Disconnect problem since patch

[Xzin]

I think the problem comes once you hit a certain number of accounts..... perhaps they set the "bar" to something realistic for an average household? That's just speculation though.... I imagine some houses have 3 or 4 kids that could potentially play at the same time in a given household. Not to mention college campuses where dozens or more could be playing on the same IP. So that seems less likely. My theory about it booting you off because you send the server too much data is what I believe is going on. No way to verify it right now but I do know that I was getting booted off much more frequently when I was running Sky and other UI mods that "talked" a lot among themselves. Eventually, Sky was updated and WoW implemented some flood controls and it cleared up. It seems that for some reason though a lot of data is being sent and that is booting people. Perhaps the /walk on /follow somehow changed the amount of position data being sent?

Keep in mind that WoW uses less than a 56k modem connection. That is 56,000 kiloBITS or around 7 KB per second per connection. No, really. It needs a good amount of upload bandwidth, which is what you run out of first...... but at 7 KB per second.... and considering most cable modems or DSL can easily push 40 KB upload per second.... you can easily carry 5 accounts at the same time without straining things too much. Keep in mind that WoW is not usually sending data like crazy.

You could run 40 accounts at the same on 2 T-1 lines. 1.5 Meg Up/Down though. Pretty sure running 5 is not going to saturate the line... but I really do think that the problem lies with Blizzard.... and it may not be UI related. How quickly they can fix it is still up in the air - as is if they even know about it..... I have only seen one or two posts and it was quickly buried under Bug: Cannot ice block twice after cold snap. Did you not read the patch notes? I mean honestly.

[Gallo]

Hmm I wonder if it IS a problem with too much data.

Tomorrow, I'm going to run some tests because I live in a condo building and there are at LEAST 2 reachable wireless networks with no password attached to them. 2 of my 5 boxes use a wireless USB network adapter, so I could probably cut my bandwidth in half.

[Xzin]

Once I get my final setup going, I will be able to test across several ISPs at the same time. I load balance across them anyway, so I am not concerned about getting disconnected (yet). Worst case, I could just buy a T-1 line and 10 distinct IP addresses. That would be plenty of bandwidth and plenty of IPs (one unique PER box) but I don't think it will come to that.

[Manaburner]

Hi all. Have a 5-box team of 4 warlocks/1 Priest.

Random disconnects were happening every 2 minutes on one of my accounts (1 warlock kept d/c'ing to login screen). After trying to switch everything out - even tried to log the account onto another computer - it turned out to be something in the WoW client - I removed the WTF folder and had to re-apply macros and keyboard bindings -VIOLA no disconnects after this!

Try deleting the WTF folder if all else fails.

[Ellay]

Thanks for that insight Manaburner and welcome to the club

[Xzin]

Once I get my new rigs operational, I will let you guys know how I fare 10 boxing with load balanced WANs. Should be interesting to see really - I am starting all 10 with completely freshly installed copies of WoW - no UI mods, nothing. So, hopefully, no disconnects. We will see.

Still waiting on the last 4 video cards to arrive and some final cables (I moved every computer to another room - I got tired of the heat / noise). It took.... A LOT of cables. Way, way more cables than I was initially prepared for I also need to setup my UIs, program my keyboards and finish my desk before I can truly play though.

P.S. USB and Dual Link DVI does not like to be extended very far without active extenders or really heavy gauge wire. USB is only designed for something like 15 ft before you need a hub. Dual Link DVI is something I was able to push to 30 feet with super heavy gauge cables - with cheaper cables it is all snow. There are extenders available but start at $200 EACH - far more than I want to spend for all 6 monitors. WTB HDMI dual link video cards. Oh well, at least PS/2 is perfectly happy being extended 50+ feet.

[Gallo]

I haven't had any problems since I tried the "break follow right before you stop" trick. I really think now that its a mechanic of the game and not net traffic.

[Bunny]

I am surprised that removing all the wtf folders worked for you. I removed it on one of my machines but I will definitely try removing them from all machines when I get home from work.
While I can play using the stop following thing when my main stops it really isn't fun. No disconnects but really bad lag, warping of the characters etc. I hope they do something about it soon.
I checked the blizz forums a few days ago where a couple of posts adressed that topic but there seemed to be no answer from blizz.
Anyways,
have fun,
Bunny

[Xzin]

Any luck, Bunny?

[Bunny]

I forgot, ops:
tonight I'll give it a shot.