Nasty Punkbuster connection problem

(Spark) #1

Hello,

since quite a while I have the following problem: Sometimes the provider disconnects my router (every 24 hours). After this happens (which is annoying already), I can NOT connect to any Punkbuster enabled server for about 30 minutes! Today it was the first time this happened in a real train and it’s really really frustrating.
I wonder what’s the problem and how this can be? I can’t be the only one having this problem, but I have never heard about this before. :confused:
When it happens and I try to connect, it gets stuck at awaiting connection and at the console the last message is “Punkbuster client: master query sent to etc etc”.
I have tried deleting my etkey key, assuming that maybe “only” my guid is locked for some weird reason until it “times out” or something. However when I did this, I got console messages of Punkbuster trying to register a new cdkey, always a new one in an endless loop.

It’s really frustrating, so I hope that maybe someone knows what the heck is going on and how I could avoid this in the future… (without rebooting the router everytime before a match, because I’m not the only one connected to it).
If it matters, I’m on Linux.

Thanks in advance…

(Spark) #2

It just happened in an important match… I can’t tell you how frustrated I am. :banghead: What’s the damn point?? It also seems to take much longer than 30 minutes…
I take it, that nobody else has this problem?

(BondyBoy007) #3

Yep there are known issues with some routers, my connection would go down only when playing ET

I updated my router’s (linksys befsr41) firmware to the recommended one on evenbalances webby - try updating your firmware

(Spark) #4

It’s a one-disk Linux router… And it’s not like the router stops working, not at all. It just disconnects every once in a while from my provider (that’s normal) and then I can do everything, just not connect to Punkbuster enabled servers for about an hour. I think I had the same problem with Q3 actually, so it’s not exactly ET specific.
I’m absolutely puzzled what could be causing this. The only thing I could imagine is, that I have to wait for some kind of timeout when I lose connection without properly disconnecting, but that’s still insane. Or maybe it has something to do with that I get a new IP and try to connect with my old GUI. But then I’d expect some kind of error message, also when I deleted my etkey, it could not register a new one (it tried again and again like I described).
This is just fishy and if nobody else every experienced this problem, I probably could only try emailing the EvenBalance support. Hopefully they have an idea.

(Ragnar_40k) #5

When you reconnect to your provider you will get a new IP. But your GUID is still registered with the old IP at the PB-servers. So you usually get a message that your GUID is already in use and you can’t connect (until it times out). The easiest way to get around it is to request a new GUID by deleting/renaming the file “etkey” in your “etmain” subdirectory. When ET/PB can’t find a GUID, a new one is created for you automatically.