UnrealIRCd Forums

G'day everyone,

I've had a small problem keeping some of the servers on our network linked for around two weeks and after this amount of time I am still unable to work out why.

Currently there are two servers running FreeBSD, one with Unreal v3.2.3 and the other running v3.2.5 and both work well. The other server runs Windows 2000 Advanced Server and v3.2.3 along-side Anope v1.7.13. This server runs fine when connected via a LAN to one of the other servers but when it is connected via WAN there is a problem with the connection staying alive and this is repeated almost exactly every hour. When the server is removed there is no connection problem.

Before going any further, there's no stability problems with any of the IRCd's or Services, there are no ports blocked and the ISP does not prohibit the running of servers. All IP's are static and we manage DNS ourselves with one primary and two secondary name servers. All IRC servers are synched to Victorian time servers, namely ntp0.cs.mu.oz.au and ntp1.cs.mu.oz.au. All routers (each of us owns different models which otherwise work fine) work well and have the latest firmware.

Today I asked a mate to install Unreal v.3.2.5 and a time server client on a spare box he owns and connect it to the server we have that runs the same version of Unreal. Likewise he has a static IP and his ISP allows servers. He has no OS or IRCd stability issues but he suffers the same connection stability problem though for him, his server disconnects once every few minutes.

I have double and triple-checked all .conf's, all routers, available memory and CPU usage on each server and everything seems fine. When reading through the forums I noticed a thread about choosing ports, among other things, located here - http://forums.unrealircd.com/viewtopic.php?t=329 - and it suggests using different ports for each server in the c/n:lines. We currently use port 7000 for each server though, once again, until two weeks ago there was no problem and we've been up for aroudn 18 months now.

So does using a different port for each server improve things and why? Or is what I read merely an example? At the moment I think I have exhausted all other possible causes.

I apologise if this post seems over-descriptive but I think it is best to state that I have reviewed as many possible causes of the issue.

Let's see... it works fine over a LAN, but when you connect over a WAN you have issues.

I think that this could be a ping frequency issue. Try changing it so that there's fewer pings sent and see what happens. If not, then maybe your ISP is routinely disconnecting connections that have been connected for a certain period of time. Based on what you said, I'd be very surprised if this were the case, but over where I live, this happens quite frequently, so I wouldn't overlook the possibility.

Of course, these are just my guesses at what could be wrong. If someone else sees something obvious that I've missed (it's 08:00 here and I'm still half-asleep), then post it.

The ping frequency is currently 90 seconds for servers. I could change these on the affected servers and see what happens. Regarding the connections to the internet, we all use the same provider and they don't disconnect us unless doing network maintenance or upgrades and they usually manage to do this quite rarely. One of the connections has had an uptime in excess of three months in the past which is quite good.

Anyway, I'll change the ping frequency when I get a chance and post the results directly.

Okay, at this time I have linked a test server for the last 14 hours with no problems. This server isn't strong enough to handle connections though, it was just a spare old box. I've tried varying the ping frequency in both directions with no problems at all.

Whilst I am still unsure of the problem I suppose this exercise can show that there is nothing wrong with the ISP, connection or router - a good thing!

I'll shift the problematic server back at some stage today and see if the gremlin comes back.

Thanks for your input Ron2K.