also have the ability to set the DNS record for the domain. Inside that record is a DNS EXPIRE setting. This variable is key here. It basically tells the entire DNS lookup-system how long to wait before attempting another lookup on the authoritative server. And your internet provider's DNS server will wait that long before it resends the query to the authoritative server to freshen-up the numeric IP associated with that domain name. Most places set that at 6 to 12 hours, and sometimes even 24 hours. It just depends.
The purpose of the DNS EXPIRE setting is that it tells the your local DNS server, once its looked up a entry for the URL in question, how long it can cache the entry, and thus avoid additional look-up calls and reduce the load on the authoritative DNS server. If the issue was being caused by out of date information being cached, then the problem would automatically resolve itself once the caching period expires and the local DNS server fetches a updated entry record... Even the case of using a DNS round-robin scheme is still subject to the DNS cache expire, (though it would be game of Russian Roulette when updating a new record entry if there's a dead IP address in the configuration)
However, most of you who are suffering from connection issues has had these problems longer then one or two days, which implies there is more then a simple IP address change going on here...
Comments
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\Users\Javier>tracert patchserver.crypticstudios.com
Tracing route to patchserver.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.41]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 6 ms 8 ms 6 ms 10.110.0.1
2 7 ms 7 ms 7 ms ten0-2-0-6.orld01-ser2.bhn.net [72.31.195.94]
3 18 ms 11 ms 11 ms ten0-15-0-9.orld71-car2.bhn.net [71.44.60.186]
4 9 ms 15 ms 15 ms hun0-7-0-0.orld71-cbr3.bhn.net [72.31.193.24]
5 18 ms 18 ms 18 ms ae-4-11.cr1.atl20.tbone.rr.com [66.109.10.14]
6 22 ms 23 ms 23 ms 107.14.19.36
7 18 ms 18 ms 18 ms 107.14.19.13
8 16 ms 18 ms 16 ms te3-4.ccr01.atl02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.12.
109]
9 31 ms 31 ms 32 ms te0-0-0-1.mpd21.atl01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54
.40.249]
10 30 ms 32 ms 31 ms te0-1-0-2.mpd21.dca01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54
.28.226]
11 35 ms 36 ms 36 ms te0-0-0-6.mpd21.jfk02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54
.5.97]
12 43 ms 43 ms 43 ms te0-2-0-1.ccr21.bos01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54
.44.10]
13 42 ms 46 ms 43 ms te4-4.ccr01.bos06.atlas.cogentco.com [66.28.4.42
]
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * * Request timed out.
26 * * * Request timed out.
27 * * * Request timed out.
28 * * * Request timed out.
29 * * * Request timed out.
30 * * * Request timed out.
Trace complete.
C:\Users\Javier>
Suggestions Grouchyotaku?
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
OS: Windows Vista Home Premium SP 2 64-bit
ISP: Charter communications
In a nutshell, this, from PWE Tech Support:
"Hello ,
Please contact your Internet Service Provider about this issue. It may be a good idea to request that your IP traffic be routed through an alternate Domain Name Server (DNS).
If the issue persists, please let us know."
That did not work at all! Yet, hey, I learned how to change my DNS address. So I guess it wasn't a total loss???
I had a lengthy chat with the local ISP tech, describing this problem at length. I even read Escapay14's last post to him, word for word. After our talk, we pretty much concluded that this problem IS NOT RELATED TO OUR RESPECTIVE ISPs. Nor, is it seemingly related to our respective DNS addresses, as I changed mine over to Google's DNS, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Public_DNS
and that made no difference in trying to connect to the patch/login launcher. Yet, I may well try other Open DNS providers and also try not only IPV4, but IPV6 DNS address changes as well. Still, I'm pretty much convinced that's not the root of the problem.
Thing that's been nagging at me since this afternoon is how and why is it that it briefly connected and patched for me earlier this afternoon, when setting the STO.exe's compatibility setting to 'Windows XP (Service Pack 3)', and again briefly with compatibility for 'WXP SP2'???!!
And Escapy14's post is a real doozey!!! I read that to my ISP tech and you could hear his surprise before saying, 'Good luck with figuring that one out!'.
I've got my pal who's been able to connect without problems, about to call me any minute now. We're gonna do a bit more comparative trouble-shooting and then I'll let ya guys know if we somehow find a miracle solution.
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
The only conclusion I can see from that is that Cryptic/PWE is somehow having some issues with certain gateway addresses and/or IP addresses. I have refreshed and renewed my IP to no avail. I even, for the heck of it, uninstalled the game before renewing and refreshing then after that was done rebooted my router and cable modem and reinstalled the game. Still no connection. Still getting the same error and no launcher.
