Troubleshooting a recurring client disconnect

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naked_eskimo
Posts: 123
Joined: Wed Jan 07, 2015 3:51 pm

Re: Troubleshooting a recurring client disconnect

Post by naked_eskimo »

It would be interesting to see what ping and/or traceroute would show on the client side during one of these disconnects. A continuous ping can be ran easy enough and MTR can do a running traceroute.
shuffleup
Posts: 18
Joined: Wed May 06, 2020 1:41 pm

Re: Troubleshooting a recurring client disconnect

Post by shuffleup »

Have performed more troubleshooting with the player. Had him switch from wireless to wired (required purchased of ethernet dongle) and he's still experiencing periodic client-side hangs, where his table shows stale action status (his shows action is on player in front of him but action has advanced to him). So if the issue still is a client-side networking issue it would have to be his cable service, which is otherwise very reliable and doesn't affect other players in the area using the same ISP.

Ken, would still like to see if you'd consider some redundancy in the client/server websocket logic to handle cases like this. From what I've read websocket doesn't provide any guarantee of message delivery. There is the inherent TCP ACK mechanism that should trigger resends at the TCP driver stack but there are a lot of holes to that mechanism, so it's really up to the client/servers to implement their own application-level delivery confirmation system. Something as simple as the client sending a response for server-initiated notifications like action changes/bets/etc, with resends/resyncs from the server and/or client when that response isn't received... If you'd rather not have that mechanism in place all the time perhaps a "Unreliable network" option in the client settings to enable this extra functionality.
zxzx10r
Posts: 51
Joined: Thu Dec 17, 2015 12:19 am

Re: Troubleshooting a recurring client disconnect

Post by zxzx10r »

Have him to open a terminal window, and do a ping 8.8.8.8 -t

and while he has issues with the poker game, have him check if the ping to 8.8.8.8 also shows latency or failure.

if it does - its not PokerMavens, its his ISP.
shuffleup
Posts: 18
Joined: Wed May 06, 2020 1:41 pm

Re: Troubleshooting a recurring client disconnect

Post by shuffleup »

zxzx10r wrote:Have him to open a terminal window, and do a ping 8.8.8.8 -t

and while he has issues with the poker game, have him check if the ping to 8.8.8.8 also shows latency or failure.

if it does - its not PokerMavens, its his ISP.
Ping times before and during a failure are consistent. Other internet activity is also unaffected, including a Zoom video chat.
shuffleup
Posts: 18
Joined: Wed May 06, 2020 1:41 pm

Re: Troubleshooting a recurring client disconnect

Post by shuffleup »

Follow-up on this issue. After determining the intermittent connection issue occurs even over ethernet I had the player connect directly to his cable modem and he was able to play a full session without the problem. We then updated the firmware on his router and the problem still occurred. He replaced his router with a different model and so far so good - one session without the issue. The router he was having the issue with is a Netgear Nighthawk R6700v3. I'm guessing it's a bug somewhere in the NAT state machine functionality, apparently unique to this type of traffic since it's a rather popular and stable router.
Kent Briggs
Site Admin
Posts: 5878
Joined: Wed Mar 19, 2008 8:47 pm

Re: Troubleshooting a recurring client disconnect

Post by Kent Briggs »

shuffleup wrote:He replaced his router with a different model and so far so good
Do you know which model specifically? Just to have at least one recommendation posted in case someone comes across the same issue later.
shuffleup
Posts: 18
Joined: Wed May 06, 2020 1:41 pm

Re: Troubleshooting a recurring client disconnect

Post by shuffleup »

Kent Briggs wrote:
shuffleup wrote:He replaced his router with a different model and so far so good
Do you know which model specifically? Just to have at least one recommendation posted in case someone comes across the same issue later.
Replacement model is a TP-Link TL-WR940N. Note other players are using similar Netgear models without issue - for example the R6700v2 instead of the R6700v3. I'm guessing it's the combination of the router and specific characteristics of the internet/connection timing yielding the bug/issue, so I wouldn't necessarily write off the R6700v3 wholesale for everyone as being a problem router for this use.
escorpius
Posts: 64
Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2020 12:47 am

Re: Troubleshooting a recurring client disconnect

Post by escorpius »

Any anticipating of providing either more robust disconnect/reconnect detection or some altered reconnect pattern for single-use session keys? I like the single-use session keys for integration and security, but the inability to refresh when there is a random disconnect without going through the process to create a new key is negatively impacting our users. I'd rather work with the system than work around it, but I'm out of options.

The pattern we see is that a user is at a table and at some point the action appears to stop. The logs indicate that their session was typically disconnected at some point minutes earlier than the action stopping. Once noticed, users logging in directly with a password can hit refresh and it reconnects them. This sometimes causes issues as well if the amount of time before they notice the action stopping exceeds, for example, their action clock. From a user experience perspective, there's no indication when the session is disconnected. Although not as good as a better mechanism to reconnect and/or something on refresh to accommodate single-use keys, even this immediate notice would allow for faster reactions that could reduce the impact.
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