connection to online services lost

[4days]

has anyone else had trouble with this? can join/play a game but 10 to 60mins in, i'll be disconnected with "connection to online services lost".

google and the etqw forums suggest that it might be to do with the demonware torrent-style advertising traffic, so i changed my router settings accordingly with no joy. mailed demonware to see if they could say anything about virgin as an isp and they very nicely told me that they weren't aware of any problems (but i guess they would say that ). mailed virgin as well (because i felt like wasting 15 minutes) and haven't heard anything back.

am i missing something screamingly obvious, like failing to uncheck the "disconnect whilst defusing the bomb in the last few seconds of a round when the whole team's relying on you" box?

[obsidian]

That error message doesn't tell a whole lot other than the game couldn't connect to the Internet.

Check your Internet connections and firewalls, etc. Update Punkbuster. Otherwise, try checking in your condump to see if you have any error messages that might give a bit more info on exactly what's going on.

[4days]

the relevant line from the log is:

SDNet::RefreshHotServers : failed (0)

still looking for problems at my end, i went as far as plugging a clean machine straight into the modem and got the same result. there's a workaround on the etqw site that uses tor/sockscap - but i can't justify spending any more time/effort to get a game working.

something useful that dumping the logs did make me pick up on is that it happens at around 40mins into each hour - which explains why i've been playing for a maximum of an hour and makes me think it could well be an isp thing

[4days]

the last patch changed the advertising provider (or it got bought out, whatever) and now the traffic's encrypted/in a format my ISP is happy with. finally i can play

are there any recommended uk/euro servers?

[obsidian]

Hook up with Plan B. He's over on your side and I see him playing quite often. We've played together as well, but one of us always has a pretty poor ping (though still very playable).

I find it interesting playing on European servers, some people will be talking over VOIP in English, French, German and who knows what. Very diverse. Over here, we get the odd Quebecois speaking in English with an accent or some American with a very Southern drawl.

[MKJ]

actually, on euro servers, germans speak german, french speak french, and the rest of them have the fucking courtesy to speak english