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Pooh-Bah
Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 3,650
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Re: Pokerstars keeps disconnecting
Seriously I never had this problem w/ my ISP, EVER and this is what Stars sends me:
Hello Kevin,
Thank you for your email and for allowing us to be of assistance.
The Network Status Report (NSR) you provided verifies this issue existed
with your connection and not just our site. This report runs a ping trace to
various websites around the world to test your connection in general.
Please allow us a moment to break down that report and demonstrate. The set
of traces listed below are ran to Australia, Cambridge (UK), US West and
East coasts, (US) Manx Telecom (IOM), and the Pokerstars.com Website (IOM).
With the exception of the PokerStars website, none of the other servers
belong to PokerStars nor are they related to your connection to our servers.
We use these sites to test your overall connection and path of data
communication. We have only included small snippets of each trace and you
may review the file you sent to review the entire path.
Host 210.247.216.161
[210.247.216.161], Pings=9 , Quality=100 , Lost=0
1 --- [ 76.180.160.1], Pings=10 , Quality=100 , Lost=0
2 --- [ 98.0.2.105], Pings=8 , Quality=77 , Lost=1
Host 67.195.160.76
[ 67.195.160.76], Pings=10 , Quality=100 , Lost=0
1 --- [ 76.180.160.1], Pings=10 , Quality=100 , Lost=0
...
4 --- [ 98.0.3.3], Pings=8 , Quality=77 , Lost=1
Host 128.112.132.86
[ 128.112.132.86], Pings=10 , Quality=100 , Lost=0
1 --- [ 76.180.160.1], Pings=10 , Quality=100 , Lost=0
...
3 --- [ 98.0.3.14], Pings=8 , Quality=77 , Lost=1
Host 169.232.56.224
[ 169.232.56.224], Pings=9 , Quality=100 , Lost=0
1 --- [ 76.180.160.1], Pings=9 , Quality=80 , Lost=1
Host 80.65.254.253
[ 80.65.254.253], Pings=10 , Quality=100 , Lost=0
1 --- [ 76.180.160.1], Pings=10 , Quality=100 , Lost=0
2 --- [ 98.0.2.105], Pings=8 , Quality=77 , Lost=1
Host 77.87.179.116
[ 77.87.179.116], Pings=8 , Quality=77 , Lost=1
1 --- [ 76.180.160.1], Pings=10 , Quality=100 , Lost=0
...
6 --- [ 66.109.6.153], Pings=5 , Quality=42 , Lost=2
As you can see you are dropping packets near the start of each trace.
First, it is important to understand how the Internet works. When data flows
from your computer to a remote site and vice versa, it is "routed", hence
the use of routers throughout the Internet. Each router will have several
connections and when it receives data it will choose where to send that data
based upon what it knows. Each router only knows how to reach a few specific
IP addresses, and has a "default gateway" for everyone else. Data will hop
through many routers, from 8 to 30 or more on its journey.
The complexities of routing tables are beyond the scope of what we can
explain in a short description, but there are a few basic truisms that are
easy to explain:
1. Data from you to our server does not necessarily take the same path as
data from our server back to you.
2. Today's data may not take the same path to reach its destination as
yesterday's identical connection. Routing tables change dynamically
depending on many factors.
3. Data from you to a server in a particular city may take a completely
different route than data to another server in that same city, it depends on
which ISPs the two servers use.
In short, this all boils down to one single, immutable fact: The Internet is
inherently less reliable than any other utility such as a phone company,
electric company, etc. Outages happen somewhere on the Internet each and
every minute as routers are shut down, restarted, and fail. Data is routed
around such outages as best it can be, but sometimes this takes time.
The NSR demonstrates there was a routing issue, outside our control, that
caused your data to be sent through a poor connection. This affected
PokerStars, located in the United Kingdom, and other sites around the world.
But may not have affected other sites who might locate their servers
elsewhere such as Gibraltar or Kahnawake, Quebec. That is why that
particular routing anomaly affected PokerStars but not others.
Can this happen to others? Absolutely! It can, and it does. Our servers used
to be located in Kahnawake, Quebec, and this happened to our customers there
as well. It also happens to other poker sites located around the world. That
is the nature of the Internet, as explained above.
So, will it happen again? We are sad to say, yes it will. It will happen to
you again at some point, no matter where you choose to play. Any site that
guarantees you 100% uninterrupted access is providing false information. In
the Internet industry, there is a "slang phrase" used by network
administrators called "five nines". It means that a respectable goal is
uptime of 99.999% of the time. We are pleased to say that, aside from a
monthly scheduled downtime for the deployment of new versions of the
PokerStars server, we indeed exceed "five nines" uptime for our own internal
network.
It is important to remember, however, that even if a site manages their own
"five nines" for their hardware and connection to the Internet, the
customers are at the mercy of the uptime of every single router along the
way from the customer to the server. As mentioned above, that can be 30 or
more routers, some of whom will have monstrously poorer track records. It
can also be a different set of routers depending on overall traffic shaping
anywhere along the path from you to the server. PokerStars has absolutely no
control over those networks, though we have spent a great deal of time and
money researching the up-times and stability of our own ISP providers to
minimize "out of network" down time.
In the end, the simple truth is that no site, not even PokerStars can assume
responsibility for the stability of every router in the world. Outages are
going to happen, a small few in our own network but the vast majority
outside our control. The same is true of other sites. We can and do assume
responsibility for our own network, but most disconnects from games are
caused by factors beyond our or any site's control.
We hope this helps to explain exactly what happened. Unfortunately you will
need to contact your ISP and provide them with the above information to
hopefully resolve this issue and stabilize your connection.
Please let us know any time we may be of further assistance.
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