Very slow response

Technical Support & Bugs
9

Well, I thought it was working better but it’s not. Everything is about 4 minutes behind my clicking on it…This has never happened before, so I know my system is good enough to run it.

10

Went to a crawl again about 3PM Eastern US time. I’m barely able to get the wiki to respond so I can post this message. Very strange

11

I, too, experienced this issue on Friday, February 20 around 8-9 PM CT and again Sunday, February 22 around 8 PM CT. There is a lag of 1-5 minutes to perform anything on the VASSAL server including connection, starting a room, synchronizing with other games, etc. The odd thing, in my opinion, is that others can see my actions take effect immediately, so the lag appears only on my end. For example, if I start a new room, others see that room appear immediately but it takes several minutes for it to display on my end.

I have been unable to test at other times of the day, but I have verified that the computer being used and the version of VASASL (3.2.13 and 3.2.15) and module versions do not appear to have any impact.

Does anybody have any suggestions to resolve this?

12

We are experiencing something similar. All our data is in another subject on this forum.

Slow syncing or none at all in joining games.

13

We have a couple people on AT&T who have terrible server lag, have had it since Sunday, are having it today as well. Module is World in Flames. It’s been happening for some time, a few weeks, off and on with lag. Often minutes after commands issued.

Two Canadians and one Iowan get great connections, two on AT&T in Michigan and California get bad connections.

14

Here is our thread with details that may be associated with this issue: https://forum.vassalengine.org/t/sync-issues-with-server/7538/1

At least one of our guys having issues is with AT&T. Checking on the other one.

15

I am an AT&T customer as well. I wonder why it would be just one particular site.

16

I am still experiencing problems connecting/synching. Below are the specs for the machine I am on now; my other newer systems (iBook Pro and an HP ProBook with Windows 8) experience the exact same issue trying to connect to the VASSAL server.

  • Model: Gateway NV59C
  • Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium SP1
  • CPU: Intel(R) Core™ i3 CPU M 350 @ 2.27 GHz
  • Memory: 4.00 GB
  • Video Card:
  • Vassal version: 3.2.15
  • Java version: 1.6.0_34 (Java 6 Update 34)
  • Vassal module name and version: VASL 6.2.0
  • Exactly what steps are required to reproduce your problem: Attempt to connect to the VASSAL server to play live online. It takes approximately 30 seconds - 5 minutes to bring up the Main Room, and each action thereafter (creating a room, joining an existing room, messaging other users) takes anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 minutes to complete.

I am an AT&T (Uverse) customer as are others reporting this problem, so I contacted the AT&T “support” center tonight. They were unable to provide any real insight; in their view, there is no problem since my general latency and upload/download speeds are acceptable.

I ran reset all systems, tried wireless/wired, ran some ping tests (average over 250 ms with about 15-30% packet loss), trace routes (see below), released/renewed/flushed the connection/DNS and other basic tasks, but I have not been able to determine what is going on. Below is a recent traceroute to 68.14.242.201 which I believe is the IP address for the VASSAL game server. I am definitely not a network guru… Does anybody have any thoughts?

[code]Tracing route to two.vassalengine.org [68.14.242.201]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 ms < 1ms 2 ms homeportal [192.168.1.254]

17

Thus spake dsoukup:

I ran reset all systems, tried wireless/wired, ran some ping tests
(average over 250 ms with about 15-30% packet loss), trace routes (see
below), released/renewed/flushed the connection/DNS and other basic
tasks, but I have not been able to determine what is going on. Below is
a recent traceroute to 68.14.242.201 which I believe is the IP address
for the VASSAL game server. I am definitely not a network guru… Does
anybody have any thoughts?

One problem I see right away is that you have the wrong IP address.
68.14.242.201 used to be the IP of the game server, but that’s not
been the case for over a year now. How did you get that address?

Similarly, two.vassalengine.org used to be the hostname for the game
server, but that also changed about a year ago. The hostname which
we have built into current versions of VASSAL is game.vassalengine.org,
which should resolve to 62.210.178.7.

