BITCO and Battlefield 4 (Xbox One)

disiza

disiza

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Gentleman, I have investigated the above issue further, extensively.

Been in touch with EA Support/Dice and they have confirmed they have no issues with servers or connectivity world wide, everything is on a status of :- All Connected, been through a troubleshooting session with a Battlefield Expert Consultant online and he is stumped as to what this issue could be but he is absolutely certain of one thing and that there is nothing on there side that is hindering the game play or network connectivity.

Once i had completed the troubleshooting session with EA I then proceeded for the rest of the afternoon from 14:30pm trying to get a game of BF4, got nothing but a black screen with a flashing cursor on the top right.

I then proceed with drastic measures changed ip(automatic /manual) ,rebooted routers and switches,rebooted and de-cached the console factory reset. Plugged a cable directly into the console etc etc ,no matter what i did, still no game!

Don't get me wrong, the start screen comes up you can open promotional boxes, change dog tags,see which friends are playing, go into the server browser check what servers you would like to play, select it and it finds the server lobby, however this is where the wheels fall off.... Black screen with a flashing cursor on the top right hand side of the screen and no matter what you do you will not get a game.

I stuck to my guns and kept on trying but no luck.

However at approximately 1 minute passed 6pm, lord behold i get a game and damn it was good,no lag or rubber banding, didn't hold my breath, thinking maybe i was lucky, i tried again and wouldn't you know, another game with no issues. I even hooked up a game with a mate in Nelspruit, again no issues and we played until about 10pm

Come 6:10am this morning before i went to work, I tried getting a game....take a guess, good old "BLACK SCREEN WITH A FLASHING CURSOR ON THE TOP RIGHT OF THE SCREEN"

BITCO ..............PLEASE SORT THIS OUT


Latest Speed Test

http://speedtest.ookla.com/result/2867238954.png

Performance on my link is not an issue it is at BITCO HQ
 
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Sounds like the port the game is running on might be classified as those used by torrents, thus being deprioritized during those time.
 
NightCrawlerNic said:
Sounds like the port the game is running on might be classified as those used by torrents, thus being prioritized during those time.
Click to expand...

You are quite right, I've had a chat to the guys at Bitco, they are now taking this issue very seriously, so much so they have gone out to buy an Xbox One and BF4 and hook it up to there network to do some testing in order to come up with a solution for this P2P intrusion.

This some how because of their packet reading protocols was or is being caused by the huge amount of P2PTorrents being downloaded during the day, business hours, not at night as advised.

This is a serious case of the minority spoiling the service for the majority.
I for one would like to keep this service, as it is now, however with Battlefield working.
 
So even if it does use the same ports as torrents, is there no way to differentiate between gaming and torrent packets?
 
SplaT said:
So even if it does use the same ports as torrents, is there no way to differentiate between gaming and torrent packets?
Click to expand...

If they are using a layer 7 firewall/packet shaper it is very possible to see the difference.
 
Tested the link this weekend with regards to BF4 and ascertained the following:

1. The game is now connecting no matter what time of day, or night, however, only if you use the server browser option.If you use the automated match making option it still doesn't enter the game and it hangs.

2.The connection is very unstable no matter what server you connect to, there is a huge amount of lag and rubberbanding.I had one of my mates based in Nelspruit join me in a squad lobby and we did a verbal comparison with regards to performance lag etc(he is running a ADSL 2mb/s uncapped, unshaped line) and no matter what lobby we were in he had smooth sailing no issues what so ever. I did a comparison on another game (Destiny) and I had no issues it was stable, consistent and smooth.

3. All other services are running smoothly streaming,P2P,normal downloads,Explora Dstv downloads etc etc

4.I have also picked up a little inconsistency with the FUP activation please see my post on MYBB for reference.
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/609204-BitCo-Consumer-Review

In general there seems to be a small improvement with regards to access however to the detriment of performance.
 
Any feedback with regards to the BF4 issue?

Michael,Garth, Richard, please advise!
 
It will end up being a simple case of bitco not being able to match the games traffic in their shaper.

So the guys at EA are randomizing ports or encrypting or both and bitco can't find a reliable l7 signature which marks all traffic relative to the game. I feel for bitco as this is not an easy problem to address.

Blame the torrent bunnies :whistle: or maybe blame EA for not giving ISP's a reliable way of identifying their games traffic :)
 
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eddief1 said:
It will end up being a simple case of bitco not being able to match the games traffic in their shaper.

So the guys at EA are randomizing ports or encrypting or both and bitco can't find a reliable l7 signature which marks all traffic relative to the game. I feel for bitco as this is not an easy problem to address.

Blame the torrent bunnies :whistle: or maybe blame EA for not giving ISP's a reliable way of identifying their games traffic :)
Click to expand...