I'm not knowledgeable enough about these types of things to get any further on my investigation than this so I hope this information helps someone who has more knowledge on the subject so we can ALL be connected to STO and be able to play again.
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
Oh I know my friend, but I got nothing to do so I will try it then throw it back at Tech Support when it fails. 4 Days to Mass Effect 3 Leviathan DLC!! Then I will stop caring about this for awhile, its getting old and tiring.
There we go, have it installing to C:\Program Files\Cryptic Studios, not that it matters
Yet, I just noticed something interesting, based on a suggestion my friend had made. He suggested that perhaps this new 'Account Guard' system might have something to do with all this. So, I just popped up to the top of this screen and accessed the 'My Account' link, via Google Chrome (haven't tried it via IE yet). Anyhow, upon getting there, I ignored the fact that it's showing me having a Zen balance of zero and clicked on 'Account Guard' and Chrome came back with 'The webpage is unavailable'.
So, then I did a tracert on that webpage and here's what it came up with:
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\Users\Javier>tracert secure.crypticstudios.com
Tracing route to secure.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.60]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 6 ms 8 ms 6 ms 10.110.0.1
2 14 ms 20 ms 10 ms ten0-2-0-6.orld01-ser2.bhn.net [72.31.195.94]
3 15 ms 23 ms 11 ms ten0-15-0-9.orld71-car2.bhn.net [71.44.60.186]
4 9 ms 15 ms 15 ms hun0-7-0-0.orld71-cbr3.bhn.net [72.31.193.24]
5 18 ms 19 ms 18 ms ae-4-11.cr1.atl20.tbone.rr.com [66.109.10.14]
6 24 ms 23 ms 23 ms 107.14.19.36
7 27 ms 19 ms 16 ms 107.14.19.13
8 36 ms 207 ms 208 ms te3-4.ccr01.atl02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.12.
109]
9 32 ms 31 ms 31 ms te0-3-0-3.ccr22.atl01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54
.83.201]
10 31 ms 31 ms 34 ms te0-3-0-2.ccr22.dca01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54
.1.122]
11 39 ms 39 ms 36 ms te0-5-0-2.ccr22.jfk02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54
.42.26]
12 43 ms 43 ms 47 ms te0-1-0-5.ccr22.bos01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54
.44.54]
13 43 ms 48 ms 44 ms te4-2.ccr01.bos06.atlas.cogentco.com [66.28.4.25
4]
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * * Request timed out.
26 * * * Request timed out.
27 * * * Request timed out.
28 * * * Request timed out.
29 * * * Request timed out.
30 * * * Request timed out.
Trace complete.
C:\Users\Javier>
Note that it times out just like the tracert to patchserver.startrekonline.com.
Not sure if that means anything, but I found it curious.
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=363871
We must remain persistent and vigilant, 'cause it's certainly not looking as though the folks at Cryptic/PWE have been!
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\Users\Chris>tracert secure.crypticstudios.com
Tracing route to secure.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.60]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms Wireless_Broadband_Router.home [192.168.1.1]
2 5 ms 4 ms 4 ms 10.9.44.89
3 6 ms 6 ms 6 ms G11-0-2-790.BSTNMA-LCR-07.verizon-gni.net [130.8
1.109.48]
4 7 ms 6 ms 6 ms so-0-3-0-0.BOS-BB-RTR1.verizon-gni.net [130.81.2
9.252]
5 10 ms 9 ms 9 ms 0.so-0-2-0.XL3.BOS4.ALTER.NET [152.63.16.137]
6 10 ms 9 ms 9 ms POS6-0.GW5.BOS4.ALTER.NET [152.63.25.69]
7 12 ms 11 ms 9 ms internap-gw.customer.alter.net [65.207.236.58]
8 12 ms 9 ms 11 ms border11.te8-1-bbnet2.bsn.pnap.net [63.251.128.1
04]
9 22 ms 16 ms 16 ms cryptic-3.border11.bsn.pnap.net [216.52.61.78]
10 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms secure.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.60]
Trace complete.
I dont know why but it stops at Line 10
EDIT: I sent support the results of our 2 traces
Hard to say... You're making it to same gateway as my Trace Route did, but.... (it almost seems like your ISP is throttling the connection... Now, if they were actually throttling the connection, would you expect them to tell you this???)
And, on one of those days, between last Sunday and last Friday (either last Tuesday or Wednesday methinks), I did notice that suddenly my usual Chrome bookmark to this forum stopped working altogether. Tried it then on IE and it still wouldn't connect.
I had to use Google search to find the latest site address, indicating that the address for this forum had somehow changed, without my knowingly doing a thing.
Might have something to do with the root of this whole problem.
Well, just off the phone with my pal and we won't be able to do more comparative troubleshooting until early tomorrow morning. I was lucky enough to get him to commit to some more troubleshooting in the A.M., before he and his family make their way to 'Star Wars Celebration'. After that, no more comparative analysis until at least Monday here.
