Conntection Interrupted

[WiseDragon]

I'm having this same issue.

I started by submitting a ticket with the help desk, but was eventually told it was related to Port 21, Anti-virus, or something else..

I confirmed with my ISP that Port 21 is not blocked.
I've logged out of my account, closed the game, reopened it, and logged back in.
Tried repeating that process after changing my password.
I verified that the TRS22.exe file isn't being blocked by Windows Defender.
I've checked that the Firewall in windows isn't blocking that file as well.
Lastly, I tried connecting to the hotspot on my phone with no luck..

Anyone got any other ideas? This is pretty frustrating at this point.

 

[Forester1]

Could it be related to posts #12, #13, and #14 in this thread? Downloading large assets without an FCT?

 

[JCitron]

I'm having this same issue.

I started by submitting a ticket with the help desk, but was eventually told it was related to Port 21, Anti-virus, or something else..

I confirmed with my ISP that Port 21 is not blocked.
I've logged out of my account, closed the game, reopened it, and logged back in.
Tried repeating that process after changing my password.
I verified that the TRS22.exe file isn't being blocked by Windows Defender.
I've checked that the Firewall in windows isn't blocking that file as well.
Lastly, I tried connecting to the hotspot on my phone with no luck..

Anyone got any other ideas? This is pretty frustrating at this point.

Are you using a wireless connection? Wireless connections can have difficulties with large files and will sometimes timeout causing the download to fail. If you can connect directly to your router (modem) using an ethernet cable, that will definitely work fine.

Some ISPs don't play nice such as T-Mobile and no matter what you do it won't work.

 

[86RZS]

Should i have to wait again but this happened to me before...

 

[WiseDragon]

Are you using a wireless connection? Wireless connections can have difficulties with large files and will sometimes timeout causing the download to fail. If you can connect directly to your router (modem) using an ethernet cable, that will definitely work fine.

Some ISPs don't play nice such as T-Mobile and no matter what you do it won't work.

This is the only option I haven't tried. I will attempt it and report back. Thanks!

 

[WiseDragon]

Are you using a wireless connection? Wireless connections can have difficulties with large files and will sometimes timeout causing the download to fail. If you can connect directly to your router (modem) using an ethernet cable, that will definitely work fine.

Some ISPs don't play nice such as T-Mobile and no matter what you do it won't work.

This worked!

 

[livingsteam]

I would say that this is pointing to a local issue with your wifi quality and not some inherent quality of wifi.
If someone wants to present some evidence that TCP using error correction over wifi is inherently flawed, I'd love to see that. And if connecting by FTP , FTP uses TCP just because of this error correction.

So not trying to disagree, trying to point out that the OP should investigate a potential problem in your wifi network.

In practice one of the main issues with wifi is people stuck on the 2.4 Ghz network. Many of your wifi cameras and the plethora of other stuff we connect to our routers is on 2.4Ghz. 5Ghz is almost always relatively uncluttered. So first of all make sure you're connecting to your 5Ghz network.

The next issue is densely populated areas with too many wifi routers. Yes new routers have enough channels to avoid this mostly, but most people don't have a new router.

Here's a tool to analyze your wifi network, see if your neighbors are stepping on your signal or something https://vremsoftwaredevelopment.github.io/WiFiAnalyzer/

I regularly download multi-gigabyte files over wifi no problem, though they are typically coming from AWS or Dropbox and might be more reliable.

 

[JCitron]

though they are typically coming from AWS

FYI: The Trainz DLS is hosted on an AWS server.

 

[livingsteam]

Hmmm, interesting. My experience with AWS has been really good, both on personal and enterprise accounts. I help run a 1000-student security course online, so we have all 1000 hitting AWS to download our VM image, which is 10-12GB. Our of those 1000, we get maybe two or three in China who complain about slow downloads (it's probably their VPN in part).

It's possible that while the content is hosted on AWS, N3V runs a local server that does authentication or something that interferes with the proper downloading of assets. That's total speculation, but AWS S3 just isn't this unreliable.

I still can't get Geneva Sub Division, Canadian Rocky Mountains Ottertail..., and Healesville 1910s to finish downloading. They will start, chug away and then fail. Or just fail immediately.

 

[JCitron]

Hmmm, interesting. My experience with AWS has been really good, both on personal and enterprise accounts. I help run a 1000-student security course online, so we have all 1000 hitting AWS to download our VM image, which is 10-12GB. Our of those 1000, we get maybe two or three in China who complain about slow downloads (it's probably their VPN in part).

It's possible that while the content is hosted on AWS, N3V runs a local server that does authentication or something that interferes with the proper downloading of assets. That's total speculation, but AWS S3 just isn't this unreliable.

I still can't get Geneva Sub Division, Canadian Rocky Mountains Ottertail..., and Healesville 1910s to finish downloading. They will start, chug away and then fail. Or just fail immediately.

