MagnusK - why does the customer need to do this?

[Llendil]

Just quoting something posted by MagnusK - no disrespect, but this isn't something the customer should be doing to ensure they can play the game. It's already been stated by others that the authentication mechanism developed by Mythic/GOA should be adapted to ensure this doesn't happen in the first place. Asking every single ISP provider to make changes to their traffic shaping is not the right way to fix the problem and most customers will find it very hard to get to speak to the right person to do this - fix it at source and change the authentication mechanism!

Hot topics
09/30 13:00 CEST - "Authentication Failed - Application Will Now Terminate" info
Many players are experiencing time-out issues, resulting in "Authentication Failed - Application Will Now Terminate" errors. There could really be any number of issues causing this but essentially it is an indication that the communication between one's computer and the WAR servers is limited.

Some users experience these problems despite having excellent bandwidth and being able to play other MMO's without any problems. This is so because their ISP (Internet Service Provider) has allowed exceptions for the traffic generated by these games. WAR is still new, and so many ISP's have not made the neccessary adjustments to their network.

Below is the IP address used by WAR in Europe, along with the ports used (should you need to reconfigure your firewall). If you are experiencing the "Authentication Failed - Application Will Now Terminate" error and cannot find a solution to this problem, you may want to contact your ISP and provide them with this information. They'll know what to do with it and hopefully, this will resolve your problem.

IP:
80.12.99.0/24
80.12.100.0/24
80.12.101.0/24
80.12.102.0/24

Ports:
TCP: 80, 8040-8047, 10622
UDP: 1024-65535

 

[AngelHeal]

well... maybe...

instead of waiting weeks for signing contracts they wanne help you sooner bytaking 1 minute of your time..

I mean this way you can play, instead of waiting?

 

[Heta]

possible, is that many are not having that problem, and there maybe aint a problem within GOA's walls?

we all know where this ends up tho.

hi opentransit, can you please stop sucking donkey balls?

 

[Llendil]

It's not helping anyone, it's merely passing a problem GOA can actually fix at source, onto the customer and a multitude of ISPs who will take even longer to make the changes or not at all. Changing the authentication mechanism so that this doesn't happen in the first place is the easiest and most sensible solution. Asking a bunch of gamers to instruct their ISPs in the art of packet management is not the best solution, yes some might think they know what to do, but you can guarantee someone will cock it up when they speak to their provider.

 

[AngelHeal]

It's not helping anyone, it's merely passing a problem GOA can actually fix at source, onto the customer and a multitude of ISPs who will take even longer to make the changes or not at all. Changing the authentication mechanism so that this doesn't happen in the first place is the easiest and most sensible solution. Asking a bunch of gamers to instruct their ISPs in the art of packet management is not the best solution, yes some might think they know what to do, but you can guarantee someone will cock it up when they speak to their provider.

like i said

you wanne play or wait 3 more weeks?

 

[Llendil]

I'll requote myself again so it's clear for you

It's not helping anyone, it's merely passing a problem GOA can actually fix at source, onto the customer and a multitude of ISPs who will take even longer to make the changes or not at all.

ISP's do not carry out network changes at the drop of a hat. They never have done, they never will do and they don't do it by you ringing up their customer service number. GOA fixing it quickly at source will solve the problem, it's not a network issue you can solve in 'a minute of your time' on a home PC.

 

[AngelHeal]

I'll requote myself again so it's clear for you



ISP's do not carry out network changes at the drop of a hat. They never have done, they never will do and they don't do it by you ringing up their customer service number. GOA fixing it quickly at source will solve the problem, it's not a network issue you can solve in 'a minute of your time' on a home PC.

yes, but solving stuff with big companys like france telecom and other company's they are dealing with (isp profs in this case) never goes within 5 seconds. Takes days maybe weeks.

So therefor they say, even though it might not be as profesional as it should be; you can wait, or try dooing something yourself wich maybe goes faster.

They not saying they dont do anything, they just giving alternative options that maybe speeds up the process.

Now I understand your point, and if I had an company I would never have posted this because it maybe attacks the proffesional view on my company however: they seem to put solving the problem as priority no1 and not their own image.

 

[Llendil]

Sorry but no, you are still missing the point.

yes, but solving stuff with big companys like france telecom and other company's they are dealing with (isp profs in this case) never goes within 5 seconds. Takes days maybe weeks.

GOA / Mythic do not have to talk to any ISPs to change their own code and authentication mechanism - it has nothing to do with big contracts or talking to anybody else. They simply have to alter the login and authentication mechanism so that it doesn't cause timeouts in the first place (this is not difficult) and consequently, nobody, GOA included need talk to an ISP or network provider to fix this at all.