Tracing route to two.vassalengine.org [68.14.242.201]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 ms < 1ms 2 ms homeportal [192.168.1.254]

If this is output you produced today, then I want very much to know
what the command you used looked like and what nameservers you’re
using, as this indicates a very serious problem someplace.

–
J.

18

Please give us the output of traceroute if you’re having connection problems. Our gameserver is game.vassalengine.org.

19

Our AT&T game friends also have this problem - one got fixed by connecting through his iphone as a hotspot, so we know it’s the internet connection. However, as he’s in California and the other AT&T gamer is in Michigan, and doesn’t have a hotspot cell phone…, this hasn’t solved anything. We did not have massive ping problems on the tracert last week, but if we get it again tonight we will post his tracert here as well. We were using just the vassalengine.org to trace to, will try game.vassalengine.org tonight.

20

I should add that once the “sync complete” message was recieved it was taking 10-15 seconds for die rolls and the like to be transmitted (which worked fine for Michigan) but the map itself took like an hour or two to show up eventually, with very long lag between moves.

21

I have been having issues like this as well for the last week or so. I’m on AT&T as well.

22

Below is a traceroute from tonight using the correct server address.

[code]C:\Users\DSOUKU3>tracert game.vassalengine.org

Tracing route to one.vassalengine.org [62.210.178.7]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 2 ms 1 ms 1 ms homeportal [192.168.1.254]
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 20 ms 20 ms 21 ms 71.150.32.178
4 23 ms 21 ms 23 ms 12.83.42.153
5 37 ms 34 ms 42 ms ggr3.dlstx.ip.att.net [12.122.138.17]
6 30 ms 31 ms 34 ms 192.205.37.50
7 67 ms 68 ms * ash-bb3-link.telia.net [80.91.252.121]
8 162 ms 164 ms 156 ms prs-bb3-link.telia.net [80.91.252.37]
9 154 ms 153 ms 152 ms prs-b8-link.telia.net [213.155.131.1]
10 155 ms 154 ms 155 ms online-ic-305116-prs-b8.c.telia.net [62.115.40.8
6]
11 155 ms 156 ms 157 ms 45x-s31-1-a9k2.dc3.poneytelecom.eu [195.154.1.35
]
12 157 ms 160 ms 160 ms one.vassalengine.org [62.210.178.7]

Trace complete.[/code]

23

Thus spake dsoukup:

Below is a traceroute from tonight using the correct server address.

Code:
C:\Users\DSOUKU3>tracert game.vassalengine.org

Tracing route to one.vassalengine.org [62.210.178.7]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 2 ms 1 ms 1 ms homeportal [192.168.1.254]
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 20 ms 20 ms 21 ms 71.150.32.178
4 23 ms 21 ms 23 ms 12.83.42.153
5 37 ms 34 ms 42 ms ggr3.dlstx.ip.att.net [12.122.138.17]
6 30 ms 31 ms 34 ms 192.205.37.50
7 67 ms 68 ms * ash-bb3-link.telia.net [80.91.252.121]
8 162 ms 164 ms 156 ms prs-bb3-link.telia.net [80.91.252.37]
9 154 ms 153 ms 152 ms prs-b8-link.telia.net [213.155.131.1]
10 155 ms 154 ms 155 ms online-ic-305116-prs-b8.c.telia.net
[62.115.40.8
6]
11 155 ms 156 ms 157 ms 45x-s31-1-a9k2.dc3.poneytelecom.eu
[195.154.1.35
]
12 157 ms 160 ms 160 ms one.vassalengine.org [62.210.178.7]

Trace complete.

What this shows is that your packets are getting through unhindered. I
see one hop which didn’t want to reply (which is not unusual) and one
packet which was dropped (to ash-bb3-link.telia.net—I believe
telia.net is a backbone provider). 160ms from you to our server is not
bad. Nothing looks wrong to me here.

