NCsoft and AT&T hate each other or my luck sucks

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  • Post category:MMORPG

I have been unable to log in to the Aion authorization server (login server) the entirety of the pre-selection.  I played, without issue, during all of the Aion beta weekends and the open beta.  What changed?  The conspiracy theory here would be that NCsoft hates AT&T (or SoCal), or the other way around, and is blocking us from connecting.  There are only a handful of people being vocal about the “cannot connect to authorization server” problem on the Aionsource boards and elsewhere so I can only assume that the problem is limited to a small minority.  I do not want us to go unnoticed.

I ran a tracert to determine where the problem could be:

Tracing route to 206-127-153-247.plaync.com [206.127.153.247]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1     1 ms     1 ms    <1 ms  home [192.168.1.254]
2    23 ms    22 ms    22 ms  99-10-160-3.lightspeed.irvnca.sbcglobal.net [99.
10.160.3]
3     *        *        *     Request timed out.
4     *        *        *     Request timed out.
5     *        *        *     Request timed out.
6    25 ms    24 ms    25 ms  151.164.42.196
7     *        *        *     Request timed out.
8     *        *        *     Request timed out.
9     *        *        *     Request timed out.
10     *        *        *     Request timed out.
11     *        *        *     Request timed out.
12  ex1-p15-1.eqlaca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.39.165]  reports: Destination host
unreachable.

Trace complete.

The above makes little sense to me, but I know it doesn’t look right.  Others have come out and said that they have AT&T and live near me and also cannot connect, so at least my misery has company.

In addition to being unable to access the login server, I can not access the Aion website, NCsoft account page, or even Aionsource (on and off for Aionsource).  I feel completely cut off from any and all support.  The worst part here is that it’s probably not even something NCsoft can help with — not like they could tell me that given their tech support page says that they don’t have weekend tech support.  Having a huge MMO headstart launch weekend without tech support…

Hopefully your Aion headstart weekend is going better than mine.

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  • I will check some german forums. Maybe it works if you put the same IP address in your hosts file. Many people needed to do something similar to connect to the patch servers.

  • “The current EU Auth is 206.127.147.26 – if you have an EU account.”

    For US you should use different IP.

    Your tracert shows you’re trying to connect to EU auth, Keen.

  • “4. In the box labeled, “Extra Command Line Parameters (Advanced)” add the following: -ip:206.127.153.247 -port:2106 -cc:1

    This IP is the current NA Auth. This IP will change in the future, so please remember these changes.”

    From the link above (comment #1):)

  • Can’t an US Aion player connect and run a tracert to give Keen the right IP?

    Some more things to try:

    1.) delete the addcache.xml file that is in the root of the game folder
    2.) -ip:206.127.153.247 -port:2106 -cc:1 -noauthgg

    Different IP, maybe this one is working…

  • Fixed it. I ran both tracerts and pasted the wrong one. That clears up SOME confusion on my end, but ultimately makes no difference. I can’t connect to the U.S. IP anyway. The US tracert looks even worse.

  • NCSoft has had basic networking issues since the last closed betas and in open beta. I tracked down the problem to a router in their data center by routing and tracing through multiple networks. Posted in their forums, had a ticket, etc. No resolution until I made a video isolating the problem and sent a tweet which got a response from their team. As of this morning, for some traffic, they’ve routed around the issue. Here’s the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hszJxZSdjY0 and here’s the difference after the fix: http://bit.ly/hQoab.

  • Another tracert looks even worse this time:

    Tracing route to 206-127-153-247.plaync.com [206.127.153.247]
    over a maximum of 30 hops:

    1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms home [192.168.1.254]
    2 22 ms 22 ms 22 ms 99-10-160-3.lightspeed.irvnca.sbcglobal.net [99.
    10.160.3]
    3 * * * Request timed out.
    4 * * * Request timed out.
    5 * * * Request timed out.
    6 25 ms 24 ms 24 ms 151.164.42.196
    7 * * ex1-p15-1.eqlaca.sbcglobal.net [151.164.39.165] reports:
    Destination host unreachable.