Hi Eddie

You are almost 100% correct. If it weren't for torrents BF4 would be working fine. We've been working day and night for a couple of months now to try correct this and I can say that this is not at all easy.

We do feel we are making progress though and testing with one user has shown that BF4 is working better at least.

Garth
 
garthvs said:
Hi Eddie

You are almost 100% correct. If it weren't for torrents BF4 would be working fine. We've been working day and night for a couple of months now to try correct this and I can say that this is not at all easy.

We do feel we are making progress though and testing with one user has shown that BF4 is working better at least.

Garth
Click to expand...

Garth/Mike

Thanks for the confirmation,however where do we stand currently with this issue.
I appreciate the technical difficulty of this matter, moving forward is there a solid solution in site.

Please advise
 
Morning All,

Hoping everybody had a great weekend and also holding thumbs Bitco can find a solution to this BF4 issue.

Did some more testing this weekend, some bad news and then some more bad news...

Saturday morning 8:15am to 10:15am went relatively well, however the normal matchmaking entry point into the game is still not working at all! The server browser entry point into the game is working however it is very selective as to which servers it allows you to join. Once in a game, gaming was smooth, free of lag and rubberbanding.

Saturday Midday 12:15 pm and all is good, except for the same matchmaking issues above.Tested the game and link for about 30mins.

Saturday Afternoon 4:35 pm, the same as above.

Saturday evening, well lets just say I started and then I ended the game, battled to get a game using all avenues of matchmaking, laggy, frustrating, rubberbanding, in general really ****ty.

Sunday Morning 10am all good, except for matchmaking issue as above.

Sunday Afternoon was the big test. Everything started off well, again except for the matchmaking issue.
Started playing at about 3:30pm and all went well up until 6:00pm where everything went pear shaped, couldn't join a game servers kept on kicking me out "connection to game session has been lost" eventually i got a game after trying for an 3/4 hour then a mate of mine invited me to join one of his games.... could not join, eventually we both got into the same game ,for the record he had no issues getting a game matchmaking etc, however i battled my arse off. He unfortunately was loadsheded about 15min later.

So i carried on and what a nightmare... lag,rubberbanding, what ever could happen, happened, overall not a pleasant experience.

However(Sigh) I stuck to my guns (ex pun) and eventually some form of normality started to return at about +-8:45pm, the game was bearable and as the evening went on improvement was noticeable, however again just before 10:30pm it started its nonsense again that is when I lost the plot.

@Bitco, seriously this is beyond the point of patience, we need to sort this out ASAP. One of the reasons why I'm paying a premium for your service is because of how stable it was and how consistent it was for gaming, it was impeccable. When I first started using the service for gaming I had absolutely no ****!

For the record, all my other services that I'm using the link for, streaming, downloading etc, are all working perfectly!

If anybody else has any info or suggestions to assist please post. All assistance would be most welcome.

Im losing patience gentleman!!!
 
Tested again last night for about an hour, same **** different day!!!
 
Battlefield 4 Update - Connection Issue




Quote Originally Posted by BitCo View Post
Hi Disiza / No-Rules / cal384 & All other Avid BF4 players

I would like to confirm that we acknowledge the problem with BF4 on our network and as described by Disiza previously this is due to the significant change in ports used by EA.

I confirm our core engineers are currently working on the issue and we hope to have it resolved no later than end of next week.

We have had a slight delay this week due to our CEO being overseas on Business, while our CEO is away our core engineers cannot make any major changes to the core network as this forms part of our change control policy.

I can confirm all other services are fully operational. If any users have issues with specific services please can you log this with [email protected] so we can ensure the ports are fully optimized.

Mike
 
I wonder what hardware they are using to identify between applications?
 
At BTgames now I saw BF4 for R 199.00 I was sooooooo tempted...

If it wasn't for the bitco issues I would have taken it :o
 
BF4 Testing Feed Back

Played some BF4 this weekend and to my surprise, alot better!

Finding a game in the auto match making was a bit bumpy, but you find a game after 2 attempts without to much drama. The server browser was alot more consistent, select a server 1st try unsuccessful 2nd try successful. So yes, there seems to be a substantial improvement.

However there is downfall, gameplay is very erratic alot of split second lag incidents, rubber banding and a general break, almost a pause, like the connection doesn't know if it must transmit or receive data,a bit difficult to explain!

I suspected it was packet loss, checked using command prompt (10min test) and the xboxone application(5 tests one after the other) and both were showing 0% packet loss.

Bitco seem to be on the right track however it is still not what it use to be!!!
 
BF4 PC

Still get kicked off each server I try following a few minutes of play - PC
 
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