Ride On Part II

ricketyclik · August 17, 2007, 18:00

Der-dent... Der-dent... Der-dent... WHANAWALAHHH

(To the Jaws soundtrack)

DrDeke · August 17, 2007, 18:50

Ok, everything should be back up and running. Let me know if you run into any trouble.

ricketyclik · August 17, 2007, 19:04

Yup... A-OK

Soltz · August 17, 2007, 20:39

I received an notification and I've played my turn.

DrDeke · August 18, 2007, 18:33

Good evening,

I'm testing a new firewall policy to address a problem wherein the pitboss server will sometimes spew about 50 packets per second of game protocol data at your computers indefinitely even after you have disconnected from the game.

This has been happening on and off since the game began, and my approach for dealing with it has been to just check on it every now and then, and take care of it* if I notice it happening. That approach wastes a lot of Internet data transfer, though, so I have now set things up so that these unwanted streams should get shut down automatically.

I don't expect this new system to interfere with legitimate game traffic, but please let me know if you start getting disconnected unexpectedly or have any unusual trouble.

Thanks,
Rusty

*If you're interested in how I "take care of it," it seems that the pitboss server will stop sending these packets if I cause my firewall to reply to one of its outgoing packets with an ICMP communication-administratively-prohibited message. This is all well and good, but the server would probably disconnect an actual game connection if I sent it one of these messages as well. So the trick is to avoid shutting down flows associated with legitimate game traffic. I've set my script to err on the side of caution by having it refrain from killing any connections if it detects that any computers are sending civ4 game data to the local pitboss server.

ricketyclik · August 18, 2007, 23:20

860 played

DrDeke · August 19, 2007, 01:00

860 played

Soltz · August 20, 2007, 00:05

Ditto

Av8tor · August 20, 2007, 02:44

Turn played

ricketyclik · August 20, 2007, 05:26

880 played

Soltz · August 21, 2007, 01:27

Played as well.

ricketyclik · August 22, 2007, 05:11

900 played

Soltz · August 23, 2007, 00:26

Played

DrDeke · August 23, 2007, 17:34

900 & 920 Played.

Soltz · August 23, 2007, 20:37

an' roun' we go!

ricketyclik · August 24, 2007, 06:44

920 played

DrDeke · August 24, 2007, 09:52

This morning, at 6:40 AM EDT (1040 UTC), my script killed off what it thought was a stuck Civ4 connection, like I mentioned in an earlier post. Since this is the first time my script has terminated a connection, I wanted to make sure that no-one was playing and had their connection cut off at that time.

Thanks,
Rusty

ricketyclik · August 24, 2007, 09:59

I was connected at about that time, and the game froze on me (so did my computer). I don't know whether it's connected, but that's the first time the game has frozen.

Keygen · August 24, 2007, 22:25

Turn 154 (920 AD) played.

Cultural bombs in cities located near our borders and especially near our cities will be considered as an act of war and dealt accordingly from now on.

Keygen · August 24, 2007, 22:28

Many thanks to DrDeke for the efforts put lately to improve the availability of the server and resolve issues related to the game and connectivity

Soltz · August 26, 2007, 18:42

Played

Keygen · August 27, 2007, 15:16

Turn 155 (940 AD) played.

ricketyclik · August 28, 2007, 06:28

960 played

Soltz · August 29, 2007, 01:20

Soltz · August 30, 2007, 20:35

ricketyclik · August 31, 2007, 10:15

980 puh-layed

Keygen · August 31, 2007, 13:08

Turn 157 (980 AD) played.

Soltz · September 1, 2007, 22:47

Played.

I'm going to be out of town on business from Tuesday through to Friday of next week. Needless to say, I'll not be able to play any turns over that period.