    Trace complete.

  • New Tracert to 206.127.155.73:

    Tracing route to 206-127-155-73.plaync.com [206.127.155.73]
    over a maximum of 30 hops:

    1 1 ms 1 ms <1 ms home [192.168.1.254]
    2 24 ms 22 ms 21 ms 99-10-160-3.lightspeed.irvnca.sbcglobal.net [99.
    10.160.3]
    3 * 25 ms 25 ms 75.20.13.194
    4 25 ms 25 ms 25 ms 75.20.0.12
    5 * * * Request timed out.
    6 25 ms 25 ms 24 ms 151.164.95.174
    7 * * * Request timed out.
    8 * * * Request timed out.
    9 * 151.164.98.61 reports: Destination host unreachable.

    Trace complete.

  • @keen Since official forums are offline, maybe try tweeting @aion_ayase and @aion_xaen. Worked well for me yesterday. Hope you get a positive response as well. Good luck 🙁

  • Well I hope you get in Keen because I’ll be looking forward to your one month play review of Aion.

    After getting burned by WAR, I’m more careful about MMO’s, and it will be a while before I ever pre-order one again.

  • Keen… I have been having these issues aslo, none of the so-called “FIXES” work. this is pathetic, We payed for this game along with the bonus of prepurchasing and they are not delivering….

  • Normally when I do trace route testing, it allows me to see where the issues “begins”. So if all of your pings except the last few hops were normal (i.e. less than 150ms), then that means the issue is usually near the destination of where you’re connecting (i.e. game servers). If you’re getting networking issues the first hop outside of your home though (i.e. hop #2 or #3), that totally sounds like a local issue relating to your communications provider. You can usually confirm this by going to someone who lives nearby that’s on another communication provider and try pinging the same server IP.

    BTW I doubt this relates to your problem but check the following as well. Open your Networking and access the Properties area of your Internet Protocal (TCP/IP). It should “normally” be set to “Obtain an IP address automatically” and “Obtain DNS server address automatically”. When I checked mine a few months back, the DNS was not set to “automatic” and this attributed to a lot of Internet issues I had sporadically been having over the past few years. Totally pissed me off because I had never ever touched that area before, so a program must have altered it somehow. Sad thing is this is a stupidly simple issue, yet I had never thought of checking it before (because I had never altered the defaults myself before).

  • Looks to be something between AT&T and Limelight networks. Looking at the routes from both the east coast (SC) and west coast (Seattle) they both go through Limelight. Yours seems to get lost before then. I assume Limelight connects NCSoft to the world.

  • Yep, just spent 45 min on the phone. They believe that NCsoft might be blocking ports IP’s starting with 99.x.x.x which encompasses all of AT&T Uverse in this area. If that isn’t the issue then they’re willing to get their network teams moving to check it out.

    I’m waiting on a response from NCsoft on it.

  • ARGHHH!!! #(#$*!&(%

    It worked for 2 minutes. I had access to the Aion website and the character creation (I logged in real quick just fine) then while making my character I got the “You have been disconnected from the game server” error and I’m back being unable to access the website and the login server.

    /emo

    Tracert shortly after:

    Tracing route to 206-127-155-73.plaync.com [206.127.155.73]
    over a maximum of 30 hops:

    1 <1 ms 1 ms <1 ms home [192.168.1.254]
    2 22 ms 22 ms 23 ms 99-10-160-3.lightspeed.irvnca.sbcglobal.net [99.
    10.160.3]
    3 25 ms 26 ms 27 ms 75.20.13.194
    4 25 ms 25 ms 25 ms 75.20.0.12
    5 * * 26 ms 75.20.0.4
    6 24 ms 24 ms 24 ms 151.164.95.174
    7 * * * Request timed out.
    8 * * * Request timed out.
    9 * * * Request timed out.
    10 151.164.98.61 reports: Destination host unreachable.

    Trace complete.

  • Truly a reminder on how much computers can suck! And another reminder on how much they have improved over the years. This brings back a lot of BAD memories.

    Sorry you have this.

