Neocron Sync's and Crashes - A Guide to help reduce them

[DIS]

The world of Neocron and syncs.

You are probably reading this thread as you are having stability problems with your Neocron connection or you are experiencing regular crashes. As you are aware Neocron is a very old game by today's standards and the game is not as forgiving as with other MMORPGs when it comes to your Internet connection.

However, I have compiled a list of suggestions which may help improve your game experience.

Neocron's method of transmitting data:

Neocron uses UDP packets to transmit game date between your PC and the Neocron server, UDP packets ensure that a constant stream of packets are sent between the client and the server, UDP does not use error correction so if packet loss occurs those packets are lost forever. If your hardware struggles sending/receiving small but regular UDP packets then this can cause players to warp/teleport across the screen, synchronising and ultimately connection loss.


Your hardware:

Overclocking: An unstable overclock WILL affect Neocron, if you run on an overclocked system and you experience regular crashing, try running at stock to rule this out as a possible cause.

WIFI: - Avoid without question, WIFI = packet loss before your data has gone anywhere.

Realtek Nic: Known to struggle with transmitting/receiving lots of small packets, ensure official Realtek drivers are updated - Consider switching to Intel dedicated Nic.

Killer Nic: Better than Realtek but still not as good as Intel Nic's, if you have problems ensure you have the latest drivers/software or consider switching to an Intel dedicated Nic.

Intel Nic-Onboard: Usually far superior compared to the competition, ensure drivers are updated. If using an old chipset consider trying a dedicated Intel Nic.

Intel dedicated: Dedicated cards always offer better performance one model I have used is tried and tested to work with Neocron:
1 Port Intel EXPI9400PT Gigabit Server Ethernet PCI Express card - Manufacturer code: EXPI9400PTBLK.
These cards work with most PC's and current versions of Windows. Tried and tested to work well with Neocron.

Helpful utility:

SpeedGuide.net - Helps configure your network settings within Windows - may improve Neocron performance. Handy registry back-up and connection speed slider. This is a downloadable program and I can vouch that it is safe to use.

Your ISP:

Your ISP will directly affect your connection speed, some ISPs now offer premium gaming services that reduce or stop traffic management, this will no doubt improve performance, non premium packages may reduce UDP packet priority which in turn could affect your connection to Neocron.

ISP provided routers:

The majority of ISPs will provide a very basic router, these routers are fine for general browsing but are not necessarily suitable for the Neocron engine. Don't be fooled by their looks, some look great on the outside but use cheap components on the inside.

Virgin Media: A good example for the above is the Virgin Media Super Hub and Super Hub 2. Both of these routers will cause syncs and thus increase game crashes and drop-outs. This has been tried and tested. If you have a Virgin connection then you are likely to have one of these routers.

It is recommended to run the router in Modem mode and replace and purchased a dedicated router.

I have personally tested the TP-LINK Wireless AC range, these routers have a built in WAN port, 4 GbE ports and good Wi-Fi coverage. They work perfectly well with virgin routers and cost around £40.

Sky:
Sky Fiber router, not aware of any issues, if you have an unstable connection let us know!
ADSL: No reported issues.

BT:
Fiber router: BT Hub is of poor quality – Suggestions from BT users are to simply purchase a good quality router.
The Netgear WNDR4000 is known to be suitable for Neocron although not officially supported any longer by Netgear.
ADSL: No reported issues.

TalkTalk:
Not expecting much here, but if anyone could let us know their experience with Neocron and this ISP that would be good.

USA
Anyone from the USA who has helpful suggestions on recommended providers please let us know.

EU
Any of our EU players have recommended ISPs and hardware that work well with Neocron please let us know.

4G
If you are using a 4G internet connection let us know your experiences.

Port forwarding.
Make sure your router is set to port forward all of Neocron's required ports:

TCP/IP: 7000, 8020, 8040, 12000, 13000
UDP: 6000, 6001, 5000 - 5016

Software Firewall:
Ensure Windows firewall or equivalent is not blocking the Neocronclient.exe

Anti virus:
Ensure your anti virus software is run into gaming mode while playing Neocron if you have the option.

