CW3 Server Connection Failed

Helper · October 13, 2021, 04:03:29 AM

Anyone else having trouble connecting to the servers?
Starting about 1900 hours (U.S. Eastern) last night, my CW3 can't connect.
Screen shot below.
I can play previously downloaded games (CS and DMD), but cannot post finished games or download new ones.
Starting some seriously serious Jonesin' for some CW3 action.

All other Internet connections work fine and CW4 comes up and functions normally.
Thanks,
H

Karsten75 · October 13, 2021, 10:44:42 AM

The log file shows nothing out of the ordinary. That might simply be because knucracker omitted to log any relevant errors to the log file.

We get intermittent reports from various folks about issues accessing/downloading maps. Since this is usually isolated to a single person we know that it is not a server outage.

What may cause this are glitches in the network matrix. There are numerous intermediaries, and at any time, one of them may go awry for a moment. usually this gets fixed after a while.

You may want to run some tests to determine if it is caused by routing errors on your computer, perhaps your router, perhaps in routing tables of your ISP (Wide Open West?)

Steps you can take:
Internally, the game uses some URLs to retrieve data. You can enter the same URLs in a browser and see if you get a result.

the maps metadata page: https://knucklecracker.com/creeperworld3/queryMaps.php?query=maplist
This will return a zipped file of all the maps on the server.

specific map download page: https://knucklecracker.com/creeperworld3/queryMaps.php?query=mapid&id=1
Replace the id=1 with any map number to downlead that specific map. Rename the file to the map number.cw3 if you wish to then play the map in CW3.

You can also find an internet utility (or use the built-in Windows commands) to do a Ping and a TraceRoute command from your computer to knucklecracker.com to see if your ISP is routing your requests correctly.

Sometimes these things gets resolved by restarting your computer, your Internet router and any other devices that make up your connection to the Internet. Sometimes (rarely) you might have to involve your ISP help desk. It will help if you have done all the above when you do contact them.

Helper · October 13, 2021, 02:31:08 PM

Thank you for posting.
Multiple tries at pinging have just started resolving 100% and tracert times out.

Both links you posted end up timing out.

Is there another way to access that zip file?
Having that stored locally would be a real bonus.

Karsten75 · October 13, 2021, 04:07:00 PM

Quote from: Helper on October 13, 2021, 02:31:08 PM
Thank you for posting.
Multiple tries at pinging have just started resolving 100% and tracert times out.

Both links you posted end up timing out.

If you use an Internet service such as

https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/

or

https://www.isitdownrightnow.com/

you should be able to talk to your ISP and have them look into why the site is down for you.

Quote
Is there another way to access that zip file?
Having that stored locally would be a real bonus.

The zip file with all the metadata? Not sure what "access" means in that context. You can download it, open it and see if there is something you want.

The other file is a .cw3 save file, as long as the .cw3 extension is present, the game will open it.

But I'm not sure I'm understanding your request, so I may be not answering the question.

Edit: On second thoughts. How come you're able to post here? the URL for this site is resolving the same as the URL for accessing/downloading maps. If one fails in your browser, the other should fail as well.

Karsten75 · October 13, 2021, 04:22:29 PM

Also, see if you can download this

Helper · October 13, 2021, 06:12:18 PM

Quote from: Karsten75 on October 13, 2021, 04:22:29 PM
Also, see if you can download this

Yes, it downloaded.
Is that game number 9709?
What folder should it be sitting in? (Windows 10).

BREAK -

I just reopened CW3 and can now see all (or at least hundreds) of maps.
I will try to play and save one of the ones that got hung up last night and this morning.
Update soonest.
Thanks,
H

Helper · October 13, 2021, 06:22:31 PM

Some kind of computer magic must have happened (FM).
I can see, play, and save in both CS and DMD.

I did install the October GeForce driver, but can't imagine that affected packet traffic - but who knows?

Thanks again for the suggestions.
H

ha11oga11o · January 11, 2022, 09:29:22 AM

Sorry to bump this post, but i really have strange issue with connecting to servers too. Sometimes it download everything well, sometimes not. Its totally random. Sometimes i need to wait whole minute and then works fine, until i play map and need to refresh map list again. Also, CW4 loads maps extremely slow, but it works.

I tried all those suggestion i could find about downloading map, thumbnail, etc. in browser and all that works promptly.

Is there outage on servers or mine steam versions of game are acting?

I tried repair files, deleting game and downloading em back. So far nothing works.

Thanks in advance, and sorry once more.

Edit - ping to 1.1.1.1 works fine, to knucklecracker.com also. Im 10000% its not my internet :)

Cheers!

