Router/FFXI Issues :(

[Boyiee]

Im having this red pearl, but can still see everything going then suddenly being dc'd problem too. It started last week, first once in a while, then every 10minutes. I forwarded all the ports and it started working good again, but today its started up again and Idk anymore.

Most annoying problem ever, everything runs great, every internet based program, but FFXI dc's every few minutes...

[Michuru]

2) having more than a handful of computers on a router simultaneously may be overloading it as well. with FFXI being a high-bandwith program (compared to stuff like AIM) you're more likely to see problems on FFXI than anything else. doing the open-ended ping like Osede said will help you figure out if thats the cause.

The issue that is hurting these routers isn't the number of computers or the bandwidth, hardware wise they can all handle anything you could ever do with a residential broadband connection.

It has to do with the way they do network address translation with UDP packets. UDP is a connectionless protocol so it is not trivial to route. The router has to store a lot of state information to do its job and the problem happens when that memory becomes full. A good router will replace old state information with new information. A bad one will simply flush all the state information and start over (you get a r0 and disconnected, but can reconnect). A piece of shit router will totally crash and require a restart(most routers on the market fall under this category) :/ Apparently memory management is too difficult for the current crop of programmers in India.

Just browsing web pages and doing downloads via TCP just about any router on the market will go all day without having any troubles.

Someone should make a list of specific models (not brands) and firmware versions that have been tested to let someone dual/triple box all day without r0 in ffxi. More specifically they should also be tested on how long it takes to zone.. Thats what I hate about my cisco 820, I zone slower than anyone else cause it doesn't buffer any of the incoming UDP while figuring out where to send it like my openWRT routers do.

That might be a good idea too, if someone could sit down and write a good walk through to install openWRT on popular router models that laypeople can understand. openWRT would fix every single problem that people have (besides a crappy ISP in the first place).

I found this reply very very interesting! What doesn't make sense however, is if I R0 often... that means my router flushes out all of the state information (but will let me reconnect). So... I followed the suggestion above about port forwarding and I don't seem to d/c as often. But with your idea of having someone dual / triple box all day without r0ing in FFXI would be ineteresting. I could dual box for a 3 1/2 hour dynamis and not get d/c once. Yet, when I am in a normal experience PT during off hours time (12 AM - 2 AM CST), I see more d/c than usual. Any theories?

However, since I did the port forwarding the problem doesn't occur as often. I have a Netgear WGR614v5 router.

[Devek]

The only way to know for certain is to hook your computer directly to the Internet (which is kind of a dangerous thing to do with Windows).

Sometimes your ISP(or your computer) is the problem.. so you need to rule that out.