 

[AngelHeal]

They simply have to alter the login and authentication mechanism.

Obviously I do not know how exactly GOA /Mythic got this login stuff programmed.
However I doubt it's that simple to fix for them?

 

[MajorKhaos]

Why don't you just contact your ISP and pass on the info, you never know, they might act on it. Hell, they may even reply, "Yes we're already working on it, because a number of people have done the same as you and told us about the issue."

 

[Soazak]

They have offered a possible solution, use it at your own leisure.

I'm sure they are doing what they can to get the details to ISPs so people can connect better, they have no reason not to want you to connect, there is no conspiracy here.

You dont need to do this, as pointed out above, you can wait for GOA to fix the problem which may take weeks - or you can pick up the phone and make an attempt at getting your ISP to direct their traffic to GOA propperly.



Do or don't...your actions will only effect you here.

 

[Llendil]

Yup, you are right, I 'could' ring my ISP and try and fix it for myself, but:

1. The problem will never get fixed at source like it should be if we all start ringing up our ISPs all over Europe and the odd few confirm it worked whilst the vast majority don't see a change and never read Freddyshouse.
2. A network change is never permanent and can be undone as easily as it's been done by any ISP at any time.
3. Fixing the code at source - it's not difficult, someone coded it, someone can recode it - is by far the best and cleanest solution and it's the only guarantee GOA will ever have that it's not them at fault anymore - they are at the moment!

 

[Soazak]

1. How do you know this is a problem at source? It could be a very limited number of ISPs blocking traffic to certain places. Afterall it only seems to be affecting a small number of people.

2. If it's so easily fixed at the ISPs end, why the problem?
/thread!

3. how do you know GOA are not already doing something about it? They have obviously acknowledged there is a problem, and by the sounds of that quote in the original post they are already on it.

 

[Llendil]

1. How do you know this is a problem at source? It could be a very limited number of ISPs blocking traffic to certain places. Afterall it only seems to be affecting a small number of people.

Because it's a failure that occurs for a large number of people under a wide range of providers and people have already submitted traceroutes which show little relationship between them. It's not a small number, GOA have had to post a response (hell, we know they only post if it's something large!)

2. If it's so easily fixed at the ISPs end, why the problem?

It's easily fixed if you play Warhammer and happen to manage the network devices at an ISP that matter and decide you want to make a change and continue to work at that company and know the change must remain permanent. Chances are we aren't all that lucky!

how do you know GOA are not already doing something about it? They have obviously acknowledged there is a problem, and by the sounds of that quote in the original post they are already on it.

I've never mentioned this and yes they have acknowledged the problem, but they don't acknowledge they need to fix, they just provide the customer with a workaround. That's the point of my post, a workaround is often used by a company as a 'fix'. My statement is that this shouldn't be the customers responsiblity. If GOA had stated they are working on a solution, I wouldn't have posted!

 

[Soazak]

But this line says it all really..

WAR is still new, and so many ISP's have not made the neccessary adjustments to their network.

They have offered a fix, which is nice of them. As more and more ISPs make adjustments for the game it will eventually be fully resolved.

No company wants to deny access to its users, regardless of how incompetent they are, its not in anyones business plan to lose money


You can always try the solution they have offered, worst that can happen is nothing will change, for a 10p phone call it's not too much of a gamble imo

 

[aika]

Magnusk is correct, its ISP issue. I had no problems connecting with my VPN gamer account ISP connection, however just to check i connected to the internet via the same ISP, just used a normal user, not a gamer account, and voila - couldnt connect, got auth error.

That is on same PC, using same router, just different ISP account.
The difference is that my gamer account at my ISP doesnt get traffic shaped, while the normal accounts obviously do get =\

 

[Poag]

It's not helping anyone, it's merely passing a problem GOA can actually fix at source, onto the customer and a multitude of ISPs who will take even longer to make the changes or not at all. Changing the authentication mechanism so that this doesn't happen in the first place is the easiest and most sensible solution. Asking a bunch of gamers to instruct their ISPs in the art of packet management is not the best solution, yes some might think they know what to do, but you can guarantee someone will cock it up when they speak to their provider.

If it was a "fix at source" problem...wouldn't it be affecting everyone? not just some people randomly spaced around europe...on isps some other people and also connect to the game ok..thus indicating the problem is infact not GOAs really?

Perhaps?

If it was affecting everyone...sorry a "large" number of people we would not see, what...3? threads about it, there would be hundreds, all 50 pages long with angry pitchfork wielding villagers threatening blue murder.

Whats more likly is that it is a "small" problem. Affecting people with similar ISP setups, and/or similar routers/firewalls.