Exclude TRS22.exe and your TRS22 data-folder from real-time scanning. It could be your antivirus program is interrupting the downloads. N3V packages content as .tzarc files and antivirus programs have a field day with the content and the program. The packages and your content are decompressed at runtime and this can also impact your program performance.

 

[livingsteam]

JCitron, forgive me in advance,

It could be your antivirus program is interrupting the downloads. N3V packages content as .tzarc files and antivirus programs have a field day with the content and the program.

I like you, don't misunderstand me. I'm new here, you're a long time respected and super prolific/helpful person here. I don't want to piss anyone off, especially you.

Maybe it's a pet peeve, I get a little rankled when people make random claims about software that are both unsupported and likely not at all true.

Can you be more specific? If an anti-virus program takes action, it doesn't do that silently. And even if it did there are logs to check.

There's the Protection History window, as you can see nothing has been blocked by my Windows Security, and that's the only virus program active.
I also am not letting Windows decide which apps I run, so that's not a factor.

Further, I took a random tzarc file and ran it by VirusTotal, the gold standard for assessing file signatures. It's clean.

VirusTotal

VirusTotal

www.virustotal.com

So what do you mean specifically by "antivirus programs have a field day"?

These Trainz downloads are not executable files, they don't pose the threat that you're imagining would set off a virus checker. At least a good one like Windows built-in virus checking.

I can't speak for Avast and other random bloat/mal/adware that people run on their systems, it's totally unnecessary. If you really want to worry, and don't trust Windows alone, then download Malwarebytes and run a free scan periodically, or pay for a sub there, it's about the only virus protection worth paying for IMO.

 

[livingsteam]

More info, a question, are we sure it's AWS that Trainz/Auran/N3V hosts on?

I did a Wireshark capture for a very short time while I recreated the issue where I get an error trying to download a paid route. Found I was getting RST packets from a Microsoft IP that looks like it's a data center.

This was not very scientific, ideally I'd shut down all my other traffic and just record the Trainz traffic, as best as I can.

But I found this:

This is the Wireshark output:

I looked at the other IP that sent a RST:

That also says "data center/web hosting/transit" so could be a place where files are stored.

Really this is shooting in the dark, I'll keep looking at the PCAP file but if anyone knows specifically which domain or IP these files are hosted on, please let me know thanks.

And to be clear, I don't think this is the DLS, I thought this would be coming from firstclass.auran.com? But I

 

[livingsteam]

OK probably just talking to myself here LOL I did more research on this.

First of all, I can recreate this error, where it says there's a .chump file "damaged or wrong format."

I found the file and ran it through VirusTotal, there's nothing setting off any alarm bells with 64 virus scanning services being represented there.

Not sure if this works to see the actual report pictured below: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file...c959e3ed4524a99193d9babe9d906469a16?nocache=1

Further I ran Sniffnet and recreated the problem I was able to isolate the IP address/domain that Trainz 2022PE is connecting to:

This again is the bunnyinfra.net domain that Trainz is using to host their content.

You can see in Wireshark where this domain is sending reset (RST) packets, I don't know for sure this is the problem but it could be.

Generally speaking there's a lot of error correction going on, but TCP has error correction that can handle it, I would assume the Trainz server is giving up at some point.

So, it's easy to blame the Internet, viruses, ISPs, etc, but none of that seems to pan out here, it looks like a server issue.

I guess I'll submit a support ticket, unless anyone has any other ideas?

Thanks.

 

[JCitron]

If it's a server issue, why is it most people have no issue with that domain or server? What's in between their server and your PC?

The connection reset is probably related to a timeout received by the server.

 

[livingsteam]

Well a couple things.

It's been claimed here that the Trainz files are on AWS, I don't think bunnyinfra.net is a N3V domian pointing at AWS.

The domain uses nameservers called ns[1-4].bunnydns.com, I think this is the DNS server owned by the data center that N3V uses.

Now, let's start out simple. Clearly Trainz is not giving us public access to these files. It's not just a simple matter of downloading a file.

There's a matter of authentication. So I'm just speculating here, but there could be a bug in the authentication server. There would be some process running elsewhere on the Trainz network, possibly in-house, that "approves" the connections to download payware.

Just theorizing here it might recheck authentication let's say every 30 seconds. Maybe it's failing.

You asked, what's in between the server and my PC. That's one example of what that could possibly be, just speculation.

I have no idea what design/implementation decisions N3V has made over the years, it could be a total cluster**** of legacy code for all we know.

The other possibility is that N3V should get their butts back to AWS, but they're probably getting such a good deal on hosting from this discount cloud service provide, we're suffering from it.

If you look at bunnyinfra.net:

The domain is owned by Datacamp Limited and/or Hetzner online.

