Well, all very interesting, but here is what i know to date. I have examined my start-up menu to see what programs run on start-up, and have eliminated all but bare bones stuff. I have modified my update process’ on my software, to not download updates in the background, because it was suggested that such things steal processor time. I run no other programs (when i am having trouble) like a browser to also free up the processor. I have 2 shortcuts to guild wars 2, one is set to run normally, the other is set for -clientport 443. My thinking is, if i experience trouble, i can swap to the alternate to see if it stops the problem. I have run ping-plotter software with little success since some servers do not respond to ping-plotter queries, and can falsely look like a fail when they are operating fine. I am troubled by the vagueness of this error code. All it appears to be telling us, is that the client program running on our machine lost connection with the Arena-net server. The ping plotter program seems nothing more than a ploy by arena-net to distract us from their server being the issue. Even if I knew of a node on the greater internet that was blocking my traffic, and presumably every other gamers it came across, who will go to bat for me against that server? Arena-net seems to think it should be my ISP. My impression is that traffic load somewhere is effecting my connectivity. There are times where i can play for several hours uninterrupted. There are times where i am disconnected every 4 or 5 minutes for something approaching an hour or more, while i try everything i can think of to diagnose a cause. The fact that connectivity is a bigger issue when testing is going on, or some event is in progress, suggests an issue with Arena-net servers more that the greater internet. I find it hard to imagine that a company whose market exists largely on the internet; would not monitor the connection to the internet carefully, and match servers to the load. Just like a brick and mortar store would not build a store out in the countryside, with no roads connecting it to its best markets. This is why I have asked before and am asking now for arena-net to just pick somebody with this problem, and use your network people to actually get to the bottom of the issue, and report back to the rest of us the details of what you found, so that we might all learn how it was fixed.
By the way, the impression I have of the -clientport option was a response to some internet providers classifying gaming packets as lowest priority when traffic was peaking on their servers. Each packet that travels over the internet has a lifespan, which counts down each time it passes a node along its route. If the counter reaches zero the packet is discarded since its originator deems it worthless at that point. Additionally, packets aimed at ports which are default gaming ports can be essentially put on the back burner or simply discarded to clear up bottlenecks for packets deemed more essential. The gaming industry has tried adding port 80 and now port 443 to hopefully fool these servers into thinking their packets are not gaming packets.
Would it be a challenge to write some small diagnostic for the client that would run whenever it detects the connection loss to take a snapshot of where the fail was at that moment with a ping, and then record the results in a log to be examined by someone who knows what they are looking at?