Also, let us take note here, that GOA have also posted about that Gold Spam blocking addon, its not an in house fix, but they have endorsed it as a part-solution to the problem. Maybe they will veen write it into there own UI in the future...you know how like Blizzard actually made a useful raid interface from CTraid

Magnusk is correct, its ISP issue. I had no problems connecting with my VPN gamer account ISP connection, however just to check i connected to the internet via the same ISP, just used a normal user, not a gamer account, and voila - couldnt connect, got auth error.

That is on same PC, using same router, just different ISP account.
The difference is that my gamer account at my ISP doesnt get traffic shaped, while the normal accounts obviously do get =\

Ah traffic shaping at its best

Traffic = zero

 

[Llendil]

...and so it's your responsibility to ensure the network is configured correctly and you'd rather do that then ensure GOA alter the authentication mechanism so that you don't get failures in the first place?

What if you decide to change provider? What if the provider changes their network equipment, do you want to manage that too?

Changing the authentication so it requires less traffic between your client and the server still remains the solution, do you not think?

By all means, ring an ISP, it won't cost 10p, we all know that but it doesn't negate the fact that the problem will remain until GOA confirm they are going to fix it. By the way, I'm with BT - I'm quite confident there are shed loads of people who will have had intermittent problems like myself.

I never had the Authentication Failures at all until a week ago, when I had them solidly for one night, then as if by magic, they vanished, they then came back again two nights ago for a period of two hours. It's not a persistent problem, so it's not an easy problem for an ISP to fix and they shouldn't be altering network equipment for the sake of a gaming application in the first place

 

[longbow]

It is a source problem. I doubt it would be a quick fix - particularly with the likes of BT where most of those on the cs desk have a poor grasp of English at best. Very few of their operators have English as their first language and it often requires repaeating exactly the same information in different formats to get a simple message accross to them. It also doesnt help when you tell them the problem and they seem to constantly want to just tell you that the problem is at the customers end and not theirs - even when it is obvious to a 5 year old that it isnt.
No contacting our ISPs is not the way to do this.

 

[Soazak]

By all means, ring an ISP, it won't cost 10p, we all know that but it doesn't negate the fact that the problem will remain until GOA confirm they are going to fix it. By the way, I'm with BT - I'm quite confident there are shed loads of people who will have had intermittent problems like myself.

I'm with BT, they offer a freephone line to everyone. 100 was it?

As well as offering gr8 indian technical support (internet providings?)

Though they are known to traffic shape a lot for the cheapest options...

 

[scorge]

next it will be post your ping plots.....

 

[Llendil]

Though they are known to traffic shape a lot for the cheapest options

Exactly, fat chance of a major provider making a change on the whim of a phone call or 7, it may be free phone-calls, but you will pay in life lost on the phone

Still adamant that this is a simple fix to the authentication mechanism, nothing more, nothing less.

 

[Poag]

...and so it's your responsibility to ensure the network is configured correctly and you'd rather do that then ensure GOA alter the authentication mechanism so that you don't get failures in the first place?

What if you decide to change provider? What if the provider changes their network equipment, do you want to manage that too?

Changing the authentication so it requires less traffic between your client and the server still remains the solution, do you not think?

By all means, ring an ISP, it won't cost 10p, we all know that but it doesn't negate the fact that the problem will remain until GOA confirm they are going to fix it. By the way, I'm with BT - I'm quite confident there are shed loads of people who will have had intermittent problems like myself.

I never had the Authentication Failures at all until a week ago, when I had them solidly for one night, then as if by magic, they vanished, they then came back again two nights ago for a period of two hours. It's not a persistent problem, so it's not an easy problem for an ISP to fix and they shouldn't be altering network equipment for the sake of a gaming application in the first place

What is more than likly happening here is that your ISP, or the peers your ISP use to connect to the GOA network have traffic shaping of some description, and during periods of maximum load P2P applications get blocked, and with P2P apps come port ranges that people use for P2P.

Thus why p2p traffic shaping is probably the cause of the problem, probably.


Now what GOA have asked you to do is actually the fastest way to get the problem resolved because of 2 reasons.

1-They are not a customer of these ISPs, they can "request" special rules to be made for there IP addresses, they can maybe threaten legal action in the LOOOOOOONNNNNG term if the don't aswell. But your a customer, so they ISP has to give you a certain SLA to fix this sort of thing.

2- They dont know which ISPs have the problem. They can blanket mail some of the bigger ISPs, but with all of europe, north africa, western-middle east and the like thats going to be a damn big list and who knows if it would even be complete. Theres 100s of ISPs in the Uk that I can think of, and i'd bet 100s more I can't.