I’m guessing that Windows tracert uses ICMP packets by default. Is
there a way to switch it to use TCP packets instead? (The Linux
traceroute has this as option -T.)

(Also, please answer my question about the original trace containing
the bad IP and hostname. I need to know how you produced that trace if
I’m going to track down that problem.)

–
J.

24

Thus spake ZenClark:

Our AT&T game friends also have this problem - one got fixed by
connecting through his iphone as a hotspot, so we know it’s the internet
connection. However, as he’s in California and the other AT&T gamer is
in Michigan, and doesn’t have a hotspot cell phone…, this hasn’t
solved anything. We did not have massive ping problems on the tracert
last week, but if we get it again tonight we will post his tracert here
as well. We were using just the vassalengine.org to trace to, will try
game.vassalengine.org tonight.

vassalengine.org and game.vassalengine.org should resolve to the same
IP address. (If they don’t, please tell me.)

Post the trace you get here. It would be helpful to have traces from
several people to compare.

–
J.

25

I do not believe the Windows command can use anything other than ICMP. I will check for a utility that can do so tonight.

I found the incorrect server address in a post from August 2012: [url=Unable to connect to server - error]. I initially tried to find the server in VASSAL documentation and based on what my outbound traffic looked like, but I was unsuccessful. I apologize for the confusion.

26

We had the same issue when playing Sunday afternoon. 3 of us had no problems. The only guy using AT&T had syncing issues. We could see his movements on the board instantly but he couldn’t see ours until about 5-7 minutes after we had done them. His connection to skype was solid and he checked his speeds and ping and they were all good as well. Here is a trace he ran today:

Tracing route to vassalengine.org [62.210.178.7]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms homeportal [192.168.1.254]
2 19 ms 18 ms 18 ms 108-213-188-2.lightspeed.snantx.sbcglobal.net [1
08.213.188.2]
3 19 ms 19 ms 18 ms 75.28.192.122
4 20 ms 19 ms 19 ms 12.83.39.17
5 28 ms 26 ms 27 ms ggr3.dlstx.ip.att.net [12.122.138.17]
6 26 ms 26 ms 26 ms 192.205.37.50
7 68 ms 68 ms 68 ms nyk-bb1-link.telia.net [213.155.133.176]
8 166 ms 163 ms 169 ms prs-bb3-link.telia.net [80.91.253.121]
9 165 ms 165 ms 171 ms prs-b8-link.telia.net [213.155.131.1]
10 154 ms 153 ms 153 ms online-ic-305116-prs-b8.c.telia.net [62.115.40.8
6]
11 154 ms 154 ms 154 ms 45x-s31-1-a9k2.dc3.poneytelecom.eu [195.154.1.35
]
12 265 ms 150 ms 150 ms one.vassalengine.org [62.210.178.7]

Trace complete.

27

Ive been having a lot of the same issues too, forums, wiki and server being
slow past couple of weeks. Sometimes pages go unresponsive and I always have
to log in everytime - never used to have to do that, even if I navigate away
to like bbc.com then come back 2 secs later I’m logged out weird…

For fun I did the ICMP and TCP traces as well as a ping (all below) -
nothing looks out of the ordinary to me either speed wise, yet I can’t even
get in to a subforum right this very second on the website (just hanging.)
even though the traces look good. Almost like the server just isn’t
responding even though we are connecting

PS C:\Users\Tim> tracert vassalengine.org

Tracing route to vassalengine.org [62.210.178.7]

over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 2 ms 1 ms 1 ms homeportal [192.168.1.254]

2 25 ms 25 ms 25 ms 70-138-80-3.lightspeed.hstntx.sbcglobal.net
[70.138.80.3]

3 25 ms 25 ms 30 ms 71.144.129.18

4 27 ms 27 ms 27 ms 12.83.36.5

5 31 ms 31 ms 35 ms ggr3.dlstx.ip.att.net [12.122.139.17]

6 31 ms 31 ms 33 ms 192.205.37.50

7 71 ms 70 ms 70 ms ash-bb3-link.telia.net [80.91.252.121]

