Network troubles at night

I doubt this is a problem with City of Heroes per se, but it's the only program majorly affected by it. By day, I have a mild-mannered network that works just fine. By night, it must be off fighting crime or something, because it's certainly not around to let me connect to CoH servers. After about 11-12 at night, I have about a 70% chance to crash and fail at logging in or changing zones. This is on a Mac Mini running OS X 10.6.8.

I'm not sure how to go about debugging this kind of issue, since it probably lies somewhere between me and CoH, and not under either my control or NCSoft's. Anyone know what I should try next?

This game has very inefficient code that is very susceptible to network hiccups.

I'm guessing your internet provider dials down the available bandwidth at night, supposedly because people need the internet less(greedy ISPs never wanting to give what you pay for).
This is causing you a bit more trouble.


You would probably have to call your internet service provider and give them an ear-full, but I wouldn't expect a change of policy without many more people complaining and mayeb legal action.

Best to shop around for another provider and play when you can actually play until then.

Thanks for the info. This only started happening recently, but maybe my ISP only recently adopted such a policy? I dunno.

Given that I can connect to all kinds of other websites, and play CoH just fine once I get into a zone, it does seem unfortunate that zoning and logging in are so fragile.

Another thought, maybe you have a problem if you leave your computer/game on too long, which happens to show up after a certain amount of time that ends up being at night.

If that is the case, giving your computer a break will solve the issue.
It could just be cumulative wear from a long time of use running rather warm.

Edit:
Modems(and broadband access boxes, which run very hot all too often) and routers also experience this. They may need a break too.

Again, thanks for the reply. I don't think it's an overheating issue. Last night, I had taken a break from my computer for a few hours between CoH running fine and CoH failing to log in. So my computer should not have been running hot. And we've had problems with our network hardware running hot before, but that just cuts off the connection entirely. It's possible it's turned into a different failure mode, but seems unlikely. Still, I can't be sure, so next time this comes up I'll definitely try giving the various hardware a chance to cool down.

Another possibility is that your ISP has a very VERY active crowd of bandwidth hogs who do most of their torr^H^H^H^H^work at night. And that your ISP probably isn't managing their bandwidth as closely as they should to prevent this sort of congestion.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

It seems odd that it would crop up so suddenly, though -- I've been at this house and on this ISP for a couple of years now, and only for the last three nights have I had problems staying connected to CoH. I doubt there was an instant flood of bandwidth hogs to the area. (Actually I'm pretty sure the area has always been flooded with bandwidth hogs.) It's possible they updated something at the ISP recently, though, that makes the network less robust in the face of high traffic. I guess it may be worth calling and complaining, though presumably they monitor for this kind of thing.

This happened to me about a year ago had DSL at the time, it turned out believe it or not that a street light was defective and that was actually causing enough interference to mess up my connection as soon as the sun went down! It took them several months to figure it out, since then i switch to cable and have very few issues now.

I would try changing the password on your router. It's entirely possible that somebody has managed to hack their way into your network and is only using it at night to draw less attention. If you are using WEP security then change it to WPA2 or WPA. If you stop having the problem right after you change your password then that was probably it.

Actually this will probably wind up being a problem for a lot of people pretty soon. Well, maybe not a lot of people but it is something that has become easy to do.

Ever since wireless routers started implementing an simple setup function (the part where you just push a button on the router and then on your device) the devices have had an 8 digit WPS code associated with them. Look on the back of your router. If you see an 8 digit code somewhere then your router has that function. And it probably does because all newer routers have it. It should be right after a symbol that looks like yin-yang arrows.

Now if somebody knows your 8 digit code they can get into your system. What are the odds somebody could figure out the code? Well you would think really low. With an 8 digit code there are 100,000,000 possible combinations. Only 3 attempts can be made before most routers will lock up for 1 minute so brute force wouldn't seem like it would work. Only it doesn't work like that. Instead the way the security check works is that after the first 4 digits are sent the router responds with a yes or no to let the sender know if they got the first part right. So what you have are two 4 digit codes, or only 20,000 possible combinations.

