Internet keeps disconnecting since last patch, any thoughts please? Also ping rate? W

Internet keeps disconnecting since last patch, any thoughts please? Also ping rate? What is ping rate? and can it be adjusted?

Since the last patch I keep getting disconnected. I have my email open and checking for mail first at 30 min, then 10, then 5 and finally every minute. No effect.

This seems much more frequent on Rubi-ka 1 than 2 and is not predictable, it has happened changing zones, moving around, standing still. There is no damage it is just annoying as you know what.

I would appreciate any feedback. I was wondering if ping rate can be adjusted and if this might help.

Thank you in advance for your time and expertise!

Ping is a tool for IP networks, what it does is send a packet out and times how long it takes to reach the destination and receive a response. There is actually more to this than that, but in a nutshell that is what it does. You can't adjust ping rate, it is a measurement of how long the information takes to travel from your PC to your destination server. Not sure what the breakdown is of the color scheme of the ping icon, but I know green is like under 300ms, yellow under 1 sec? Red is anything over 1 sec. or 1000ms. If you ping icon is green means that your network connection to the Dimesion server is pretty good, yellow means you are probably gonna have some lag issues and red means you are definately lagging. But I don't think what you are experiencing is a network issue, if you read the boards there are tons of posts of people who are having the same issues you are as well as I and my ping times are good, green mostly except for a few times when it seems that the servers are bogged down.
One thing you can do is shut off your e-mail when playing. Everytime you down load e-mail your ping time will go up because the e-mail download will "fill the pipe". If you get e-mail with files or pictures and such in them, they will kill your ping times till they finish downloading to your mail client.

Oh, and about the Internet disconnect, are you actually getting disconnected from the Internet? or just the AO Servers? If you are on a dial-up, using a modem, does your modem have to redial in order to reconnect to the AO servers? or do you just have to re-login? If your modem is disconnecting from the Internet, you may have a problem with your phone lines and may be unrelated to AO. If your modem is not re-dialing than it is just a problem with the AO servers.

I also notice that if you set your dial up networking to disconnect on idle, that AO for some reason isn't considered active and windows will disconnect your Internet connection based on the idle time out that is set. You can check this by going into dial up networking, click on properties for your dial up connection and checking the last tab labled dialing, toward the bottom you will see a check box with the lable Enable idle disconnect. Uncheck this box. I don't know if this is just in this patch or been around forever, I just know that it happens because I have been playing around with my Internet settings a bit and noticed that when I turned on the enable idle disconnect, my modem (ISDN terminal adapter) kept disconnecting. I didn't turn it on before this last patch so I can't say that it didn't happen before now.

Yes, I am getting disconnected from the internet. Then I can't reconnect through the game client even though the dialup connection window pops up. So I have to connect again after having closed the game client.

I play DAOC and never have a problem. I checked the AO FAQ and they recommended the email being open if this happens, but it doesn't seem to make any difference.

My ping indicator is always yellow. I will see what the color is once I close the email program.

I have been thinking about DSL for a while, it may be time. Something that is always on can't get disconnected it seems to this non-computer savy person.

I am going to check my modem settings to see if the Enable idle disconnect is checked too.

Thanks for the feedback!

Hello!

I experience the same disconnect problem you describe, only it doesnt happen alot. What does occour more frequently though, is client crash without internet disconnection. I usually never crashed b4 the 13.8 patch, but instantly after the patching, zoning took 50 times as long as b4, and I always crash when trying to crid; both when gridding in, AND out...!

Missions are VERY difficult to do well anymore.. Team missions at least. What happens is that I now take 2-3 minutes to zone in mission, and when we get i.e. a bad pull, we zone out (I use 2-3 mins to zone back out, while my friend zones in 3 seconds), he has already zoned back into missionroom long b4 I am finished zoning out of mission room for the first time, and he might get killed, or I can get killed - handling mobs alone isnt easy.. And it isnt fun either, when I have to zone all the time - I COULD handle it when it only took me 5 seconds (that was the time I used to zone untill the 13.8 patch), but now that it takes me MINUTES (and often with a crash) it is almost unbearable!

NOTE: I am on a 56k dialup modem, while my friend is on a adsl connection. B4 the patch my friend was actually the one who used longer time to zone, but only a couple of additional seconds. Now it is me, on a modem, who uses longer time to zone - but with MINUTES!

I HAVE the latest drivers both to my 3d card and sounddrivers. I have the latest direct x drivers. I use win 2000 pro. I cant understand what is wrong. I hope tomorrows patch, 14.0, will help!

Sincerely,
Aforce

PS! IF you live in norway, then perhaps you should reconcider getting yourself an adsl connection, as it seems to be unstable atm. Alot of the time my friend crashes without any reason, and is disconnected for many hours b4 being able to log on again.
At least that is a problem I dont have on my 56k modem. :)

I have been paying attention to when it happens to me more carefully - more crowded areas.

I think the only answer for me is DSL.

On one of the computers I play on I have a 1 way cable modem (data is sent through a 56k and data recieved through a cable modem) what I have done to stop the disconnects which were getting worse and worse was to 1st go to espn.com and under NBA scores there is a link for SCOREPOST this scorepost is constantly getting updates from espn and has stopped my disconnects completly.

hope that helps

not sure i use a cable modem and when i try to whompa to 20k nowdays i crash 33% of the time guarenteed.

Cable modem, Win2K, 768 megs RAM, 1.4 Gig CPU, 64 megs Video RAM. I don't think the long zone times are on my end. I never had zonning problems before last patch. (5 sec zones) Now it takes me 90 secs to zone. On the other hand, you just have more fingers, the guy I always team with is on dial-up (poor fukr) and used to zone poorly but now zones in 5 secs. He's stoked. So it's proven that whether or not you have a fat pipe Funcom can make it so you zone fast. But why can the digital connection peeps do it one patch and not another, and vice versa for analog connection peeps? In all honesty I don't really care about dial-up problems, just as long as I get to zone fast again in the near future :}

I do have the same problem, and I have cable, so I don't have any connection problem at all from my computer or internet connection. The new patch for sure is having bug for connection!!!