Occasional Zone Crashes

[Calico]

Every now and then, I will have trouble with my toons zoning or loading into a zone. It seems to occur at random and across all the toons I play. For instance, about two weeks ago, all of my toons were unable to zone into or load into Skyfire for a number of hours. I never checked for a solution, I just pressed on and didn't go to VP.
As of this Friday I am unable to load or zone into HoH. The day before, Thursday, I had been raiding HoH without a problem. All of my toons lock up and I get a server is not responding message.
I have tried running as administrator, making sure the necessary ports are open, opening my firewall completely, deleting the relevant zone files, re-downloading the zone files from other downloaded copies of EQ, even taking other -- perfect and working -- zone files from other people (thanks Noren), and I also re-downloaded all THF files.
I've run out of ideas.

Here is the dbg.txt log of the error, more or less, in its entirety.

[Mon Mar 18 00:35:14 2013]00200:Initializing character select UI.
[Mon Mar 18 00:35:14 2013]00201:Resetting game UI.
[Mon Mar 18 00:35:17 2013]00202:Zone Connect -- 0 -- Received MSG_ZONE_ADDRESS
[Mon Mar 18 00:35:17 2013]00203:Zone addr [195.5.177.21:40475] received...
[Mon Mar 18 00:35:17 2013]00204:ZONING
[Mon Mar 18 00:35:17 2013]00205:Networking: Connection Closed [0] with 0 pending bytes.
[Mon Mar 18 00:35:17 2013]00206:Networking: using port [54841].
[Mon Mar 18 00:35:17 2013]00207:Networking: Connection Established [1]
[Mon Mar 18 00:36:16 2013]01165:Item done, MSG_WEATHER_EVENT received.

[Mon Mar 18 00:36:17 2013]00208:Could not connect to 195.5.177.21:7070 [client:DisconnectReasonConnectFail,server:DisconnectReasonNone]. Negotiation count: 600.

[Mon Mar 18 00:36:17 2013]00209:Networking: Connection Closed [0] with 0 pending bytes.
[Mon Mar 18 00:36:17 2013]00210:Failed to connect to zoneserver (195.5.177.21, port 7070), result = 1, for MSG_ZONE_ADDRESS.

[Mon Mar 18 00:36:17 2013]00211:THE SERVER IS NOT RESPONDING.
[Mon Mar 18 00:36:17 2013]00212:
end of DisplayScreen

[Mon Mar 18 00:36:19 2013]00213:disconnected at C:\p4\EverQuest\live\EverQuest\EverQuest.cpp:17890 (char. select) g_world == NULL

[Mon Mar 18 00:36:19 2013]00214:Character is .

[Mon Mar 18 00:36:19 2013]00215:YOU HAVE BEEN DISCONNECTED.
[Mon Mar 18 00:36:19 2013]00216:
end of DisplayScreen

[Mon Mar 18 00:36:22 2013]00217:Attempt to send message 13716 on a void connection.
[Mon Mar 18 00:36:22 2013]00218:Cleanup 1



Sorry for the lengthy post guys. Trying to fix my issue and potentially help others.

Hope you all had a good weekend as well as a great St. Paddy's.

Calico

[Noren]

In trying to figure out why this is happening to you, I found this: http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/index ... kpaw.1298/

The jist of it is that Sony programmers designed the server to select random ports for each zone, and sometimes it selects one that is commonly used (like VoIP) for one type of web traffic. In that instance, packet filtering can take place and block connections or shape traffic.

If that's true, I can't be sure. More interesting to me is that if it's true, we still don't know if it's your router or your ISP having issues with port 7070.

Quickest way to find out is to skip the router and go directly to your modem.
Slowest way is to wait for a server reboot and hope for a better port on HoH (if that's the cause). That's also assuming it will get a new port - I don't actually know if it behaves that way, and how it applies to static/dynamic zones.

[Vaion]

Noren is correct in when a zone refreshes it will get a new port.

Things you could do to fix this:
1) In your router Open all ports from 7000-7200 (these are the ones mainly used for EQ zones)
2) Bypass your router and connect straight to modem (not always an option for some players)

Outside of that, there isnt much that can be done since EQEmu randomly assigns the ports and we have little to no control over them.

[Calico]

Okay. I run Verizon FiOS. FiOS service is run off of one unit that is both a modem and a router. Off of that router I am running my own router to split internet access to both my computer and an xbox. I made sure on both the router I am using and the FiOS provided modem/router that ports 7000-7200 are open.
So yeah, no idea. I guess something along the line hates port 7070.