[Morrighan]

My stuffs:

Laptop: Intel Wireless-AC3165 (usually), or Qualcomm Atheros PCI-E Gigabit. Win 10.
Desktop: Intel Gigabit onboard, not dedicated. Win 7.
Both run the default Windows protections + Spybot S&D, NC gets to come and go as it pleases.
Cable modem is ISP supplied Motorola Surfboard, which has been alright. Many fewer restarts than older model I had with Roadrunner. Router is Cisco EA2700, pretty basic. Desktop and Firestick have been given priority switching. No port forwarding enabled.
I don't sync out too often, can play or idle for long periods of time. I'm way more likely to crash to desktop than sync. Ping here is pretty consistent @ 165-170. For a rural ISP, it's not too bad!

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/18023320

[William Antrim]

Question about the BT home hubs.

I have one, theyre shit. My connection drops on average once or twice a day and when I have tried to explain this to customer services they dont understand because theyre not network analysts obviously. I had to teach one guy about what a "handshake" is in computer terms.

In conversation however one thing he said to me was that as far as he could see my connection was fairly stable and had only dropped once a day and that was acceptable. I said no, it happens once a day at around 8 or 9pm at night - right when im in the middle of fcking using it!

So my question is - now i read the guide - if I get a decent router and plug that into my homehub 5 will it improve my connection? I have currently 2 PCs, 2 phones and 1 sky tv box that connect to the hub at any one time, though not all at the same time necessarily.

Im not sure if this question is better posed on the BT forum but you made me think of it so I thought id ask here to see if this will help. If you have any knowledge specifically of this hardware that is.

[Mal]

I'm on Sky fibre with their second gen hub and was having horrible issues around 3 weeks ago - crashing on zoning and randomly crashing when changing weapons, equiping things in the quick bar and attempting to cast PSI modules. They seem less prevalent but still apparent (prior to yesterday).

I've gone from onboard (unsure which one) to dedicated NIC yesterday (Intel EXPI9301CTBLK PRO1000) and crashed once - but wasn't present during the later fight where most people crashed out and died. Further testing recommended before a verdict is reached!

[Bifrost]

First off, thanks to DIS for his time and effort in researching this post and also thanks for the feedback from the community so far.

in DIS's guide he put a Netgear WNDR4000 router with BT as working well, and this is my setup.

I'm on BT 80meg FTTC and the supplied HomeHub 3 router got replaced within a day or two of it being installed as it was unstable for just about anything. I replaced it with a Netgear WNDR4000, but as it is no longer supported by Netgear I've flashed it with OpenWRT.

It's very rare I get a connection drop, crashes or lost packets while playing or GM'ing in NC, and I've also done a live stream for the Neocron YouTube channel several times with no issues.

[Odimara Orca]

None of the setups in this thread represent the majority of the playerbase and none of the solutions in this thread are workable for a casual.

A fact is: I experienced a vast difference of connection quality over the last couple of years with exactly the same setup.

Stability issues need to be resolved server side.

Everything else, especially coming from the Dev team, shows an amazing degree of ignorance and lack of experience with IT infrastructure / Service responsibilities from the Devs.

Experience:

Sysadmin for the VM infrastructure of a hospital with 6000 employees.

Telling the NC playerbase to buy a new router because of connection problems is the equivalent of me telling the networkteam to blow 10 Million Dollars to rip out and replace the old glasfaber cables, just because I'm to lazy to proprerly configure my VM's, Virtual Connects and Fiber Switches.

Just no.

[Odimara Orca]

First off, thanks to DIS for his time and effort in researching this post and also thanks for the feedback from the community so far.

in DIS's guide he put a Netgear WNDR4000 router with BT as working well, and this is my setup.

I'm on BT 80meg FTTC and the supplied HomeHub 3 router got replaced within a day or two of it being installed as it was unstable for just about anything. I replaced it with a Netgear WNDR4000, but as it is no longer supported by Netgear I've flashed it with OpenWRT.

It's very rare I get a connection drop, crashes or lost packets while playing or GM'ing in NC, and I've also done a live stream for the Neocron YouTube channel several times with no issues.

Try going for the player experience.

Cap a PE then do some farming and Opfighting.

You will see what we complain about if you actually spend some time playing the game like a normal player.

And do it with a Setup that represents your player base. I don't test a Terminalserver from the console.

I test it from a 0815 Client.