    Also…I may have missed this in other blogs/posts. But I assume Graev’s computer is doing the same thing as well eh? I bring this up only because I have had times where my connection was messed up and I completly forgot to try another computer in the house…and it worked fine. A reformat later and I was golden. I’m sure you’ve done this but it never hurts to mention.

  • AT&T’s explanation may be plausible. Destination host unreachable indicates some sort of routing trouble. I think you meant to say IP addresses, not ports.

    This could very well be a routing issue on NCSoft’s side (traffic gets there, but is routed back incorrectly). Personally, still I think AT&T and Limelight are having issues.

    I say this because 151.164.98.61 is an AT&T IP out of Texas. Limelight is a provider in Texas for NCSoft as far as I can tell. If the transition to the Limelight network was working from AT&T we’d see it shown in AT&T’s side. It could be AT&T or Limelight at fault here.

  • Yeah I meant to say IP addresses. I think it’s definitely an IP issue now that I’m hearing all these AT&T people using Gamepath (proxy) and having no more troubles.

  • This was on AION source posted originally by Livvy.

    send an email to amboss[at]ncsoft[dot]com
    subject: error 36

    and IP number in message body .indicate where you live and your ISP in message body too ,but don’t elaborate. Just those 3 things

    – country,region
    – ISP
    – IP#

  • Don not worry if there is no message with error 36 it just their way of knowing it is an unblock IP address issue.

  • The US servers were always laggy, screwed, whatever. NCsoft West personally responsible = FAIL.

    The EU servers worked much better, faster and all that. For the USA routing alone seems to be an unsolvable mystery.

    Notice how neither NCsoft nor AT&T feel any responsibility? This is ridiculous.

    Poor Keen, but maybe it is a sign. Given that I doubt Aion’s longevity to exceed 2-3 months, it might indeed be an omen.

  • Longasc, you are insane if you think Aion’s longevity is only 2-3 months. It’s been steadily increasing in Korea for nearly a year and I expect the same in the west.

  • If Keen simply can’t connect it will not even be given a Darkfall / Age of Conan style funeral here.

  • Wow, that’s a pretty extreme issue. It may be a DNS issue with AT&T that gets resolved soon. Fingers crossed. I doubt it’s a conspiracy but more likely some bizarre error.

    People in Europe had some funny bugs too – like my client running in Korean!!

  • I had some issues with connecting to the L2 servers back at the beginning of the year. It wouldn’t allow me to connect to anything NCSoft related at all including any of their websites nor the game itself.

    I ended up having to use a proxy program I found on the internet to bypass whatever the issue was (still don’t know to this day). Once I had the program running I was able to contact NCSoft and had a bunch of email exchanges trying to figure out what the problem was. In the end they claimed it was something on my ISP’s end. I forwarded the emails and the technical data that NCSoft sent me and the response back was that “We don’t block anything”.. then again my ISP’s manager is such a charming fellow..

  • Issue is still unresolved. I’m not going to pay to use some proxy service that could run me the risk of getting my account banned.

    I’ll switch away from AT&T if this is not fixed within 3 business days. I’m tired of their service and their shoddy tech support.

  • Actually Keen the one I used was free.. I just can’t for the life of my remember the name offhand of it..

    I know the program used an Onion for a icon which makes me think Vivaldi or something along the lines of that..

    It worked fine other than the issue of “having” to use it..

  • Warden, are you talking about Vidalia Bundle with Tor and Privoxy programs?

    The onion icon made me remember.

  • You’re going to switch ISP’s because of Aion? There’s a ringing endorsement if I ever heard one!

  • It’s more than just that. AT&T has been giving me ENORMOUS problems all summer long. I’m talking about losing service 4-5 times a day or more during prime time.

  • I’ve spent over an hour on the phone with AT&T and they’re going to have their network people check on the issue, but they strongly believe that it is on NCsoft’s end.

    They have asked me to request NCsoft check their ACL (Action Control List) to ensure that IP ranges starting with 99. are not being blocked for some reason because that is the IP range assigned to AT&T Uverse users in Southern California.