You might be thinking that you can just go into the router configuration and turn off the easy access function... except that doesn't actually work. In every router tested it was found that turning off the WiFi simple configuration function did not disable the remote PIN access. Even now simple programs are getting out onto the market to hack into routers everywhere. If you live in a remote area where nobody else can see your router then you are probably fine. If you live in a crowded area where a lot of people can see it then you probably aren't so fine.

Of course if somebody is using the PIN code to hack in then changing the password will do nothing for you because they will be able to see the settings and what the new password is.

And now that I've left you all with this healthy dose of paranoia I'll leave you to enjoy the rest of your day.

hello op from another person from mass. there are mac and pc network programs that will give you your speed of your broadband connection and how using it..(connected mac addy). also your router logs will tell you. one other thing to check even though it a mac is that you dont have a virus or spyware..a lot of new stuff now with hackers is to turn pc/mac into zombie host for dds attacks. where they use most of your netwok to send pings to a server in hope of crashing it. if you have comcast and renting there modems see that you have the newest dosi 3.0 modems that channel bond. you wont get max speed now with comcast unless it a 3.x modem that takes four dosci channels and bonds them. also with comcast and there network your sharing the bandwith. in your area the hub/server your connecting too may be overloaded. try dsl reports or google seaches to see if there more then one hub in boston that you can tell your modem to connect to. if not ask comcast lev 2 tech for help that at night your area is overloaded and your connection is dropping.

also will screw up a cable modem is how many tv are in your house or apt and are on the same line or splitter. comcast will want to put the cable modem on the first splitter in the house to keep the signal strength good and the noise low. take a look at the wires going into your home. both the electric and cable. the covering should look fine if it looks like it melted or bare in some spots have the power/cable company replace it. (could cause cross talk or a ground short). also have them check the main connection coming in the house that it not rusted out and the signal strength is fine. one last thing to check is a bad box or tv in the house. somone is watching the 10-11 oclock news on the tv/box and it causing a lot of noise in your house so that the cable modem is forced to slow down. easy check is to disconect line from the wall when you fine the box/tv your modem will speed up. if your in an apt it might not be you but someone connected to your splitter.

If anyone knows the IP of the CoH servers, it might be informative to do a ping and traceroute to the servers at the different times.

Sometimes these problems come from a connection between ISPs, where the game is hosted on one backbone and the users are on another. But I would expect that to be more of a problem when traffic is highest. If the servers are on the west coast of the USA, then when it's 11-12 in Boston, it might be peak traffic on the west coast causing your troubles?

My first thought on this is that you are hitting the peak traffic period about 6-7pm - that could correspond to 11pm -12 midnight on the opposite coast in the US.

Thanks for all the responses, everyone. It looks like it was an issue with my computer (or possibly network card?) overheating, after all. I tried switching to my laptop when my desktop could no longer connect, and the laptop worked fine on the same network. Once I get my laptop properly set up for play, I'll see if this solution lasts.

This is a good move anyway, my laptop is newer and better in pretty much every respect.

Glad you could find a solution.

I guess I pegged it right on with the overheating of the network hardware, even though I pointed to the wrong hardware.

Edit:
Actually, it's probably just failure due to general wear and tear over time. Network cards were, and mostly still are, onyl meant for web browsing and the occasional heavy demand, not prolonged heavy demand from a game that uses bandwidth fairly inefficiently.
Be wary of issues with your laptop though. They run hotter than desktops and have a tendency to shed the heat onto other components, resulting in failure faster than desktops.

Yeah, I'm aware of the heat issues. Both my machines have similar issues, though; my desktop is a Mac Mini, and also crams all its hardware into a small area. More importantly, because my house's wireless access point is in the basement, I get best reception by leaving my Mac Mini upside down. I'm certain its fans and air vents were not designed to work best this way, so I suspect it's having more heat problems than usual. My hope is that using my laptop in non-upside-down fashion (boy, wouldn't that look odd) will have fewer problems over all.

Of course, if my laptop does fail, I'll just recoup the losses by suing you all for providing faulty technical expertise.

How can you use a laptop upside down?? o.O

I don't know, but people in Australia seem to manage it just fine.