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Issues with poor connections? 
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Joined: 2010-12-25 02:40:30
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Any reason why Cool VL Viewer seems to have more issues with poor connections than the official viewer?

I'm currently connected to the intertubes with a lousy connection, ping is showing me about 10-15% packet loss on average. When attempting to connect to SL, I get the "Logging in..." message above the progress bar, it advances to about 12%, stops for a few seconds, then advances a tiny be more (maybe to 14%, say), and stops entirely. It sits there until I hit the quit button (unless it would do something else if I left it for over three minutes, but that was the limit of my patience in testing).

Okay, bad connection, can't login, not Cool VL Viewer's fault. Except... if I switch to the official viewer, I can login. It hits about the same point in the progress bar, pauses for maybe 10-20 seconds, then either gives me a can't connect error, or successfully logs in. Half a dozen attempts resulted in two "can't connect" error messages and four successful logins. I'm currently trying to connect using Cool VL Viewer for about the 50th time, with only one successful attempt (alas, with the wrong alt).

Any idea why the official viewer responds so much better under these circumstances, and any chance whatever it's doing could be backported to the Cool?


2010-12-25 03:01:42
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Joined: 2009-03-17 18:42:51
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What version of the "official viewer" are you using ? The Cool VL Viewer v1.25 is based off Snowglobe v1.5. Since I didn't touch the part of the code responsible for the connection process itself you should experience the same behaviour with Snowglobe (v1.4 or v1.5). Perhaps things have evolved in v2.x viewers, or perhaps it's just a coincidence and your connection was worst when you tried the Cool VL Viewer than when you tried the official viewer...

Without the logs (SecondLife.log) for both viewers, it's hard for me to make a diagnostic, but I never had any connection issue with the Cool VL Viewer and did not notice any difference in connection speed with other viewers (officials, v2.x included, or other TPVs).

In any case, if you got network issues, your best bet is to solve them in the first place. Do check your MTU, since too large a MTU is a common issue for packet loss and failure to connect (to SL, or even to websites or any server with any protocol): search this board for "MTU" and read the messages I already wrote about it.


2010-12-25 08:03:20
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Joined: 2010-12-25 02:40:30
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This would be with Viewer 2.4. And I'd say it's definitely not a coincidence, I've been having on-again off-again packet loss problems all weekend, and when it's going on, I'll go for long periods where Cool VL Viewer simply cannot connect to the grid at all, no matter how many attempts I make. At the same time, the official Viewer 2.4 connects most of the time. Whatever they changed in the new viewer definitely makes it much more robust when it comes to establishing a connection. You're right about the speed, it's definitely not any faster at all once connected, but it reliably connects when Cool won't. If the problem starts while I'm already connected, Cool works just fine, but if I logout, I cannot log back in without switching to the official viewer.

The problem is with the cable connection. Hopefully they'll be able to fix it today. Just thought you might want to know Viewer 2 has some substantial reliability improvements when it comes to making that initial connection to the grid. If not too much trouble, it'd be cool to see those backported to a usable viewer like Cool.

Edit: I found SecondLife.log. FWIW, the last thing written into it before Cool goes into the long hang of doom is:

2010-12-27T09:50:06Z INFO: LLStartUp::setStartupState: Startup state changing from STATE_LOGIN_NO_DATA_YET to STATE_LOGIN_DOWNLOADING


2010-12-27 09:45:55
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Joined: 2009-03-17 18:42:51
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Galatea wrote:
This would be with Viewer 2.4. And I'd say it's definitely not a coincidence, I've been having on-again off-again packet loss problems all weekend, and when it's going on, I'll go for long periods where Cool VL Viewer simply cannot connect to the grid at all, no matter how many attempts I make. At the same time, the official Viewer 2.4 connects most of the time. Whatever they changed in the new viewer definitely makes it much more robust when it comes to establishing a connection. You're right about the speed, it's definitely not any faster at all once connected, but it reliably connects when Cool won't. If the problem starts while I'm already connected, Cool works just fine, but if I logout, I cannot log back in without switching to the official viewer.
This won't be a Cool VL Viewer specific issue (you would encounter the same issue with any of SL v1.xx viewers, Snowglobe or any TPV based on the former two), and knowing that v2.4 works better in your particular case doesn't mean much either: for example, if your issue is related to a bad MTU (which is still my guess), this could come from the fact that v2.4 sends smaller packets on login than what older viewers do, but this doesn't mean someone else (who would require an even smaller MTU than you would) wouldn't also encounter this kind of issue with v2.4... The *real* problem is with your network, not with the viewer...

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The problem is with the cable connection. Hopefully they'll be able to fix it today.
Again, look at your MTU... Under Linux it is as simple as typing "ifconfig" and looking at the MTU used on your ethernet card(s), then, if it reports 1500 (the default), try lowering it to 1492 (which is the maximum value for the PPPoE or PPPoA protocols used to encapsulate the traffic for ADSL and Cable MODEMs). Under Linux, it's just about typing "ifconfig ethX mtu 1492" (where "ethX" is the network card on which your cable MODEM is connected, for example "eth0"). Under Windows, you'll have to Google for "MTU Windows" since it requires touching the stupid registry...

Quote:
Just thought you might want to know Viewer 2 has some substantial reliability improvements when it comes to making that initial connection to the grid.
This is just an assumption you make based on your own experience, but that might prove wrong for anybody else. The Cool VL Viewer is perfectly reliable in normal conditions (i.e. with a non-broken network).

Quote:
If not too much trouble, it'd be cool to see those backported to a usable viewer like Cool.
It *is* much trouble, since any change to the login procedure would make the Cool VL Viewer incompatible with OpenSim grids (LL is not worried any more with such compatibility and their v2 viewer is plain incompatible with OpenSim). Beside, I'd rather use my sparse free time to code more useful features (such as Mesh support)...

Quote:
Edit: I found SecondLife.log. FWIW, the last thing written into it before Cool goes into the long hang of doom is:

2010-12-27T09:50:06Z INFO: LLStartUp::setStartupState: Startup state changing from STATE_LOGIN_NO_DATA_YET to STATE_LOGIN_DOWNLOADING
This simply says the viewer is waiting for a reply from the server, but to truly try and spot where the difference between v1 and v2 viewers could matter, I'd need *both* the logs for v2 and for the Cool VL Viewer... Don't bother yet: better concentrating on fixing your network, because this is where the cause for your problem will be found.


2010-12-27 18:23:47
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