Disconnection Problem

Technical Support & Bugs
1

Hi. I’ve been having a lot of problems with being disconnected from VASSAL while playing games. This had been occurring under the latest and previous versions of VASSAL. Recently though it has gotten so bad that while it’s not impossible to play it’s a serious distraction. I’m even being disconnected while trying to reconnect.

I’ve tried all the fixes I can find here and more but to no avail. Having run a few tests it seems I might have a hardware problem, but before I settle on that conclusion, I’d appreciate some help interpreting my error log. Some of it I do understand but there are some details that may contain clues to solving my problem that escape me. Here’s a sample of my error file:

2022-10-19 20:46:12,272 [6484-write game.vassalengine.org/109.237.26.25] WARN VASSAL.tools.logging.LoggedOutputStream - Sent keep-alive

2022-10-19 20:48:12,284 [6484-write game.vassalengine.org/109.237.26.25] WARN VASSAL.tools.logging.LoggedOutputStream - Sent keep-alive

2022-10-19 20:50:12,298 [6484-write game.vassalengine.org/109.237.26.25] WARN VASSAL.tools.logging.LoggedOutputStream - Sent keep-alive

2022-10-19 20:52:12,312 [6484-write game.vassalengine.org/109.237.26.25] WARN VASSAL.tools.logging.LoggedOutputStream - Sent keep-alive

2022-10-19 20:54:12,318 [6484-write game.vassalengine.org/109.237.26.25] WARN VASSAL.tools.logging.LoggedOutputStream - Sent keep-alive

2022-10-19 20:56:12,327 [6484-write game.vassalengine.org/109.237.26.25] WARN VASSAL.tools.logging.LoggedOutputStream - Sent keep-alive

2022-10-19 20:58:12,334 [6484-write game.vassalengine.org/109.237.26.25] WARN VASSAL.tools.logging.LoggedOutputStream - Sent keep-alive

2022-10-19 21:00:12,347 [6484-write game.vassalengine.org/109.237.26.25] WARN VASSAL.tools.logging.LoggedOutputStream - Sent keep-alive

2022-10-19 21:02:12,357 [6484-write game.vassalengine.org/109.237.26.25] WARN VASSAL.tools.logging.LoggedOutputStream - Sent keep-alive

2022-10-19 21:05:32,642 [6484-read game.vassalengine.org/109.237.26.25] ERROR VASSAL.chat.node.NodeClientFactory - Lost connection to server

As I understand it, I’m coming close to losing my connection every 3 minutes or so. Is this normal? What does the ‘6484’ indicate?

All help greatly appreciated,

Monte

2

May not help you, but. I do know that some varieties of VPN will cause disconnections with the Vassal server. The one I use, via bitdefender, does this.

3

No, that’s not correct.

The keep-alive log entries indicate that Vassal sent a message to the game server after two minutes of inactivity. The only implication is that when each such message was logged, it had been two minutes since the last data was sent to the server; it’s not indicative at all of how near you were to being disconnected.

6484 is the process ID of the process which logged the message. It’s helpful to have when looking at an error log produced when multiple instances of Vassal are running simultaneously.

4

When troubleshooting a disconnection problem you should aim to swap out one part at a time:

  • Try connecting with a different computer on the same network.
  • Try connecting with the same compute on a different network.
  • Try turning off your VPN if you’re using one.

One of those tests is likely to show you where the problem is.

5

Thank you, palad0n and uckleman for your replies. My apologies for not getting back to you earlier.

Once I’ve finished trying all your suggestions I’ll report back.