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Freeze

Started by Guillaume, October 11, 2016, 01:16:25 PM

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Guillaume

Hi,


It has been several years I didn't play seriously Simutrans, and I wanted to get back to it by trying to play online.
When I open the game, I click on the Network button, and then it freezes for 15-20 seconds, then the network tab appears. Each click on a button has the same effect. And I cannot see the list of servers online/offline/compatible (it's empty).


I downloaded the latest executable 120.1.3 r7753 with the latest pak128 2.6
I'm on Windows 10 pro.
I tried on another PC also under W10 pro, same effect.


Do you know how to solve this ?

An_dz

It's probably your firewall blocking Simutrans. Take a look if you have allowed Simutrans in your firewall rules.

Guillaume

Thanks for your reply.
I already checked my firewall, it isn't the problem (tested without any protection -> same result).
I tested the three versions (GDI, SDL1, and SDL2 via steam).
I had same results on both my PC.


I don't know what I'm doing wrong...  And I played, back in the time on Fifty's server, without any problem.


DrSuperGood

QuoteWhen I open the game, I click on the Network button, and then it freezes for 15-20 seconds, then the network tab appears. Each click on a button has the same effect. And I cannot see the list of servers online/offline/compatible (it's empty).
Firstly try restarting your internet connection from the modem (usually called a router now). This often gives a new IP so can solve issues like this. If not then it could be something far worse.

Sounds like the problem I had, it started 2 months ago around the time of the froum DNS issue. The cause was my IP address range being blocked by the server centre that hosts the multiplayer listing server. If you cannot access this web page http://servers.simutrans.org/list then there is a chance that your IP range has been blocked by the server centre for malicious activities (probably not your fault but others who share the same range). In my case the entire BT ISP was blocked so most of their owned IP address ranges assigned to customers were being blocked by a firewall at the server centre so could not use the listing server or access the SVN. It was solved by getting the IP ranges unblocked, however this is not automatic.

If your IP ranges are blocked then you will need to post which ISP you use and an example of the IP you are currently using. There is no guarantee you may ever be unblocked as if the ISP is still heavily involved with malicious activities it may not be viable for the address range to be unblocked. It also requires some administrative overhead so could take some time.

One can hack around it to some extent using TOR, a custom build and a custom written port tunnel. However I only recommend this for computer scientists since it is far from user friendly.

The game was not written to be multi-threaded and so freezes for I/O to occur. Since it cannot create a TCP connection to the multiplayer listing server the game freezes for several seconds while several connect and timeout cycles are attempted before the call finally returns with a connection failure. What should rather happen is that the game polls the internet module showing a "waiting for connection" message while remaining responsive, however my crude attempts at writing this resulted in crashes as the game uses too much share state.

If a proper multiplayer synchronization model is introduced (one which does not allow clients to run ahead of servers) then maybe proxy support could be added. This would allow the game to work directly with something like TOR to avoid such blocks at the expense of extremely bad latency.

Guillaume

Restarting router didn't change anything, same IP, and I have no access to the server list http://servers.simutrans.org/list .
After some research, it appears that my ISP changed from dynamic IP address to static IP address with the implementation of IPv6 in January/February 2016... And the majority of ISP here in France are in the same situation or in the process of.

Will a VPN be a good way to bypass it ? Because I'm not a computer scientist.

Thanks for the help guys !




EDIT : I tried to change my IP address but after checking it, no changes. But now it finally changed and I have access to the server list, and the network screen doesn't freeze anymore !   Success !

prissi

The serverlist server has no IPv6, unless my provider enabled it yesterday. So it may go via a provider NAT, which may or may not work. Nevertehless, I am workin gon IPv6 enabling to avoid such issue for you and many more in the future.

EDIT: No no IPv6 yet.