4 replies to this topic

[Brandywine]

Back when UI 2 came out, this happened to me so much that MWO was unplayable for a couple of weeks. Eventually, a patch was issued and it went away. I don't recall what patch fixed it. In any case, with this most recent patch 1.3.311, it came back. This is what happens:

Depending upon the time of day (I am speculating that busy PGI servers has something to do with it), I can maybe get 1 or 2 matches and then when loading the mech bay, I get this game UI pop-up notification that says

"REDEEM ITEM - UNKNOWN FAILURE"

and immediately after, I get a Windows pop-up error that says:

"CryEngine Error - Pure function call"

and then MWO crashes. The really annoying thing, though, is that my router also crashes and becomes unresponsive. My cable modem is fine, because I have a separate VoIP phone router also connected directly to the cable modem and it continues to work fine.

I've searched high and low for what the heck could be causing this and I found an article somewhere about a malformed UDP packet is being issued by the game - or maybe a whole slew of malformed UDP packets are being sent and some routers detect this as a DDoS attack and drop the connection... which doesn't sound like something that should be causing a router to crash,

I've seen some people suggest using Google or OpenDNS DNS - which did not help.
Some have said to turn off firewalls and zone-alarm - I am not using either on my Windows box.
I've run the repair tool multiple times and reinstalled the games multiple times - no improvement.

During the weekdays, it seems to happen less, and I can get in 3-4 games before crashing. This is why I speculate is something to do with PGI server load.

I did have one other instance where I was getting the redeem item failure, but it did not cause my router to crash. In that case, some sort of configuration changed - I think on a Centurion I won in a weekend challenge or maybe it was a Hunchback. Basically, it said I had an invalid configuration and I had to remove and then re-add a standard 260 engine I think. It was kind of weird.

Maybe I'll get in and remove all modules from my mechs or something and see if that helps,

Anyway, I wanted to get a topic out here in case others are getting their routers screwed up from MWO.

[Tarl Cabot]

Quote

Some have said to turn off firewalls and zone-alarm - I am not using either on my Windows box.
I've run the repair tool multiple times and reinstalled the games multiple times - no improvement.

Brand/model of the router. Does it have the latest firmware update?

Turn off the SPI/Firewall that is in the router. This does not disable NAT.

On the modem, is it a modem or a gateway (combo modem/router)?

[Clit Beastwood]

Brandywine, on 17 August 2014 - 07:00 PM, said:

Back when UI 2 came out, this happened to me so much that MWO was unplayable for a couple of weeks. Eventually, a patch was issued and it went away. I don't recall what patch fixed it. In any case, with this most recent patch 1.3.311, it came back. This is what happens:

Depending upon the time of day (I am speculating that busy PGI servers has something to do with it), I can maybe get 1 or 2 matches and then when loading the mech bay, I get this game UI pop-up notification that says

"REDEEM ITEM - UNKNOWN FAILURE"

and immediately after, I get a Windows pop-up error that says:

"CryEngine Error - Pure function call"

and then MWO crashes. The really annoying thing, though, is that my router also crashes and becomes unresponsive. My cable modem is fine, because I have a separate VoIP phone router also connected directly to the cable modem and it continues to work fine.

I've searched high and low for what the heck could be causing this and I found an article somewhere about a malformed UDP packet is being issued by the game - or maybe a whole slew of malformed UDP packets are being sent and some routers detect this as a DDoS attack and drop the connection... which doesn't sound like something that should be causing a router to crash,

I've seen some people suggest using Google or OpenDNS DNS - which did not help.
Some have said to turn off firewalls and zone-alarm - I am not using either on my Windows box.
I've run the repair tool multiple times and reinstalled the games multiple times - no improvement.

During the weekdays, it seems to happen less, and I can get in 3-4 games before crashing. This is why I speculate is something to do with PGI server load.

I did have one other instance where I was getting the redeem item failure, but it did not cause my router to crash. In that case, some sort of configuration changed - I think on a Centurion I won in a weekend challenge or maybe it was a Hunchback. Basically, it said I had an invalid configuration and I had to remove and then re-add a standard 260 engine I think. It was kind of weird.

Maybe I'll get in and remove all modules from my mechs or something and see if that helps,

Anyway, I wanted to get a topic out here in case others are getting their routers screwed up from MWO.

I experienced these issues non-stop using a dlink router with dd-wrt. Launch MWO, the router would reboot. Never found the problem, just switched to a different router.

[Brandywine]

Interesting... I am using DD-WRT v24-sp2 (03/25/13) std (SVN revision 21061) on a D-Link DIR-615-E3/E4. I've actually got two others setup as wireless repeaters to cover all three floors of my house. Mixing routers when doing wireless repeaters in DD-WRT is an exercise in pain and misery.

Let me look into the SPI firewall and see if it is a requirement for port-forwarding. I believe it is, so I would not be able to disable it, as I've got multiple servers handling different port ranges.

Ultimately, though, it was working without issue after the patch that was released on 2/18/14 and the 1.3.311 patch. So maybe there is a similar thread in there. Moreover, if they found out what was doing it, PGI could issue a security finding to the DD-WRT folks for the vulnerability.

Edited by Brandywine, 18 August 2014 - 05:26 PM.

[Tarl Cabot]

Mixing routers (shudders)...

It could be related to the desync that is being experienced with some sort of optimization to be applied in the patch on Tuesday, though not a complete fix. It could be related to when the game resync then your connection being flooded.

I would also look at cleaning out the router (very few do). If it is being "overworked" part of the reboot could be heat related but atm I am leaning towards the desync issue. Though I have had a router literally go up in smoke, now that was a fun time.

Quote

Hi everyone,

This is just a quick message to let everyone know that we are aware of the lag issues currently occurring on production. The cause of the issue roots back to how the engine handles high network traffic levels under load, and is resulting in specific players desyncing from the server due to extremely high induced latencies. This typically results in the affected player noticing other mechs in the game either rubber banding or walking in place, as well as abnormally long delays when zooming or changing vision modes. We have been tracking these issues since they were first reported to us, and have been working on resolving them ever since.

The first set of fixes are scheduled to come out with tomorrows patch (August 19th), which should help to improve the situation somewhat. Beyond that, we are looking at making more significant changes to the underlying networking subsystems that should directly improve these desync situations; especially under high loss or highly variable latency conditions.

Thanks for your patience! We hope to have these bugs resolved as fast as we can.

-Karl.
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Edited by Tarl Cabot, 18 August 2014 - 07:33 PM.