So its not GOAs fault, and i'll say this again "As of the current information available its not GOAs fault"

They can try and fix it by using a different port range to send/receive information that may/maynot be blocked by other ISPs than your own. Thus fixing it for you and breaking it for someone else..or maybe blocked by every ISPs and shooting themselves in the foot.
But that is a "maybe" solution as its not sure fire to actually work.

So, they give the information to the people who have the problem, thus ensuring they can get that info to the right ISPs who have the problem.



Gifv coffeez

 

[Poag]

next it will be post your ping plots.....

Very possibly, they can see who the common peer is along the route from you to them and contact them directly and say "Your traffic shaping is fucking up our game/users..hurf durf <legal threats>!" etc.

 

[Llendil]

Arrrgh

It may not be GOA's fault, but they can provide the solution to avoid all this madness about ringing up ISPs - blimey, why should hundreds of phone calls be made around the world by lots of us when it can be resolved with a change to the authentication mechanism at source. For example, there is no need to return a complete server list when I log in (that's where it fails intermittently) - I only play on one sodding server, base the lookup on a 'favourites' selection. If I want to create a new character, then hell, give the entire list of servers.

It's functionality in place on WoW, in place on LOTRO and it works to avoid all of this - that's my point! Use an authentication method that avoids all this crap!

 

[Soazak]

It may not be GOA's fault, but they can provide the solution to avoid all this madness about ringing up ISPs

Ringing the ISP is the solution to the problem, not the problem itself..

 

[Krazeh]

I would love to see how many ISPs would, on request from a customer, open/disable traffic shaping on 10 TCP ports and 64512 UDP ports to 1016 destination IP addresses. I'm guessing it'd be quite a low number, probably around 0ish.

 

[Iceforge]

I'll requote myself again so it's clear for you



ISP's do not carry out network changes at the drop of a hat. They never have done, they never will do and they don't do it by you ringing up their customer service number. GOA fixing it quickly at source will solve the problem, it's not a network issue you can solve in 'a minute of your time' on a home PC.

GAH!

This is making my head hurt.

Okay, now, listen up, Llendil, because it is actually going to help you if you say something to your ISP.

Now, if this is anything like the Open Transit problem there was some years back, the procedure is like this due to else didly shit will happen, and GOA being powerless about it.

Now, simplified, you sit at home, you dial up to your ISP to get internet, they send you through Open Transit (and other hubs) to get you connected to GOA which makes you able to play.

Now, if one of the Hubs is acting up and makes 5000 people unable to play, for instance, then GOA (1 company) going to the Hub making trouble = the hub not taking the problem serious, it is, afterall, just 1 company.

Now, if you complain to your ISP and your ISP complain to the Hub, guess what? Now it is 2 companies complaining, so the problem might be a tad more serious.

What if 5000 people complain to 200 ISPs making 200 ISP's complain to the hub?
Then the hub is going to fix their serious problem as quickly as they fucking can before they get their asses kicked.

But sure, refuse to do it and essentially say "it is GOA's problem, I won't contact no other company even through the problem might be outside GOA's hands and their power, because I expect the impossible!" if you must

 

[Llendil]

Hehe, cheers Iceforge, you've reinforced the fact that 5000 people need to deal with a problem one person can fix by altering the code that serves up the server list when you sign in. It sounds like you prefer the 5000 people phoning up You've simplifed it well, I grant you, but in practice what you state doesn't happen, I work in networks

Odd, how it's only DAOC and Warhammer that require us to contact ISPs to resolve fairly fundamental issues which exist and can be solved in code?

 

[Iceforge]

Hehe, cheers Iceforge, you've reinforced the fact that 5000 people need to deal with a problem one person can fix by altering the code that serves up the server list when you sign in. It sounds like you prefer the 5000 people phoning up You've simplifed it well, I grant you, but in practice what you state doesn't happen, I work in networks

Odd, how it's only DAOC and Warhammer that require us to contact ISPs to resolve fairly fundamental issues which exist and can be solved in code?

Now, i don't know the specifics about this error, someone said Open Transit and what I mentioned before ofc only applies if it is anything like the Open Transit problem there was years ago.

I cannot comment on why only, as I don't know if it is even only those 2 games that have that issue.

But seems quite reasonable that if your ISP blocked a port that is needed for the game then you contact your ISP to get it opened; Why change a code that works for 99%+ of the players, risking instability, if the issue can be resolved by the customer contacting his ISP, and if the ISP is truely blocking those IP's/Port's, then you got to wonder why; Are you paying to have your internet connection restricted or are they restricting it to increase their own profits by limiting your usage of their systems?

Sorry if some of my replies are incoherent with the actual problem, but not that bothered that I had read through everything in the thread to every last detail or researched it more than briefly; Then again, I am not influenced by the problem myself