8 173 ms 170 ms 166 ms prs-bb3-link.telia.net [80.91.251.99]

9 163 ms 164 ms 163 ms prs-b8-link.telia.net [213.155.131.1]

10 183 ms 181 ms 181 ms online-ic-305116-prs-b8.c.telia.net
[62.115.40.86]

11 189 ms 186 ms 190 ms 45x-s31-1-a9k2.dc3.poneytelecom.eu
[195.154.1.35]

12 166 ms 157 ms 156 ms one.vassalengine.org [62.210.178.7]

Trace complete.

PS C:\Users\Tim> ping vassalengine.org

Pinging vassalengine.org [62.210.178.7] with 32 bytes of data:

Request timed out.

Reply from 62.210.178.7: bytes=32 time=159ms TTL=50

Reply from 62.210.178.7: bytes=32 time=155ms TTL=50

Reply from 62.210.178.7: bytes=32 time=159ms TTL=50

Ping statistics for 62.210.178.7:

Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 3, Lost = 1 (25% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

Minimum = 155ms, Maximum = 159ms, Average = 157ms

PS C:\Users\Tim> tracetcp vassalengine.org

Tracing route to 62.210.178.7 [one.vassalengine.org] on port 80

Over a maximum of 30 hops.

1 3 ms 2 ms 2 ms 192.168.1.254 [homeportal]

2 26 ms 27 ms 26 ms 70.138.80.3
[70-138-80-3.lightspeed.hstntx.sbcglobal.net]

3 25 ms 31 ms 26 ms 71.144.129.18

4 29 ms 27 ms 25 ms 12.83.36.5

5 35 ms 34 ms 33 ms 12.122.139.17 [ggr3.dlstx.ip.att.net]

6 33 ms 32 ms 33 ms 192.205.37.50

7 122 ms 135 ms 79 ms 213.155.133.176 [nyk-bb1-link.telia.net]

8 173 ms 173 ms 173 ms 213.155.135.4 [prs-bb3-link.telia.net]

9 168 ms 172 ms 164 ms 213.155.131.3 [prs-b8-link.telia.net]

10 197 ms 204 ms 201 ms 62.115.40.86
[online-ic-305116-prs-b8.c.telia.net]

11 201 ms 201 ms 199 ms 195.154.1.35
[45x-s31-1-a9k2.dc3.poneytelecom.eu]

12 Destination Reached in 182 ms. Connection established to
62.210.178.7

Trace Complete.

PS C:\Users\Tim>

From: messages [mailto:messages-bounces@vassalengine.org] On Behalf Of Joel
Uckelman
Sent: Monday, March 02, 2015 5:36 AM
To: The mailing list for VASSAL
Subject: Re: [messages] [Technical Support & Bugs] Very slow response

I’m guessing that Windows tracert uses ICMP packets by default. Is
there a way to switch it to use TCP packets instead? (The Linux
traceroute has this as option -T.)

–
J.

28

Thus spake “Tim McCarron”:

For fun I did the ICMP and TCP traces as well as a ping (all below) -
nothing looks out of the ordinary to me either speed wise, yet I can’t even
get in to a subforum right this very second on the website (just hanging.)
even though the traces look good. Almost like the server just isn’t
responding even though we are connecting

I’m certain the problem is not on our end—we’ve had no configuration
changes, no high loads, no unusual traffic. What everyone who’s reported
this as a probelm has in common is that they’re in the US. It also looks
like everyone who’s said either has AT&T as their ISP or has an ISP which
routes through AT&T (as Tim’s does).

I’d like to see some traceroutes from people in the US who are not
having a problem. My guess is that that their route to our server will
be the same from Telia onward, as that’s the transatlantic part of the
trip, which would make it unlikely that Telia’s backbone is part of the
problem—and my guess is also that none of them will be routing through
AT&T.

Where geographically are you guys who are having a problem? From looking
up the thread, I see CA, MI, and TX.

–
J.