Sorry but your experiences with that setup are absolutely worthless as a testcase.

[William Antrim]

I think you are going dangerously off topic here buddy. It is one thing to criticise someones networking skills, its another entirely to start shit flinging about op fights. I am not going to pretend I know anything about networking but please dont go off topic into the wider points that you have personal beef with and use a thread solely about getting better network performance as a personal vehicle to attack a member of the support team. Be critical of development by all means, as an investor (of time if not money) then you absolutely have a right to criticize but do it in the right forum please.

The setups in this thread represent a broad range of BRITISH ISPs - I use caps to illustrate my point. None of us has the ability to gauge European ISPs if we live in the UK. We voted to leave all of that behind recently.

I think the valid points that come out of this thread are for gamers generally. If you want a good solid internet connection to game on then get a router.... thats what i took from the thread. For that reason I find it informative. If someone cares enough about a specific hobby they will look to get the best tools of the trade. Getting a good router is just as important as getting a good GFX card in another game. Why is the hardware here any different?


Id like the thread to continue because I am learning something here and am rather pleased that others with more knowledge can enlighten me on this subject as it is one I am a novice in and would like to improve my net connection.

[Odimara Orca]

I think you are going dangerously off topic here buddy. It is one thing to criticise someones networking skills, its another entirely to start shit flinging about op fights. I am not going to pretend I know anything about networking but please dont go off topic into the wider points that you have personal beef with and use a thread solely about getting better network performance as a personal vehicle to attack a member of the support team. Be critical of development by all means, as an investor (of time if not money) then you absolutely have a right to criticize but do it in the right forum please.



[Edited]

This is about basic accountability which every IT person should understand. I gave you my comparsion.

You don't tell the playerbase to go buy a new router or change the ISP: This shit is ridiculous.

[Zoltan]

None of the setups in this thread represent the majority of the playerbase and none of the solutions in this thread are workable for a casual.

A fact is: I experienced a vast difference of connection quality over the last couple of years with exactly the same setup.

Stability issues need to be resolved server side.

Everything else, especially coming from the Dev team, shows an amazing degree of ignorance and lack of experience with IT infrastructure / Service responsibilities from the Devs.

Experience:

Sysadmin for the VM infrastructure of a hospital with 6000 employees.

Telling the NC playerbase to buy a new router because of connection problems is the equivalent of me telling the networkteam to blow 10 Million Dollars to rip out and replace the old glasfaber cables, just because I'm to lazy to proprerly configure my VM's, Virtual Connects and Fiber Switches.

Just no.

So please tell us what to do. Thank you. Please keep in mind - we are unexperienced, ignorant, lazy and maybe stupid a bit so please write slowly.

[William Antrim]

[Edited]

This is about basic accountability which every IT person should understand. I gave you my comparsion.

You don't tell the playerbase to go buy a new router or change the ISP: This shit is ridiculous.

Separate your issues out then. This thread is about routers, not op fights. Can you see the difference?

[DIS]

Question about the BT home hubs.

I have one, theyre shit. My connection drops on average once or twice a day and when I have tried to explain this to customer services they dont understand because theyre not network analysts obviously. I had to teach one guy about what a "handshake" is in computer terms.

In conversation however one thing he said to me was that as far as he could see my connection was fairly stable and had only dropped once a day and that was acceptable. I said no, it happens once a day at around 8 or 9pm at night - right when im in the middle of fcking using it!

So my question is - now i read the guide - if I get a decent router and plug that into my homehub 5 will it improve my connection? I have currently 2 PCs, 2 phones and 1 sky tv box that connect to the hub at any one time, though not all at the same time necessarily.

Im not sure if this question is better posed on the BT forum but you made me think of it so I thought id ask here to see if this will help. If you have any knowledge specifically of this hardware that is.

One thing... OFC I have no idea how knowledgeable you are so forgive me if I'm barking up the wrong tree here.

Some routers have a DHCP lease time... which are set to a ridiculous time of 24 hours, check under DHCP in your router setup and make sure its not set to 24H, if it has a max limit which can be up to 48 hours on some routers there is usually a way to add an address reservation so it does not disconnect the device, hope that helps.