Not that there's much left to do. I only got three other areas to extensively compare with him. At that point, I'm pretty sure that option of troubleshooting will have been exhausted.
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
Update:: Never mind Grouchy, I did some digging about this 'connection throttling' nonsense and it's likely just that...nonsense that's not at all germane to this problem . And we've lost enough time and patience in dealing with nonsense. So, kindly, in replying to any tech questions Grouchy, please bear in mind that while some, like myself, are multi-lingual (English, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese here), the bulk of us likely don't speak 'Techy' or 'Silicon Valley'. Explicit, non-technical, plain English would do nicely, if ya care to contribute, please.;)
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
Basically they just told me to go away and quit bothering them so I will, good luck guys I hope you are able to connect soon.
In fact, due to the apparent and inarticulate incompetence of PWE's Tech folk (with their dirge of useless form responses), I've been left to trouble-shoot this problem on my own. And, amidst all my troubleshooting and tweaking, I fear I have perhaps inadvertently caused more harm to my system than healed any existing issues, within the past week.
An example being my download and subsequent use of 'CCleaner' earlier today. It mysteriously zapped about 2.5GB of who knows what. Thankfully no apparent fallout from that...yet.
So, how might you suggest I go about getting rid of any and all references to STO, in my registry, if I do another uninstall/reinstall?
Yeah Macfelly, if you read some of my more recent posts in this thread, then you would have seen that I too received the same message from PWE Tech Support. Called my ISP. Spent roughly two hours on the phone with them before I got their highest level tech, who was based in my home town. He walked me through changing Domain Name Servers. And, as I'm sure you've already discovered, that made no difference at all in resolving this issue.
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
I really want to get back in game but I'm thinking they're just assuming the issue is our end now I have completely wiped a laptop, downloaded from a torrent and theres nothing but my internet security, which has everything for sto set to open access and still nothing. I'm using the laptop as a test bed for new things we come up with.
Original Join Date May 2009 - Real 1000 Day Veteran
Now its known that some Network providers with limited bandwidth, want to reserve their resource for high paying business contracts (usually with a quality of service guarantee) and discourage 'trivial' uses of valuable bandwidth (which includes Internet MMORPG) Comcast itself had a long history of trying to throttle Bit-Torrent use (which competes against their Cable content) while constantly denying they were doing so. And their attempts to hide their throttling resulted in connection quality issues playing MMRPG games, including STO. This didn't stop until the FCC ordered them to do so as part of the requirements for their proposed merger of the NBC Television network. Since then, Comcast high-speed Internet has been problem free, as Comcast wouldn't want something to happen that could endanger the ongoing NBC merger.
So you have to keep a open mind that cause of your issue could be ISP throttling. And of course they wouldn't tell you about it, for fear of adding credence to the various Open Network Initiatives that is being pushed by a certain political party in Washington... As these things have occurred in the past. And as long as its not outlawed, will happen again in the future...
Doubt it's local ISP,
startrekonline.com (208.95.185.44) and secure.crypticstudios.com (208.95.185.60) are on the same network, perfectworld seems on a different network. This suggests gear problem and they either know about it, or are in denial (can't say I blame them, 95% of issues are users).
If it's the case of IP block, a router reset may help if you get a new IP from the pool, unless they block by pool. Unfortunately I can't test this.
Tracing route to secure.crypticstudios.com [208.95.185.60]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 44 ms 99 ms 99 ms local IP (removed by me)
2 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms local IP (removed by me)
3 13 ms 11 ms 11 ms p69.pool-82.callplus.net.nz [202.180.82.69]
4 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms vlan7-cpcak3-s1.tranzpeer.net [202.180.81.49]
5 11 ms 11 ms 25 ms x7-1-0-101.akbr5.global-gateway.net.nz [202.50.234.61]
6 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms xe3-1-0.tkbr9.global-gateway.net.nz [202.50.232.74]
7 137 ms 135 ms 135 ms ae2-3.labr5.global-gateway.net.nz [203.96.120.142]
8 136 ms 143 ms 138 ms ae0-3.lebr6.global-gateway.net.nz [203.96.120.86]
9 137 ms 140 ms 141 ms ae0-3.lebr6.global-gateway.net.nz [203.96.120.86]
10 138 ms 141 ms 138 ms sl-crs1-ria-0-3-2-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.24.42]
11 142 ms 142 ms 145 ms sl-crs1-stk-0-11-2-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.25.241]
12 172 ms 172 ms 172 ms p4-0.sprint.mlpsca01.us.bb.verio.net [144.232.8.166]
13 176 ms 176 ms 176 ms sl-crs2-oro-.sprintlink.net [144.232.1.3]
14 179 ms 179 ms 179 ms sl-crs2-oro-.sprintlink.net [144.232.1.3]
15 213 ms 218 ms 218 ms 144.232.1.74
16 244 ms 226 ms 225 ms sl-crs2-akr-0-3-3-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.20.186]
17 237 ms 253 ms 237 ms sl-crs2-spr-0-4-5-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.18.109]
18 239 ms 237 ms 239 ms sl-st20-bos-0-0-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.8.48]
19 240 ms 241 ms 241 ms sl-st20-bos-0-0-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.8.48]
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
And the reason I am not so certain is the fact that www.crypticstudios.com is giving me a 'connection has timed out' error. And the patch server the game attempts to connect to (according to my logfile) is: stohttppatch.crypticstudios.com So it seems there is an issue at crypticstudios.com regarding their pipe to the internet.
