CCP_Explorer

Just a quick confirmation that we’ve had in the past issues with older Virgin Media hubs. Those issues should be known to Virgin Media and be resolved by now; and also would not explain these synchronous disconnects we see from the UK. Also a quick confirmation that customers of other ISPs in the UK are not complaining to us, only Virgin Media UK customers.

Indeed; I find it a bit curious that Virgin Media doesn’t peer directly with Cloudflare in the UK (as I know other UK-based ISPs do) but there could be reasons. What I do find curious is to bounce the traffic to Amsterdam and hand it there over to Telia, instead of handing it over to Telia in the UK (as Telia peers with Cloudflare both in the UK and in the Netherlands).

Per my reply above:

While it is very curious to send all-UK network traffic to Amsterdam then it is not necessarily the root cause of the issue. But to even begin trying to diagnose a cryptic issue...

EVE Online is very frugal when it comes to bandwidth requirements but can be sensitive to packet loss, latency spikes, over-capacity spikes, and BGP flapping. It needs a stable TCP/IP connection, which is why we have always invested in good networking equipment and partner with companies such as Cloudflare.

EDIT: Virgin Media UK did provide such a stable TCP/IP connection until 22 o’clock on 23 February

...

That 213.46.182.162 address still puzzles us here at CCP. It’s in Dutch range for Liberty Global (Virgin Media UK’s owner) and VodafoneZiggo (also owned by Liberty Global) as a part of ASN 6830. It looks like Virgin Media UK is sending the traffic on their own backbone to Amsterdam and handing the traffic off there to Telia (twelve99.net) that then peers with Cloudflare. That’s how the traffic ends up in Cloudflare’s Amsterdam PoP (which then has to send the traffic back to...

Currently Virgin Media UK is not responding on the email thread we have with them (or had with them…) so I don’t have any updates to share with you.

Please file tickets with Virgin Media UK referencing their internal fault ticket F009669229 (or update your existing tickets) to let them know that you are impacted.

I’ve been reading the tickets you have sent us here at CCP and it’s same pattern in them all: Virgin Media UK is sending your TQ network traffic to Amsterdam – and CCP has no control over that. I even saw one ticket where an EVE player said they lived “within 30 miles of your TQ data center” and yet the trace route was very clearly sending the traffic to Amsterdam.

We advertise through DNS+BGP that network traffic should be sent via Cloudflare, which has 3 locations in the UK: Edinburgh, Manchester, London. ISPs should either have direct peering with Cloudflare or hand over the traffic as quickly as possible, somewhere in the UK in this case.

Wh...

Your connection should directly to Cloudflare’s colo in Manchester (and from there on Cloudflare’s backbone to TQ in London); not to Amsterdam as this trace route shows. This is at least one of the things Virgin Media needs to fix.

Not all hops respond all the time; it’s very difficult to actually catch the issues happening in the trace route results.

Indeed, the cause for this is what Virgin Media UK’s network administrators need to find. This is not happening to other players.

No; the patch on the 23rd was almost exclusively content; this weekend’s event and localization fixes.

Indeed, this issue resolves around BGP routing and peering/cross-connects and how network traffic that should be all-UK ends up in Amsterdam. This is way above what regular ISP tech support can handle. When you contact Virgin Media, please reference their internal F009669229 ticket.

Yep, three spikes in a row. Or one spike with three “sub-spikes”.

Yep, must saw that 19:50 disconnect spike in metrics.

Affected Virgin Media UK EVE players: Has your route to TQ changed? Is it no longer being bounced to Amsterdam but rather being handed off in Edinburgh, London, or Manchester?

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If you want, please start a new thread and I can post details on the difference in what we are seeing in metrics and logs.

Are you in the UK and is Virgin Media UK your ISP? If so, head over to this thread: ...

We are keeping this thread 20220225 - Connection Issues (UK) updated on the Virgin Media UK disconnect issues.

We continue to keep this thread 20220225 - Connection Issues (UK) updated on the Virgin Media UK disconnect issues.

This thread is specifically for ongoing disconnect issues in the UK (that started at 22 o’clock on 23 February). If you are playing from another country or the issue you have is that you are unable to connect at all to begin with, please send a technical support ticket to CCP’s Customer Support.

I’m hoping that they get back to all of you on your tickets that you sent them.