[DIS]

I'm on Sky fibre with their second gen hub and was having horrible issues around 3 weeks ago - crashing on zoning and randomly crashing when changing weapons, equiping things in the quick bar and attempting to cast PSI modules. They seem less prevalent but still apparent (prior to yesterday).

I've gone from onboard (unsure which one) to dedicated NIC yesterday (Intel EXPI9301CTBLK PRO1000) and crashed once - but wasn't present during the later fight where most people crashed out and died. Further testing recommended before a verdict is reached!

I did not crash during the fight either and I am using the dedicated Intel Gigabit PRO 1000CT card which I installed a few days ago, again need to carry out further testing but this is promising. Thanks for flagging that.

[DIS]

@NST can we remove any non constructive posts and moderate this thread as I don't fancy it turning into a slanging match.

@Odimara Orca okay so you an Sysadmin for the VM infrastructure of a hospital with 6000 employees - good for you.

Seeing as you claim to know a thing our two about networking, perhaps you can provide some insight as to why certain ISP's provided hardware cause or contribute to game instability?

I mean it's not that I have gone out of my way and tested three routers, 2 from VM and one purchased at my own cost and proved the units from VM cause sync's and crashes.

I enjoy playing Neocron, Neocron does not like my hardware so I either stop playing, moan about it or do something to try and resolve the problems whilst sharing my findings with the community.

I would never advise a person to change their ISP for a game, but at the end of the day sometimes you get what you pay for, if you are gaming, as William Antrim quite rightly states - you would not skimp on a graphics card so why skimp on a router or ISP?

[Odimara Orca]

So please tell us what to do. Thank you. Please keep in mind - we are unexperienced, ignorant, lazy and maybe stupid a bit so please write slowly.

If you honestly tell people to change their routers or ISP's, with the current symptoms, then yes. You are all of those things.

And yeah if you'd actually started to listen to the community, neither playerbase, balance or stability would be as fucked as it is atm.


@NST can we remove any non constructive posts and moderate this thread as I don't fancy it turning into a slanging match.

@Odimara Orca okay so you an Sysadmin for the VM infrastructure of a hospital with 6000 employees - good for you.

Seeing as you claim to know a thing our two about networking, perhaps you can provide some insight as to why certain ISP's provided hardware cause or contribute to game instability?

I mean it's not that I have gone out of my way and tested three routers, 2 from VM and one purchased at my own cost and proved the units from VM cause sync's and crashes.

I enjoy playing Neocron, Neocron does not like my hardware so I either stop playing, moan about it or do something to try and resolve the problems whilst sharing my findings with the community.

I would never advise a person to change their ISP for a game, but at the end of the day sometimes you get what you pay for, if you are gaming, as William Antrim quite rightly states - you would not skimp on a graphics card so why skimp on a router or ISP?

It is absolutely meaningless imo. The connection quality varies widely over time with the same Router.

So maybe it isn't the Router that needs to be fixed?

Maybe it's Serverside?

It would explain the sudden changes over the last year in quality with the same setup.

But hey... go change your ISP or router.

It's always the customers fault that shit isn't working right, aight?

That seems to be the mindset and it's highly unprofessional.


Separate your issues out then. This thread is about routers, not op fights. Can you see the difference?

I didn't flame anybody here Bifrost.

[Odimara Orca]

@NST can we remove any non constructive posts and moderate this thread as I don't fancy it turning into a slanging match.

@Odimara Orca okay so you an Sysadmin for the VM infrastructure of a hospital with 6000 employees - good for you.

Seeing as you claim to know a thing our two about networking, perhaps you can provide some insight as to why certain ISP's provided hardware cause or contribute to game instability?

I mean it's not that I have gone out of my way and tested three routers, 2 from VM and one purchased at my own cost and proved the units from VM cause sync's and crashes.

I enjoy playing Neocron, Neocron does not like my hardware so I either stop playing, moan about it or do something to try and resolve the problems whilst sharing my findings with the community.

I would never advise a person to change their ISP for a game, but at the end of the day sometimes you get what you pay for, if you are gaming, as William Antrim quite rightly states - you would not skimp on a graphics card so why skimp on a router or ISP?

I can't be bothered doing an analysis when the issues are obviously server side.

My ISP used to be goverment subsedised about 20 years ago then was privatized. As a side effect it's the biggest one in my country with the largest infrastructure.

