Bug Report Forums

@nika

There's a raised eyebrow over here at the thought of no antivirus. Linux machines are far less likely to be infected with most but...I apologize in advance for this wall of text.

Anyway, FR's coli connection is fairly fragile--interrupts caused by an increase in bad packets can knock you off or your upstream connection being near the bandwidth limit (found this one out the hard way--I'm 2 blocks from a community college and when they put up new buildings the dsl in this entire area hits the the absolute limit about 6 hours every day).

So, first step if this you notice all other web traffic slowing or errors creeping up on your connection is to reboot your router/modem.

Second, check your wifi drivers (if wifi, ignore if you're using cables).FR keeps updating the coli but I've noticed a lower priority on less used browsers. You may need to go back to an older driver.

Third, if you get kicked off the coli, open a terminal and ping http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=coliseum to see if you're getting packet loss/latency issues. You should get more than 5 responses when you do this. If none, you've lost all connection and with 1-4 it's either your modem/router or some issue down the line that's beyond your control.

Another thing to check, in the lower left corner of your browser are you getting any error messages? Resolving proxy server/dns error? If that is the issue, it's a combination of poor site writing (order of operation loading for google analytics causes the connection to reset and thus kick you out of the coli) and connectivity issues upstream. Fixes for this are beyond me; I don't have the experience anymore with linux and the upstream issues are something to check out with your provider/speed testing.

Hope some of this helps.

@Jarvelous

Thanks for writing back with info.

First, have you whitelisted www.flightrising.com* and www1.flightrising.com*?

The coli is (supposedly) optimized to run on Chrome. Other fixes that might work (safe mode is just fine) are to:

- Going into your Account Settings and toggling your Fairegrounds Socket
- Clearing your browser's cache
- Using a different browser, see if that one works any better
- Disabling addons
- Check to see if your network is blocking websockets.

You can test the last one at http://websocketstest.com. If this is the case, have your system administrator open up websocket port 4231. You may also need to disable noscript from preventing IP 199.38.112.170 from running.

Honestly, we've all got our fingers crossed for the next major site update that includes the coli. There's a bunch of bugs/errors/incompatibilities that have been around forever that we hope get fixed.

Also, I checked your lair and thought you might want to check out these guides:

Culex Training Guide: http://flightrising.com/main.php?board=gde&id=1040710&p=mb
Kiena Training Guide: http://flightrising.com/main.php?board=gde&id=937136&p=mb
Maki Battle Stone Guide: http://www1.flightrising.com/forums/gde/1344211
Maki Festival Guide: http://www1.flightrising.com/forums/gde/1388514

The coli does not reward an evenly statted dragon and seems to start actively punishing you for this at L10.

@nika

Uh, yeah. 10% packet loss is bad. That can be caused by all sorts of random things, too; leaky microwaves, proximity of air conditioning units to wires, or electrified fences turning on (no kidding--I have a friend who lives next to a secure facility and when the fence goes on his wifi dies. He used to get kicked off and then his modem would reboot at some ridiculously low rate so he'd have to reboot again. Now he just avoids having his computer on for 30 minutes a day.). It's not necessarily something rebooting the router will fix but rebooting is a general "try it first" step.

Eh, if there's no problem there's no problem. Given the amount of time I've spent wrangling antivirus software for elderly relatives...

If you get that sort of packet loss often or at regular times (sundown/sunrise/specific hour/20 degree temperature changes) you might also contact your ISP and have them inspect the line that runs from the street to your home. For DSL it's called the "drop" and over time it can corrode and become sensitive to temp/humidity changes. Having it replaced moved my margin from 6.7 to 13.

Hope things work out!

@Nika

2-3 months ago...Early June there was a bunch of "can't connect" errors on the bug board but no obvious cause was ever found. That was also when vistas were added to the coli and the colorwheel update. I've noticed that the screen where you add dragons to your party started lagging a bit (chrome or firefox/desktop/win7/macafee or trendmicro) if you had more than 150 named dragons in your lair. I think that might have to do with loading 150 named dragons, many of them with apparel and accents.

My issues with corrosion were only fixed this spring. The best thing to do is keep track of when bad packets start showing up. I'm not sure what utility on your set-up lets you see connectivity issues but that would be a place to start. Anything over 2% is the first warning sign of something not right and 4-5% is when it starts affecting your connection in a noticeable way because your machine won't be able to correct/exchange data fast enough. If you can prove through record-keeping that you're getting regular interruptions of bad packet loss it's time to start calling them and telling them their hardware is to blame.

They'll ask you to do stuff like reset your modem and check certain settings, but if you've got a regular time that packets disappear I suggest calling them 10 minutes before it happens so that when they do a line test the problem should show up.

Out where I am, it's the ISP's responsibility to keep their hardware (basically everything past your modem unless you're renting that from them) fixed. If they don't respond to calls (1-2 a week for 3 weeks) it's time to start calling your better business bureau and shop around.