Frequent Disconnects when connected to the server

bawalker · Post by **bawalker** » Fri Nov 25, 2005 1:38 am

Hello all,

Currently I am using Unreal 3.2.3 on a CentOS linux server that I own. I have compiled, modified, and been using the .conf settings now very successfully for over two years. Updating as I need.

Recently I have noticed VERY frequent disconnects from my server with mIRC 6.16 client software. Initially I thought it was my DSL provider as I've had disconnection problems with it as a whole. But I did some testing by having 8 servers open and multiple channel windows from each server open in mIRC for a period of over a week. During this time almost all of the other servers were never disconnected from me with me maintaining constant connections to them.

However with my server disconnects were happening about every 15-20 min with my client appearing that I was connected. But when I went to type something and enter that into the channel, it showed me that I was disconnected. mIRC automatically reconnected me, but after another 15-20 min this began happening all over again. The truely odd thing is that none of the other users are getting such major disconnects. Here is a sample of the client window and server window of mIRC:

<skiler> yeah, which is good
<modem> heh
<modem> i wonder if bt is killing my connection?
* Disconnected
* Attempting to rejoin channel #friendly
* Rejoined channel #friendly

*****************************************

Ping? Pong!
* [10053] Software caused connection abort
* Disconnected
* Connect retry #1 irc.modemnet.net (6667)
-irc.modemnet.net- *** Looking up your hostname...
-irc.modemnet.net- *** Found your hostname (cached)

I'm not sure if this means that there is something wrong with my client, my isp, or such because this is NOT happening on any other servers. Yet other clients onmy server aren't experiencing this either. Do I need to make a certain configuration change?

Help!

JIVXor · Post by **JIVXor** » Fri Nov 25, 2005 8:27 pm

I dont think this could help you, but try by modifying "pingfreq" directive.

bawalker · Post by **bawalker** » Fri Nov 25, 2005 8:29 pm

Is there a recommended setting... or should it be set higher or lower? Obviously lower means more frequent pings, but I want to get someones perspective who is more familiar with it.

JIVXor wrote:I dont think this could help you, but try by modifying "pingfreq" directive.

Jason · Post by **Jason** » Fri Nov 25, 2005 8:57 pm

I would actually leave your pingfreq at 30-120 and set your script to PONG the server every so often, say five under half the pingfreq, whether it got pinged or not. Just activate a timer on connect like me.

on *:CONNECT: {
//timer 0 30 /.RAW PONG : $+ $server
}

NOTE: This will ONLY work if you are getting PING TIMEOUT quit errors. Otherwise the pingfreq isnt the issue, and this wont help at all.

JIVXor · Post by **JIVXor** » Fri Nov 25, 2005 9:02 pm

I'm agree.

bawalker · Post by **bawalker** » Fri Nov 25, 2005 9:06 pm

Actually I don't see any PING TIMEOUT quits. Rather it's like the connection just dies out behind the scenes, but mIRC still shows me online until I goto type. Then it just says Software Disconnected. It reminds me of the old timeout errors of days past when a dialup connection got disconnected and it still showed me on the channel until it timed out a minute or so later.

I'll add that script to mirc and see what happens.

Jason wrote:I would actually leave your pingfreq at 30-120 and set your script to PONG the server every so often, say five under half the pingfreq, whether it got pinged or not. Just activate a timer on connect like me.

on *:CONNECT: {
//timer 0 30 /.RAW PONG : $+ $server
}

NOTE: This will ONLY work if you are getting PING TIMEOUT quit errors. Otherwise the pingfreq isnt the issue, and this wont help at all.

w00t · Post by **w00t** » Sat Nov 26, 2005 11:27 am

I have actually heard of another person [at least] having similar problems to yours under CentOS, I'm starting to wonder if it's something they do differently.

With a change in OS, their problems were solved. Obviously, this may not be a choice for you.

aquanight · Post by **aquanight** » Sat Nov 26, 2005 2:39 pm

Jason wrote:I would actually leave your pingfreq at 30-120 and set your script to PONG the server every so often, say five under half the pingfreq, whether it got pinged or not. Just activate a timer on connect like me.

on *:CONNECT: {
//timer 0 30 /.RAW PONG : $+ $server
}

NOTE: This will ONLY work if you are getting PING TIMEOUT quit errors. Otherwise the pingfreq isnt the issue, and this wont help at all.

That's a very very very VERY BAD way to solve it. Clients should know enough to pong on their own. And if the pingfreq is so low that they drop before they get a chance, then a timer will not help anyway :P .

Jason · Post by **Jason** » Sat Nov 26, 2005 3:52 pm

My client sends a ping on its own, but this timer still did help me a bit. No data, (pingfreq too long) sent over the connection, something dropped it. Then I actually did ping out.

bawalker · Post by **bawalker** » Sat Nov 26, 2005 5:08 pm

You are correct, this isn't a choice. I own a webhosting company and the server that the IRCD is on is also a live production hosting server that has to have 0% downtime.

w00t wrote:I have actually heard of another person [at least] having similar problems to yours under CentOS, I'm starting to wonder if it's something they do differently.

With a change in OS, their problems were solved. Obviously, this may not be a choice for you.

Suchiara · Post by **Suchiara** » Sat Nov 26, 2005 8:03 pm

no, this is os-independednt and hardware independent. I own two LANs and on both users use local irc servers. They also ger ping timeout'ed if they idle (don't speak). Tried on linux debian, freebsd 4.x, netbsd 2.0.2 and on all os'es the result IS the same

some software problem here perhaps.

w00t · Post by **w00t** » Sun Nov 27, 2005 11:36 am

Being we're not talking about ping timeouts here...

Suchiara · Post by **Suchiara** » Sun Nov 27, 2005 7:50 pm

well.. are you really sure that is not a ping timeout?
because:

Ping? Pong!
* [10053] Software caused connection abort
* Disconnected
* Connect retry #1 irc.modemnet.net (6667)
-irc.modemnet.net- *** Looking up your hostname...
-irc.modemnet.net- *** Found your hostname (cached)

I had the same situation. Those who stayed said saw me ping timeout'ed each time, so I think we're dealting with ping timeouts here too

Jason · Post by **Jason** » Sun Nov 27, 2005 10:42 pm

We didnt know that before.

Actually I don't see any PING TIMEOUT quits. Rather it's like the connection just dies out behind the scenes, but mIRC still shows me online until I goto type.

~bawalker

That made us think Ping Timeouts were not the problem

w00t · Post by **w00t** » Mon Nov 28, 2005 10:39 am

Depends, sometimes the ircd will see them as ping timeouts -- in the [admittedly odd] cases I've seen, they were.. fun, odd socket errors.