Having run my own web hosting company for 6 years, my guess is crypticstudios.com may have changed its DNS entries for it's servers. And while the command "ipconfig /flushdns" does flush your own local machine's DNS cache, it does NOT flush your ISP's dns server's cache. Only time can do that in most cases -- unless you have a really small ISP and some really eager-to-help admins.
DNS servers resolve the alpha-numeric name of an address into it's numeric IP. For example, it is what converts 'www.crypticstudios.com' into 208.95.185.46. When you first go to such an address, your computer checks to see if it knows what that address resolves to. If it does, no lookup is necessary. Otherwise, it then passes the request on to your ISP's DNS server, which does the same -- if it knows it, it tells it to your machine, and the process ends there. If it doesn't know what it is, your ISP's dns server reaches out and grabs it from the authoritative DNS server (NS1.crypticstudios.com and NS2.crypticstudios.com) on file for the domain address you're looking up.
When you register a domain name, you also have the ability to set the DNS record for the domain. Inside that record is a DNS EXPIRE setting. This variable is key here. It basically tells the entire DNS lookup-system how long to wait before attempting another lookup on the authoritative server. And your internet provider's DNS server will wait that long before it resends the query to the authoritative server to freshen-up the numeric IP associated with that domain name. Most places set that at 6 to 12 hours, and sometimes even 24 hours. It just depends.
My guess is that cryptic is changing around its IP addresses. And they're doing it in a very unprofessional manner. Whenever they do such a thing, they should change that EXPIRE variable on the domains to something like 5 or 10 minutes....rather than 6, 12, or 24 hours... OR, one of their routers has gone nuts and needs to be reset.
It is quite possible for some people to be able to get in, and others not get in, simply because of a server or router crashing. There's some magic that can be done at the nameserver level -- namely round-robin DNSing... Basically, that's when multiple physical machines are all responding to a single domain name. The first query to the dns server might be told that somesite.com resolves to 1.1.1.1 and the subsequent query is told that it's 1.1.1.2 That way, one server isn't forced to handle all the traffic of an entire domain. Those of us who are given a resolution via round-robin DNSing to a dead IP address would simply be SOL -- and I don't mean the star system... =]
If someone wants to give them a call, it appears their phone number is 408-399-1969
I'd call them, but I don't have free long distance.... And if they're in California, they might not even answer for another 2-3 hours... *sigh*
Grouchyotaku, I appreciate your specificity in responding this go around. Regarding 'ipconfig/flushdns', I can assure you that I have done that more times than I recall throughout the past week. As for 'connection throttling', I did a bit of research on all that last night and even ran a number of diagnostic programs to determine whether or not that might've been the case. All diagnostics came up clear. My ISP is Time Warner Brighthouse Roadrunner. I've been subscribed to their cable internet service for about twelve years now and, in all that time, I've barely ever had any problems with them whatsoever. Pretty darned sure that 'connection throttling' is not at issue here.
Aamche, you brought up some interesting points that have flitted about in my mind over this past week. Failure to connect at the network server level, on Cryptic/PWE's end, has likely been my chief culprit in all this. And I completely agree with your take on this problem having little, if anything to do with our respective ISPs. With regard to the possibility of an 'IP block', at our end: I don't have a router at all, as my desktop PC's ethernet card is directly connected to my cable modem. I have, however, both completely powered down and unplugged my cable modem and run 'ipconfig/release', 'ipconfig/renew' and 'ipconfig/flushdns' several times throughout the past week.
Captainepi, thanks for your wonderfully thorough analysis! Your detailed explanation of the nature of DNS servers has shed some light on theories that have been nagging at me throughout the past week. And thank you ever so much for giving us Cryptic's phone number! I do have unlimited long distance calling and I'll most definitely be giving them a call in a little over two hours!
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
However, most of you who are suffering from connection issues has had these problems longer then one or two days, which implies there is more then a simple IP address change going on here...