Internet connection dies when connecting to server

[gdubya]

Hi all,

I bought Altitude a couple of months ago and have been playing it quite happily up until a couple of weeks ago. For some strange reason whenever I try to update the server list my internet connection seems to die completely. By this I mean that the server list stops updating (about 50% of the servers are marked as "unresponsive"), I am unable to connect to any of the servers in the list (the "connecting" dialog opens but progresses no further), and if I immediately quit from Altitude I am unable to load any web sites for a few seconds. I've tried this on several PCs in my house and they all suffer the same problem. I am able to retrieve server lists and play other games (e.g. Team Fortress 2) without any problems. I am able to play Altitude when I connect through a different network (e.g. on my laptop during lunch at work), so I presume it's something to do with my router configuration, however it was working fine for several weeks without any problems and I haven't changed any of my router settings lately.

Does anyone have any ideas what the problem might be?

Thanks for the help and a great game (when it worked)!

[lamster]

Try this:

Open ~Altitude/config/options.xml in a text editor

On the line starting with <networkOptions, change:

maxConcurrentServerRequest="25" to maxConcurrentServerRequest="5"

That will reduce the server list retrieval speed, which should prevent your router from triggering "Denial of Service" protection.

[gdubya]

Thanks! That did the trick! I didn't think my router was that clever So did that setting change in one of the December updates or something, because as said it was working fine about a month ago...

[lamster]

It hasn't changed for a while, but server list retrieval rates depend on local network conditions and those of the servers on the list. The next patch will use a slightly different strategy to rate-limit server list packets, hopefully this will help us avoid the "router denial of service trigger" we've run into -- only a few routers exhibit this behavior so it's been hard for us to nail down exactly what was going on