Losing more and more connections over time

[rmarsu]

Hi,

alt.binz 0.39.15 is losing more and more server connections over time.  I'm using easyusenet.nl with 8 parallel connections.   After pushing the "connect" button, alt.binz connects to the server and all threads are working fine.  Looking at alt.binz one day later, only one connection is good, and the other 7 of the 8 threads have lost connections and say "retrying", but that always fails.  Then push connect button to disconnect all threads, and immediately press connect button again to reconnect, and all connections are working fine again.
This happens almost every day, the number of connections lost is different each time.  Changing the number of parallel connections does not help, less threads cause alt.binz to die earlier.  Speed is around 360kb/s, server limited.

[Hecks]

These are server-side connection problems, but Alt.Binz can do some things to help on the client-side depending on how badly-behaved the server is.

What do you have set under Setup > Connection > Connect while idle, Global connection timeout, delay between retries, etc?

(in fact it would be helpful if you could just post a screenshot of Setup > Connection page)

[reisender67]

Hello,

I don't think that it is server side. I have the same problem with several servers. Other Users here have similar problems reported:

https://www.altbinz.net/forum/bugs/alt-binz-can%27t-revive-a-connection-in-some-cases-just-shows-%27connecting%27/
https://www.altbinz.net/forum/german-%28deutsch%29/verbindungsabbruch/

I have this problem only since I use Win 8.1.

Greetings
Christian

[Hecks]

Please make sure you're running the latest 0.39.15 exe - redownload it from the thread, as it's been updated a few times while keeping the same version number.

With only some users reporting these problems without any apparent common connection (perhaps Win 8.1?) it's hard to point to specific problems in Alt.Binz. If it was widespread, obviously Alt.Binz would be quite unusable for most.

So apart from the advice above (play with your Setup > Connection settings, timeouts), follow the usual trouble-shooting to try to isolate the problem: disable firewall and anti-virus temporarily, try SSL vs non-SSL, change ports, etc). When you know more, report back here!

[rmarsu]

I also don't think this is server side related:

- I'm seeing the same issue with servers from eweka.nl
- as mentioned, when I manually disconnect and immediately reconnect again, all connections are good again.  Obviously alt.binz does something different when disconnecting/connecting versus retrying to connect.

My connection settings:
max download speed 5000kb/s
delay between connection retries 10s
global connection timeout 30s
XPAT connection timeout 300s
article not found retry count 0, delay 5min
connected while idle: no (but there was no idle during that time period)

The log says for example:
[06-Sep-14 18:16:55] [T1] Connecting (easyusenet.nl)
...
[06-Sep-14 18:16:58] [T5] Connecting (easyusenet.nl)
[06-Sep-14 18:16:58] [T3] Connecting (easyusenet.nl)
...
[06-Sep-14 18:17:05] [T1] Could not connect (easyusenet.nl) 
...
[06-Sep-14 18:17:08] [T5] Could not connect (easyusenet.nl) 
[06-Sep-14 18:17:08] [T3] Could not connect (easyusenet.nl) 
...
[06-Sep-14 18:17:16] [T1] Connecting (easyusenet.nl)
...
again and again, while the other threads are working.

A more detailed error description in the log would help.

I will redownload and reinstall the alt.binz exe.

[rmarsu]

Update: downloaded latest version of 0.39.15 (in fact the binaries were different), but it did not help.  First connection (out of eight) lost after around 1 hour, two connections lost now after around two hours.

Btw, I'm running on Windows Server 2008 R2, not Win 8.x.

[rmarsu]

Update: I replaced the alt.binz v0.39.15 with an old version 0.39.12 which I used before, and the problem is gone.  Connections are stable for around one day now.  The rest of the environment and settings is the same, I only swapped the alt.binz binary (and language files).
So it seems the problem was introduced in one of the later versions of alt.binz.

[reisender67]

Hello,

I switched to Version 0.39.14 and the connections are stable.
A second "bug" are also gone. With 0.39.15 the download paused every few minutes for a few seconds. With 0.39.14 the download runs continuously.

Greetings
Christian

[rmarsu]

yes, I can confirm that.  After v0.39.12 I also tried 0.39.13 and 0.39.14, and all of them show stable connections.  When switching to 0.39.15 the connections start to die after some time.

So 0.39.14 is the last version which works, and 0.39.15 has introduced a bug.  The change log says that 0.39.15 has a change in the (SSL) connection behavior.  I'm using SSL with the Usenet servers.

[Hecks]

Great, that's narrowed it down, thanks! The final test is for one of you to try 0.39.15 with a non-SSL connection and port.

[reisender67]

Hi,

I am testing it. Will report tomorrow.

Greetings
Christian

[reisender67]

Hi,

tested 0.39.15 without SSL.
no loss of connections, no download interruption. All OK

Greetings
Christian

[peppersgc]

I was having this same problem on Win 8.1.1. I recently downgraded to Win 7, and the problem persists over 3 different usenet servers. The connections slowly die over time.

[peppersgc]

Also, to the previous posters, it is not feasible to downgrade to 0.39.14. I highly recommend that you do not do this, because most new rar sets created nowadays are in the rar5 format. Rar5 support wasn't added until 0.39.15.

[rthsw]

Hi, if someone still having this issue: Install one of the new Beta. The official Alt.Binz still contains this error on SSL-Connections, but the nonofficial BETA (e.g. 0.41.1) continues w/o disconnection.