Odd lag issue

[essex1028]

I'm having a problem that occurs very randomly throughout the day. At these random times, my Recieve signal drops to 0 and fluxes to non-0, back to 0...and most of the time ends up disconnecting me. It happens for about 5-10 mins, but again, the duration is random. Even resetting my cable modem/network doesn't work, nor does restarting the computer. I also play Everquest and never have this problem, or any connection issues in there. I've tried opening the ports on my hub, and again doesn't work. Does anyone have any ideas as what could be causing this...and more importantly how to fix it? Otherwise my connection is completely stable, except for these random times. I've also tried updating Windows, but no noticable effect on the problem.

Thanks for the help in advance,
Trextal

[jwalton]

Re: Odd lag issue

It's some goofy bug with Square Enix's servers, from what I can tell. I have the same oddball problem every once in awhile. Makes no sense at all, because I can browse the internet just fine during these spontaneous Receive 0 moments.

[sevenpointflaw]

Re: Odd lag issue

FFXI is poorly written. Thats the only explination I can give. I've tried everything under the sun to avoid this problem, and no matter what I do it always (eventually) comes back.

[fastcart]

Re: Odd lag issue

I heard ffxi is buggy when used with certain routers. I don't know which router they are though.

[kiffkin]

Re: Odd lag issue

This was happening a lot with the DDoS attacks a while ago. It's been better since then but seems to have got worse again in the last couple of weeks. That said, there are some people it happens to more often than others, so it may have nothing to do with that.

[Centurion]

Re: Odd lag issue

Do you currently have any 3rd party programs installed and running for FFXI?

that may cause a problem, just a thought.

[Ellipses]

Re: Odd lag issue

I was having something like this on my VOIP router a while ago. Every so often I'd get R=0 for a minute or so, sometimes I would d/c, sometimes not. I just hooked up my old non-VOIP router instead, with the VOIP router hooked up to it. Problem disappeared. Have you got a different router you can try? I've also heard of disabling DHCP helping with FFXI's connection issues.

[Slip]

Re: Odd lag issue

I was having the same problems a year ago and one thing I did that seemed to help was to configure the ports on my Linksys router to open the ones requested by FFXI.

I snagged this off the Playonline Website:

PlayOnline(including all related software such as FINAL FANTASY XI) may use any of the following ports. If you are using a router, please configure it to allow packets to pass through these ports.

Port numbers that may be used by the PlayOnline server group.
TCP 25, 80, 110, 443 or 50000 - 65535
UDP 50000 - 65535

Port numbers that may be used by terminals such as the PlayStation(R)2.
TCP 1024 - 65535
UDP 50000 - 65535

*Your router may require that you use a PC to configure your network settings. For more information about how to configure your network settings, please refer to the instruction manual that came with your router or contact the manufacturer directly.

*If your Internet service provider (ISP) specifies a DNS server, you may need to configure your settings to allow packets to pass through UDP Port 53 as well. For more information, please refer to the instruction manual for your router or the information provided by your ISP.

[jwalton]

Re: Odd lag issue

Just opened those ports... thanks for the heads up. Going to see how things work out for a week and make mention of my results here.

[Kutu]

Re: Odd lag issue

I get random lag during the day, but thats just down to my crummy ISP cutting its service every now and then.

Opening all the ports should help though.