    I’ve sent out twitters, forum posts, emails to tech support, and now added it to my blog post.

    THIS WHEEL IS ONLY GOING TO GET SQUEAKIER!

  • Get em Keen>.<

    I refuse to spend over 3 hours in a queue. I am only willing to wait for about 30 minutes. I will not waste my time with this game until the queue times are reasonable.

  • haha! yeah these queue times are crazy..

    Not missing much just yet.

    Though I do love the clusterfuck that is the first few quests.

    Good luck on your resolution.

  • The extreme camping of quest items was mostly skippable up until that horribly thought out campaign quest that can’t be avoided (Odessa from the Gray Mane Stalkers). I had to channel hop a bit and get someone from the legion to help me take down the mobs in order to get through it. The good news is drops like that do seem to work as group loot so the more people you have actually in a group the faster it goes.

  • i’ve had no problems
    had to queue for 4 minutes
    logged in
    got all my names fine without bother
    no lag what-so-ever for my 4.5 hour stint last night

    i think the EU servers are in a much better state than the US servers

    only 2 problems

    1. general chat, can anyone say barrens chat? honestly general chat is awful
    and
    2. the lack of quest mobs and items, like wine barrels, but oh well, i soldiered through all the quests and made it to just under level 10

    very happy with my first day of aion

  • Tried to get on Lumiel but there was a huge (600 player) queue so I logged on to Marchutan and that let me in right away.

    Holy plague of locusts batman! Don’t see that many people in one area very often.

    lightsong is right about the quest objects being camped like crazy. But most you could bypass and come back later. The wine barrels were impossible at first but I came back after an hour (for completeness sake) and it was no problem.

    During the night I had 3 disconnects. But it was no real problem, I was expecting worse. Longest queue was 35 people (about 2 minutes).

    I got as far as ascension before calling it a night. Anyway, I had a lot of fun. I hope everyone that got on did too. And I hope those with tech issues gets fixed soon.

  • There is nothing more frustrating then what some of you are going through. Just imagine if you were one of the run of the mill gamers out there trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

    Best of luck to you all.

  • I just got off the phone with both AT&T (4th call) and NCsoft (2nd call) and they spent a combined hour blaming each other.

    AT&T claims NCsoft’s firewall is blocking IP’s (mistakenly, obviously)

    NCsoft claims AT&T is having routing issues.

    Neither wants to budge and I’ve been getting quite upset with both of them. I’ve demanded AT&T networking guys look at it and they’re resisting me because they’ve deemed it NCsoft’s problem. NCsoft said “It would be stupid to the level of insanity for us to block those IP’s from a major provider” <-- that's a direct quote. Meanwhile, the customer gets screwed.

  • Using my tech support skills…

    You played open beta and all other betas up until last week. Therefore something changed on someone’s end. NCsoft, At&T or yourself. I will rule you out as you probably did not make any hardware or router changes or anything drastic in the last week.

    Therefore the question to ask At&T and NCsoft did they do any changes at all to their network connectivity in the last week? Did they perhaps change your IP address ranges in the last week? This line of questioning will eventually uncover something has changed. Also, do you know of others in your area with At&t are having the same issue?

    Try to get a conference call in with them…. only way you can solve this if at all.. otherwise change carriers 🙁

  • As much as people have been touting this game I have been waiting for reality to hit it in the face. Looks like it has. Good luck with it.

  • If an NCSoft router were blocking addresses say, why would an *AT&T* router reply with “destination host unreachable”? You’d expect that message from the NCSoft router (or considerably more likely no response at all).

  • EVEN if NCSoft is blocking AT&T, you would think AT&T would be trying their damndest to fix the issue (like contacting NCSoft. It sucks you have to handle this.

    If your not under a contract, drop em and get another ISP in. I have a hard time believing either of them are REALLY going to try and help you here. I could be wrong!

  • It’s AT&T’s fault and they partially admitted it to me finally. They’re having routing issues.

    This is in no way reflective of the game, as some of you wonderful people are trying to make it out to be.

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