Karsten75 · January 11, 2022, 10:05:13 AM

Quote from: ha11oga11o on January 11, 2022, 09:29:22 AM
Sorry to bump this post, but i really have strange issue with connecting to servers too. Sometimes it download everything well, sometimes not. Its totally random. Sometimes i need to wait whole minute and then works fine, until i play map and need to refresh map list again.

As I previously remarked, these symptoms are not indicative of a server issue on our side. At any time, if you suspect the server being out, you can use any one of th eInternet services that can independently report on a site's status:

https://downdetector.com/
https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/
https://www.isitdownrightnow.com/

And a number of similar sites

QuoteAlso, CW4 loads maps extremely slow, but it works.

CW4 has a more recent http library, so it may be more tolerant of connection errors and timeouts. Saying that it loads slowly and looking at the IP address you poseted from , I mist as what is your connection speed and what type of connection do you have? is it fiber, cellular or ... ? Your type of connection might have a visible effect on download performance and I believe CW4 does in fact download more data than CW3 to populate the custom map displays.

QuoteI tried all those suggestion i could find about downloading map, thumbnail, etc. in browser and all that works promptly.

Proof that the server is up and working :)

QuoteIs there outage on servers or mine steam versions of game are acting?

I tried repair files, deleting game and downloading em back. So far nothing works.

the actions outlined above are really not helpful inresolving network issues, but they don't really hurt either, As I said before, and am now saying again, these things are very often dependent on a myriad of routes and intermediaries and from where you are, I'm pretty sure the route to knuclecracker.com is not often used and many of the nodes may have to first resolve the route and other things like that, so it may perhaps time out - I really don't know and I'm just speculating. ALl that I really know is that our server is up, available and performing well.

QuoteThanks in advance, and sorry once more.

Edit - ping to 1.1.1.1 works fine, to knucklecracker.com also. Im 10000% its not my internet :)

Pinging Cloudflare is hardly likly to fail. :) They are the biggest Internet backbone in the world as far as I know. Their addresses are probably fully resolved in all network nodes.

I'm really sorry, but you'd have to provide us with the output of tracert, proving that he endnode (knucklecracker.com) is unavailable to prove that it was (or is, or remains) a problem on the server side.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-to-use-tracert-to-troubleshoot-tcp-ip-problems-in-windows-e643d72b-2f4f-cdd6-09a0-fd2989c7ca8e

ha11oga11o · January 11, 2022, 11:36:54 AM

Many thnx for reply, at first. That was really fast.

Thing is that im sure servers are ok, just asking what could be because last 10ish days i have this issue. Im using pfSense as my router on hp dl380 g7 as vm on proxmox. Internet is 50/5 Mbit with 24 hrs IP change. I set that at 2:00 night.

I did traceroute if that can explain:

Tracing route to knucklecracker.com [72.14.178.233]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms pfSense.home [192.168.1.1]
2 7 ms 8 ms 7 ms brmo3.tel.net.ba [85.94.144.43]
3 7 ms 7 ms 9 ms po1-brpo1.tel.net.ba [85.94.144.205]
4 7 ms 9 ms 10 ms brdrmo-mo1.tel.net.ba [85.94.144.189]
5 16 ms 16 ms 14 ms 195.29.3.161
6 27 ms 15 ms 16 ms gtr11-gdr11-2.ip.t-com.hr [195.29.240.62]
7 16 ms 16 ms 16 ms be6057.rcr21.zag01.atlas.cogentco.com [149.6.30.161]
8 31 ms 24 ms 24 ms be2810.ccr51.vie01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.74.21]
9 37 ms 30 ms 30 ms be2974.ccr21.muc03.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.58.5]
10 35 ms 37 ms 35 ms be2959.ccr41.fra03.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.36.53]
11 44 ms 97 ms 42 ms be2813.ccr41.ams03.atlas.cogentco.com [130.117.0.121]
12 132 ms 146 ms 147 ms be12194.ccr41.lon13.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.56.93]
13 148 ms 136 ms 136 ms be2317.ccr41.jfk02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.30.185]
14 137 ms 136 ms 137 ms be2889.ccr21.cle04.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.47.49]
15 135 ms 135 ms 134 ms be2717.ccr41.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.6.221]
16 147 ms 147 ms 147 ms be2831.ccr21.mci01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.42.165]
17 156 ms 156 ms 156 ms be2432.ccr31.dfw01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.3.133]
18 157 ms 157 ms 156 ms be2763.ccr41.dfw03.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.28.74]
19 150 ms 174 ms 150 ms 204.68.252.98
20 149 ms 149 ms 149 ms if-3-6.csw2-rin1.linode.com [45.79.12.3]
21 149 ms 148 ms 149 ms li40-233.members.linode.com [72.14.178.233]

Trace complete.