I'm not from Kongo. The Infrastructure here is pretty good.

And yet NC connection quality is worse then it was whem we had the player spike post-patch.

No changes in my Setup.

It's certainly more likely (like a 1000%) to be something Serverside than my Router.

Just look at how many people have issues.

And the answer is seriously to tell each and every one of them to get a new router or ISP?

If that many people have Issues (which intensified again over the last months) it's so obviously serverside it isn't even funny.

[DIS]

And the answer is seriously to tell each and every one of them to get a new router or ISP?



I didn't suggest that a player should change their ISP or router, however my findings were pretty conclusive, two routers (different models though two from the ISP are same model they have different internals from what I found) provided by my ISP have issues with Neocron, they only have issues with Neocron and no other game that I am aware of. Now my thoughts on this were perhaps the routers were losing UDP packets while connecting to Neocron.

So, with the first router I complained to my ISP, they sent me a replacement unit... a newer version, the first router was internally a Netgear router with the custom firmware the ISP uses, the second had different internals but was the same model number. Knowing from online research a lot of customers have complained about this router dropping packets and getting poor network speeds I was already aware that the router was not the best.

The second replacement made by a different OEM was slightly better, but still suffered from syncs while zoning also if in the zone for over 20 minutes, chat drop outs, random syncs during combat, regular crashing..

So I purchased a new router and tried it. Instantly the above issues were resolved, the syncs stopped.. okay they still happen but are very rare now, general game stability increased.

ISP upgraded my connection to 200Mb around 12 months later and provided a new router, dual band.. all singing and dancing... tested this router with NC, issues less frequent than the original two units but returned, switched back to my own router which I purchased and the problems stopped instantly.

This clearly proves that some routers are causing issues with the game, I am not saying its the fault of the router.. Neocron is an old game and the Internet has changed over the years, the routers are clearly not configured for the type of data neocron requires or they are just plain trash.

A lot of ISP's here in the UK also traffic shape depending on your internet package, that means reduced priority of UDP packets and throttling down speeds... I am certain this all add's to the problem.

I have now explained my findings twice, if you don't want to take the advice Odimara Orca they by all means that is up to you, however if this thread can help just one player improve their connection then it was worth posting.

[William Antrim]

.... however if this thread can help just one player improve their connection then it was worth posting.

o/

That's me then!

[Mozencrath]

Thanks Dis!

Can I add some stuff Ive found?

I am in the US East coast, ping is 130 to 137, QoS will add 10 to 20ms onto your ping so I recommend disabling that if you have high ping and dont have a bottleneck at home with up/download speeds (if you do use all your bandwidth while playing NC I would recommend leaving QoS on for example someone on your router is downloading torrents while you are playing NC)

Also, the biggest thing I have found that cuts down on syncs/crashes is adjusting the MTU size within your router. This is easy to do by simply going to your routers configuration page in your web browser. All routers are set at 1,500 MTU size. I have had excellent results lowering that to 1,200 but I think you can go down even to 1,000 or 900. Before changing MTU size,I was getting stuck at syncs probably 2 or 3 times per day and having to crash the client. After lowering the MTU, that problem dropped to about 2 times per week at most.

[Kragar]

Since the games release 15 years ago I have had Sync issues which happens when I change zone.

During this time have had numerous hardware setups and cannot change router because
it comes with the Cable and have no issues with any other game. Only had ( not recent )
issues when some game been in beta and until they fixed the disconnect issues.

Generally my game doesn't crash and sync issues very seldom happens while in zone.

Currently I desync pretty much every time I change zone except if I have visited the zone
very recently. Popping into a sewer and killing some mobs and returning does not cause
desync but if Im abit longer in the sewer I desync and have to relog in again.

I get the following error message.

Worldclient: Request for new world failed.

My guess is that the client / server communication is too fast and something glitches
the loading of the clients zone info, unless the zone info is very recent.

Really would hope to find a solution for this, any current players have similar disconnects
when zoning?

[Sidhardha]

I remember having sync issues in original Neocron, but pretty much never had them in 2.2-2.3.

The only issue i had not being able to get out of appartment since clicking on elevator button did nothing so had to relog, but no issues with zone changes.