Syria timeouts

[Tj1376]

Hey@Flappie !

No. QoS resolved the issue.

I analyzed the traffic flow of the router (a nearly 10 year old but very high end Netgear router.) With extremely high unit counts you can see bursting of UDP traffic in sporadic spots. This behavior is only seen on the Syria map. The theory is that the bursting of traffic was causing the older router to not process all of the traffic. And while UDP is designed to come in any order and can be lost, it appears that DCS does not follow that standard. Somewhere during the bursting the DCS server doesn't receive the right UDP packet and the DCS server stops communicating with the client via UDP only (TCP is not impacted which is why the f10 map allows you to chat and you can see missiles and player deaths.) Two minutes after the dcs server stops sending udp, the connection is terminated and the user gets a ping timeout warning.

I have a sneaky suspicion that the engine Netgear uses in its routers are prone to this. Setting QoS is telling the router to stop "best effort" routing and it stops dropping UDP during the bursting.

Most of the above is my speculation based upon Wireshark analysis and ping plotter tracking to the dcs server. In real life, I've spent nearly 15 years in troubleshooting network and applications in a large scale and global organization, you learn a thing or two. :)

If you ever want to setup a test to prove the theory, im all ears and have several recommendations. But we need a server, a Wireshark installation and a mission file that has scripting and high unit count. I recommend BlueFlag Syria modern mission for this from xcom. :)

TJ

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[Flappie]

What a feedback! Much details and still easy to read. I love it. Many thanks!

I'm afraid I don't have much time to test it, but I take your word for it.

[Tj1376]

What a feedback! Much details and still easy to read. I love it. Many thanks!
I'm afraid I don't have much time to test it, but I take your word for it.

I wonder if dcs server has anti cheat systems that review the UDP traffic and if anomalies are found it terminates the servers UDP to the specific client it believes is cheating. I would imagine getting out of order UDP packets would be a great way to cause warping, which would sure make it hard for an attacker to hit you. This dropping of UDP due to best effort routing (no QoS) would look exactly like this.

We may not have to test. Just ask the netcode team if such a feature exists. If you get a solid confirmation, then the netcode team just needs to identify why the bursting of UDP occurs on the Syria map to resolve the problem (no need to respond here, as we dont want to tell cheaters how the anticheat systems work.)

TJ

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