Heres my gateways state last few days:

Jan 11 02:10:26    dpinger    2860    send_interval 1000ms loss_interval 2000ms time_period 60000ms report_interval 0ms data_len 1 alert_interval 1000ms latency_alarm 500ms loss_alarm 20% dest_addr 8.8.8.8 bind_addr 95.156.171.65 identifier "WAN_DHCP "
Jan 11 02:10:08    dpinger    59821    send_interval 1000ms loss_interval 2000ms time_period 60000ms report_interval 0ms data_len 1 alert_interval 1000ms latency_alarm 500ms loss_alarm 20% dest_addr 8.8.8.8 bind_addr 95.156.171.65 identifier "WAN_DHCP "
Jan 11 02:10:08    dpinger    83262    WAN_DHCP 8.8.8.8: sendto error: 65
Jan 11 02:10:07    dpinger    83262    WAN_DHCP 8.8.8.8: sendto error: 65
Jan 11 02:10:06    dpinger    83262    WAN_DHCP 8.8.8.8: sendto error: 65
Jan 10 02:10:36    dpinger    83262    send_interval 1000ms loss_interval 2000ms time_period 60000ms report_interval 0ms data_len 1 alert_interval 1000ms latency_alarm 500ms loss_alarm 20% dest_addr 8.8.8.8 bind_addr 95.156.160.203 identifier "WAN_DHCP "
Jan 10 02:10:07    dpinger    42979    send_interval 1000ms loss_interval 2000ms time_period 60000ms report_interval 0ms data_len 1 alert_interval 1000ms latency_alarm 500ms loss_alarm 20% dest_addr 8.8.8.8 bind_addr 95.156.160.203 identifier "WAN_DHCP "
Jan 10 02:10:06    dpinger    422    WAN_DHCP 8.8.8.8: sendto error: 65
Jan 10 02:10:05    dpinger    422    WAN_DHCP 8.8.8.8: sendto error: 65
Jan 10 02:10:04    dpinger    422    WAN_DHCP 8.8.8.8: sendto error: 65
Jan 10 02:10:03    dpinger    422    WAN_DHCP 8.8.8.8: sendto error: 65
Jan 10 02:10:02    dpinger    422    WAN_DHCP 8.8.8.8: sendto error: 65
Jan 9 02:10:34    dpinger    422    send_interval 1000ms loss_interval 2000ms time_period 60000ms report_interval 0ms data_len 1 alert_interval 1000ms latency_alarm 500ms loss_alarm 20% dest_addr 8.8.8.8 bind_addr 95.156.183.155 identifier "WAN_DHCP "
Jan 9 02:10:07    dpinger    48901    send_interval 1000ms loss_interval 2000ms time_period 60000ms report_interval 0ms data_len 1 alert_interval 1000ms latency_alarm 500ms loss_alarm 20% dest_addr 8.8.8.8 bind_addr 95.156.183.155 identifier "WAN_DHCP "
Jan 9 02:10:06    dpinger    56572    WAN_DHCP 8.8.8.8: sendto error: 65
Jan 9 02:10:05    dpinger    56572    WAN_DHCP 8.8.8.8: sendto error: 65
Jan 9 02:10:04    dpinger    56572    WAN_DHCP 8.8.8.8: sendto error: 65
Jan 9 02:10:03    dpinger    56572    WAN_DHCP 8.8.8.8: sendto error: 65
Jan 9 02:10:02    dpinger    56572    WAN_DHCP 8.8.8.8: sendto error: 65
Jan 8 02:10:31    dpinger    56572    send_interval 1000ms loss_interval 2000ms time_period 60000ms report_interval 0ms data_len 1 alert_interval 1000ms latency_alarm 500ms loss_alarm 20% dest_addr 8.8.8.8 bind_addr 95.156.161.212 identifier "WAN_DHCP "
Jan 8 02:10:03    dpinger    3115    send_interval 1000ms loss_interval 2000ms time_period 60000ms report_interval 0ms data_len 1 alert_interval 1000ms latency_alarm 500ms loss_alarm 20% dest_addr 8.8.8.8 bind_addr 95.156.161.212 identifier "WAN_DHCP "

all those entry's basically is because IP change. So internet is solid with average 1.1.1.1 ping od 23ms. (im using cloudflare as my DNS since appearance , and referencing to it because i know it works. So if ping to that is bad - my internet connection in not god. Hence i stated it too.)

Weird thing is, once if maps are loaded first screen, others are loading without any issue. Problem is when i finish map, or start game at first call to maps screen it stays on reconnecting, and i need to wait minute or so, or sometimes i need to go back to main menu and try again.