DataCamp Limited – AS60068 | Delivering internet traffic

DataCamp is your dedicated server and content delivery network provider. Accelerate your website and take advantage of our secure and robust network.

www.datacamp.co.uk

Dedicated Server, Cloud, Storage & Hosting

Your partner for system-wide hosting, from cloud to dedicated servers. We deploy the latest tech at the best price in minutes.

www.hetzner.com

So it could just be that their choice of webhosts is the problem.

(and yes perhaps under the hood these companies are just using AWS

 

[livingsteam]

Honestly JCitron, if I understand you, you are or were in IT. I don't know how much exposure you got to DevOps in that role. So you probably already know all this, I'm posting for people in general.

There's a great description of how Internet servers have changed over time, it's called "Pets vs. Cattle" In the old days we stood up servers and meticulously maintained them, caring for their every need. They were like our pets, if a server got sick we'd do anything to save it. Fast forward a bit and you get virtualization, then containerization. Now we're in the world of "cattle."

The reason I bring this up, unless N3V is about 20 years behind the times, their infrastructure is not a "Pet." Everything is an image ready to be deployed when needed, if one instance of the theoretical login/authentication server from above goes haywire, you just kill it and launch another.

Now consider what must be the complexity of N3Vs systems. Add to that a good dose of the usual technical debt. Now factor in legacy code written by someone who didn't document it and then left the company. There could be a lot of explanations for what's happening. But to suggest that I can't point a finger at N3V, and not suggest further troubleshooting, I don't know.

And fwiw it's worth, everyone, I see repeatedly people are told their ISP is blocking port 21. First, I'm not gonna say that never happens, but that's highly unlikely for an ISP to do this. Let's hope things are really done on Port 22, sftp's port, which is brought up in this post. I mean, I guess there's nothing dangerous about our Trainz content that they really need a secure connection, but it's very likely it's sftp and port 22 in use. If it really is FTP, and people do want to check with their ISP, then they need to check port 20 as well. FTP uses both ports.

 

[JCitron]

I used to take care of my pets. ;-) In the company I worked for as a network admin, I supported 15 fileservers in addition to multiple engineering servers including Sun servers and workstations. We never had an outage while on my watch except for one time due to an odd hardware failure caused by the interlocks on the chassis that shut the server down and it wouldn't power up at all.

There are some ISPs that block those ports. T-Mobile is one of them and they wreak havoc with the Trainz server connections. For anyone using T-Mobile, they can't download at all.

Just for kicks, have you tried a wired connection?

Trainz files are quite large and many wireless connections don't work with large files and end up disconnecting because they time-out. This is what's causing the RST. This has something to do with the connection to the tower or the channel between the client and the router.

 

[livingsteam]

(Yes I have tried a wired connection, never mentioned Wi-Fi)

OK all you people who want to tell me this is a network issue on my end.

N3V replied to my question about this by saying it's likely a problem with the Trainz installation.

So I would respectfully suggest that people whose first line of defense is to blame a user's virus scanner, ISP, wifi, etc, just consider that maybe there could actually be something wrong on the Trainz end of things.

I'll post the response here in case it helps someone in the future.

Thanks to N3V for giving me some concrete steps to follow in the first response!

Good Afternoon livingsteam
It sounds like there may be some corrupt downloaded files in the cache of your Trainz installation which may be causing this. Could you please try following these steps to manually clear the cache:
1) Double click on your Trainz icon
2) Click on Trainz Settings
3) Go to the 'Install' tab
4) Make a note of the location of your LocalData folder in this window
5) Close all Trainz windows
6) Open File Explorer (or My Computer, or equivalent)
7) Go to the location of your LocalData folder
8) In your LocalData folder, delete the file named 'assets.tdx'
9) Now open the folder named 'cache'
10) Delete the files named 'assets.bku' and 'backup.tdx'
11) Open the folder named 'internet', within the 'cache' folder
12) Select all of the files in the 'internet' folder, and then delete these files
13) Go back to the 'cache' folder, then in this folder open the folder named 'temp'
14) Within the 'temp' folder, delete all files and folders
15) Close explorer
16) Now try starting Trainz again, and then try installing the DLC packs again.

Please let us know if you still see this issue.

 

[JCitron]

(Yes I have tried a wired connection, never mentioned Wi-Fi)

OK all you people who want to tell me this is a network issue on my end.

N3V replied to my question about this by saying it's likely a problem with the Trainz installation.

So I would respectfully suggest that people whose first line of defense is to blame a user's virus scanner, ISP, wifi, etc, just consider that maybe there could actually be something wrong on the Trainz end of things.

I'll post the response here in case it helps someone in the future.

Thanks to N3V for giving me some concrete steps to follow in the first response!

That's weird...

Try installing again and see what happens. We blame the ISP and user setup because 99.999999999% of the time it is the user setup, usually because they're using a tethered connection to a phone, their ISP because they use crappy T-Mobile or are out in the boonies with some unknown carrier that only has 2mb download and 20mb upload, or more recently VPN software that's traversing the globe through multiple connections.