iPhone version frequently loses network connection for no apparent reason

**Illusionator** · 06-10-2013, 11:54 PM

Originally Posted by bowserr

The problem has seems to have gotten worse for me with 2.010. Now it would freeze the application when the countdown appears. In v2 I would just back out from the application and go to setting and turn wifi on ad off an that would usually resume the game again or the application would freeze.

Hi, bowserr. I agree with you. Back in SE v1.7, if I hit the dreaded "Wait 45...44...43..." message on the network connection, I could often recover by quickly going into settings on the iPhone and turning off WiFi so that SE would use 3G/LTE instead without losing the game. But that trick never seems to work now. I don't know if it started with v2.000 or v2.010, but I haven't found any way to re-establish an SE game if there is some kind of network packet hiccup now.

Are you using SE on the iPhone, like I am? One other person has reported this problem on the iPad. I'm guessing that this problem where a WiFi network hiccup causes you to lose or draw the game might be specific to iOS, and might be due to the details of the specific network APIs in the Game Center on iOS. But if you are using SE on an Android phone or whatever, that would also be very useful to know. Thanks!

**Jeromy** · 06-11-2013, 12:41 AM

I will second this. I use iPad 4 and encounter this problem AT LEAST once per day. I've only been playing for about 6 weeks, but I would guess that I have lost 50 games in that time frame to the "quit timer". I don't have 3G, wifi only, but it's not the Wifi (I can minimize game and surf Internet) to come back to a timer still going. Before update, this would sometimes reconnect (1 out of 10 times) if I refreshed the connection, but now it is a guaranteed loss.

**Illusionator** · 06-11-2013, 03:12 AM

Originally Posted by Jeromy

I will second this. I use iPad 4 and encounter this problem AT LEAST once per day. I've only been playing for about 6 weeks, but I would guess that I have lost 50 games in that time frame to the "quit timer". I don't have 3G, wifi only, but it's not the Wifi (I can minimize game and surf Internet) to come back to a timer still going. Before update, this would sometimes reconnect (1 out of 10 times) if I refreshed the connection, but now it is a guaranteed loss.

Jeromy: Thanks for your note. I was starting to wonder if it was just me. But you and I and bowserr have all seen the same problem with SE on the iPhone/iPad.

**Padawan Pete** · 06-11-2013, 04:56 AM

I also have an ipad 4 and not had the issue for ages on wifi and none of my games on the new patch, my mtu is lower though. On cable you could have a higher mtu but for testing we can use 1442 until you have decided if it helps or not, then we could work out an exact value for you afterwards. With regards to the Starbucks question, generally what that kind of connection is used for is http browsing. You would not notice an mtu issue on http transfers. Yes the SE connection is sensitive, I don't know why it does not retransmit or attempt to reconnect in a more resilient way, only a programmer could tell you why SE opted for this method. Maybe to save bandwidth with thousands of players, I have no idea.

On cable you can get feedback by the way from other cable devices (eg tv) so also a good test is to unplug the tv while testing or any other cable devices if you had any. This would effectively avoid that as an issue. Cable is a bit different to other types of connection, so you have a bit more testing to do on that connectivity type. If its an rj45 to the tv or media box then you can ignore that btw, only if its old style connector.

**Illusionator** · 06-11-2013, 01:17 PM

Originally Posted by Padawan Pete

I also have an ipad 4 and not had the issue for ages on wifi and none of my games on the new patch, my mtu is lower though. On cable you could have a higher mtu but for testing we can use 1442 until you have decided if it helps or not, then we could work out an exact value for you afterwards.

Hi, Pete. Thanks again for your reply. With regard to the MTU size in my router so that SE stays happy, I reduced it from 1500 to 1442 yesterday. I'll watch to see if the problem recurs. I never would have thought of reducing the MTU size in my router for the sake of SE, thank you for mentioning it.

More generally, though, I hope the Wulven devs can come up with a way to make SE more resilient to network hiccups under iOS with WiFi, regardless of whether someone is playing SE at home or on WiFi out in the world. I haven't heard non-iOS users mention this as a problem, so it's probably specific to SE on iOS. But for iPhone/iPad on WiFi with the latest SE v2.010 release, the dreaded "Wait 45...44...43..." message occurs frequently to myself, Jeromy, and bowserr (replies on this thread) even with a strong WiFi signal, and no workaround seems to fix it -- it just becomes a "Defeat." Similarly, there is a fairly high incidence of games that end in "Draw" with SE reporting network synchronization issues, and I suspect that is a different symptom of the same underlying problem. To fix, maybe can SE can detect and retransmit network packets that don't make it through.

Anyway, thanks again!

**Jeromy** · 06-11-2013, 06:12 PM

My PC uses the same wireless, yet never gives me the "quit timer". I've yet to get the timer on my PC or Android Phone. iPad 4 only.

**Padawan Pete** · 06-13-2013, 05:22 AM

So what happened?

**PP Star 4ever** · 06-13-2013, 09:40 AM

Switch to Android

**Illusionator** · 06-13-2013, 12:56 PM

Originally Posted by Padawan Pete

So what happened?

Hi, Pete. I think you are onto something. Since switching the MTU size of my router to 1442 from the default 1500, I haven't had any lost games or network sync draws due to network glitches. It's only been a couple of days, so I'm not certain, but so far, I think the MTU size change has helped a lot. I'll re-post to this thread if the problem occurs again.

It's not a good general fix for this SE issue, because people (like me) play SE using lots of different WiFi hotspots throughout the day (not just at home) where we don't have control over the router's MTU size. So, I still think SE needs to become more robust about WiFi network hiccups. But I really appreciate this workaround, thanks so much for mentioning it. I never thought of it!