Once more, im not stating that anything is not working, or its bad, im just looking forward its isolated issue and hope it will resolve at some point.

Many thnx in advance, and sorry for "War and Peace" amount of text :)

Karsten75 · January 11, 2022, 12:12:49 PM

OK, I'm aware English is not your first language and that you're doing a great job - better than if I were to communicate in another language.

However, there are some things I'm not sure about, so I'm going to write what I understand, and then andwer that. If anything is wrong, or if I misunderstood you, my apologies.

1. Tracert shows that you can talk to the knucklecracker.com server. So no server issues.

2. You have a gateway log with some errors. You state that the gateway errors are due to your regular, scheduled IP change.

3. Issues in loading the maps are
a) first load or
b) load after playing a game.

Note that paging in the maps database is a local operation and should not at all be impacted by network persormance. That is also what I believe you say
> Weird thing is, once if maps are loaded first screen, others are loading without any issue.

So now back to why would you experience issues in the case of 3a) and 3b) ?

My guess, and this is a guess, is that there are many routing tables such as the ARP and others. In some servers, or in busy servers, some of these tables may be too small, leading to them discarding addresses and routes that are not actively used or that has not been needed before.

In those cases there may be a delay while these tables are populated or route information obtained or a domain name/route being resolved. This may lead to a timeout.

This is the only issue that I can think that you may experience. We have literally hundreds of server access per minute and as you can see, complaints are very few, and the previous complaint that you posted on, resolved itself "magically" - it may happen for you as well. I have knowledge of some network issues taking a few weeks to resolve if some network admin made a routing error somewhere.

Again, there is nothing we can do and I don't believe there is an issue either with the games or with the server.

If I have not understood you, I apologize and ask that you restate your issue so I can try and understand what you are asking.

ha11oga11o · January 11, 2022, 12:28:05 PM

Thank you for your understanding. Issue is ALWAYS when "retrieving map list from server" menu. No matter i just opened game, or finished one. Or even when it loads, and i go back in main menu, and again to colonies, issue is there. Every time when asks for maps it hangs.

Now when we check all what was check-able, only thing it goes to ISP. Sadly they have monopoly due political climate here and i cant change it, and i know there's bunch of smart ass "i know everything" individuals who did something at their side.

So, its ISP 99,9%.

Many thnx for your time and kindness.

Cheers!

ha11oga11o · January 13, 2022, 02:14:40 PM

Sorry to bump it again.

But i think i found an issue of my problems. Somewhere on forum i found that your server is in Dallas TX, or close by. I tried speedtest.net to Dallas server and im getting 0.12 Mbps download and 0,23 Mbps upload, while local (Europe) is 48Mbps/5Mbps.
It seems my ISP has sore throat to USA.

I tried to download map with link http://knucklecracker.com/creeperworld4/queryMaps.php?query=mapid&id=2738 which is 7,8MB and average download speed is 17Kb. Takes ages. Thats why cw3 load maps eventually, but cw4 cant download big maps cause time out maybe? It just stops at some point and map detail stays blank. Ill download those big ones manually and place em in folder after that, it works.

Cheers.

Karsten75 · January 14, 2022, 07:47:07 AM

Quote from: ha11oga11o on January 13, 2022, 02:14:40 PM
Sorry to bump it again.

But i think i found an issue of my problems. Somewhere on forum i found that your server is in Dallas TX, or close by. I tried speedtest.net to Dallas server and im getting 0.12 Mbps download and 0,23 Mbps upload, while local (Europe) is 48Mbps/5Mbps.
It seems my ISP has sore throat to USA.

I tried to download map with link http://knucklecracker.com/creeperworld4/queryMaps.php?query=mapid&id=2738 which is 7,8MB and average download speed is 17Kb. Takes ages. Thats why cw3 load maps eventually, but cw4 cant download big maps cause time out maybe? It just stops at some point and map detail stays blank. Ill download those big ones manually and place em in folder after that, it works.

Cheers.

knucklecracker.com is hosted on Linode. That you can determine from the traces you posted earlier. It's correct that the Linode datacenter that hosts knucklecracker.com is located in Dallas, TX.

Here is the Linode speed test page from where you can determine your connection speed to the Linode datacenter.

https://www.linode.com/speed-test/

If you are unable to acieve a reasonable speed you may want to take it up with your ISP.

ha11oga11o · January 14, 2022, 08:32:40 AM

Hello, and thanks again.

I did spoke with ISP and they said there's nothing wrong about my issue. But that was call center. After that call, about 30 minutes, everything is sorted out, lol. Probably someone miss configured something, as You mentioned before. My connection to USA is fine now. So, ... there's another "magically" fix situation :) Maps are loading promptly again.

Cheers!