Am I crashing because of aws connection?

[Eirynne Sieyes]

This is one of those posts where the technology is not understood well enough to compose the question. Here's my best shot:

Since SL moved to the cloud, the browser will crash perhaps 5 times in an hour, including but not just on tp. It has been suggested that our aws connectivity may be weak. Otherwise, we are on a fast cable connection with few problems in the South East USA. 

Testing speed from https://cloudharmony.com/speedtest-for-aws  we failed 3 tests (Lightsailap-northeast-2, Lightsailap-south-1, and Amazon EC2eu-central-1) I don't understand the tests.

Does anyone have idea about what may be going on? Or, how to go about finding out more about our aws connectivity? 

[MarissaOrloff]

Is the viewer crashing or disconnecting? If it is disconnecting then it could be something going on with how your ISP routes you to aws west 2. If it is crashing then you have a different problem and the switch to AWS was just a coincidence.

[Rowan Amore]

2 hours ago, Eirynne Sieyes said:

This is one of those posts where the technology is not understood well enough to compose the question. Here's my best shot:

Since SL moved to the cloud, the browser will crash perhaps 5 times in an hour, including but not just on tp. It has been suggested that our aws connectivity may be weak. Otherwise, we are on a fast cable connection with few problems in the South East USA. 

Testing speed from https://cloudharmony.com/speedtest-for-aws  we failed 3 tests (Lightsailap-northeast-2, Lightsailap-south-1, and Amazon EC2eu-central-1) I don't understand the tests.

Does anyone have idea about what may be going on? Or, how to go about finding out more about our aws connectivity? 

If you could go to Help-About at the top of your viewer then copy to clipboard and paste those specs here, it might give us a better idea of what is happening.

[Vicious Hollow]

If it's you being disconnected (and not crashing) try restarting your router. Power it down, wait a moment or two, then power it back up. If you have an antenna set up (even though you mentioned it being cable there are some set-ups that still use an antenna), once the router has restarted, restart the antenna as well. Once it's back, try logging in and see how things go from there.

If it still happens and you're on a wireless PC/Laptop, inside your home, try connecting directly to the router from the device you're using. 

[Eirynne Sieyes]

Thank you.

I don't know the difference between crashing and disconnecting. I doubt it is the ISP since other services are unaffected, including streamed content run concurrently. The screen freezes the scene and controls don't work. It stays this way maybe half a minute(?), a minute(?) before I am able to shut it down. If it matters, aws became suspect when Yavanna pod rides were crashing and a tech-savvy person on their Discord channel suggested I look into the Amazon connection. The same thing happens on two computers.

The requested content:

Firestorm 6.4.21 (64531) Jul 21 2021 21:00:53 (64bit / SSE2) (Firestorm-Releasex64) with Havok support
Release Notes

You are at 178.0, 46.6, 22.3 in Whiskey Bay located at simhost-065cab1e4e6b9fe14.agni
SLURL: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Whiskey Bay/178/47/22
(global coordinates 265,138.0, 248,623.0, 22.3)
Second Life Server 2021-08-27.563385
Release Notes

CPU: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1185G7 @ 3.00GHz (2995.2 MHz)
Memory: 16092 MB
Concurrency: 8
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit (Build 19042.1165)
Graphics Card Vendor: Intel
Graphics Card: Intel(R) Iris(R) Xe Graphics
Graphics Card Memory: 1024 MB

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 27.20.100.9778
OpenGL Version: 4.6.0 - Build 27.20.100.9778

RestrainedLove API: RLV v3.4.3 / RLVa v2.4.1.64531
libcurl Version: libcurl/7.54.1 OpenSSL/1.0.2l zlib/1.2.8 nghttp2/1.40.0
J2C Decoder Version: KDU v8.1
Audio Driver Version: FMOD Studio 2.01.09
Dullahan: 1.8.0.202011211324
  CEF: 81.3.10+gb223419+chromium-81.0.4044.138
  Chromium: 81.0.4044.138
LibVLC Version: 2.2.8
Voice Server Version: Not Connected
Settings mode: Firestorm
Viewer Skin: Firestorm (Grey)
Window size: 1527x1102 px
Font Used: Deja Vu (96 dpi)
Font Size Adjustment: 0 pt
UI Scaling: 1
Draw distance: 192 m
Bandwidth: 500 kbit/s
LOD factor: 2
Render quality: High-Ultra (6/7)
Advanced Lighting Model: Yes
Texture memory: 768 MB (1)
Disk cache: Max size 2048.0 MB (100.1% used)
Built with MSVC version 1916
Packets Lost: 1/156,015 (0.0%)
September 01 2021 12:25:26 SLT

[Rowan Amore]

14 hours ago, Eirynne Sieyes said:

This is one of those posts where the technology is not understood well enough to compose the question. Here's my best shot:

Since SL moved to the cloud, the browser will crash perhaps 5 times in an hour, including but not just on tp. It has been suggested that our aws connectivity may be weak. Otherwise, we are on a fast cable connection with few problems in the South East USA. 

Testing speed from https://cloudharmony.com/speedtest-for-aws  we failed 3 tests (Lightsailap-northeast-2, Lightsailap-south-1, and Amazon EC2eu-central-1) I don't understand the tests.

Does anyone have idea about what may be going on? Or, how to go about finding out more about our aws connectivity? 

The switch to AWS also coincided with the full release of EEP which had a.much more dramatic effect on performance .  I see you have an integrated graphics card.  Those normally don't play well with SL.  As such, you.may want to fiddle with your graphics settings.  The draw distance being the largest impact.  You can see an entire region at 128.  If you're primarily indoors, there is no need for anything above 56 or so.  I keep mine at 32 when I'm home.  Also, you may want to adjust the new water opacity.  You can now run without full water transparency AND have the ALM enabled.  It made a huge difference for me.

One other thing.  Are you using a wired internet connection or wireless?

[Eirynne Sieyes]

Always wireless, but it's a fast 400 speed. I almost always use a thin and light notebook with an integrated card. It fits my lifestyle. And it is amazing how well the 11th gen i-7 cards play. I know it's far from optimal, but it will handle two or three instances of SL when needed.

I will gladly take your suggestions. I will also increase cache to 4000 since it was maxed out.

*crosses fingers and toes that it's not aws*

[Rowan Amore]

2 minutes ago, Eirynne Sieyes said:

Always wireless, but it's a fast 400 speed. I almost always use a thin and light notebook with an integrated card. It fits my lifestyle. And it is amazing how well the 11th gen i-7 cards play. I know it's far from optimal, but it will handle two or three instances of SL when needed.

I will gladly take your suggestions. I will also increase cache to 4000 since it was maxed out.

*crosses fingers and toes that it's not aws*

Are you using the 5G option on the wireless?  Although faster, it's also less stable.  I normally run wireless also and there is much better response using the normal WiFi as opposed to the 5G.  It times as slower but the connection is more consistent which is needed with SL.  Stability over speed.

[Eirynne Sieyes]

2 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Are you using the 5G option on the wireless?  Although faster, it's also less stable.  I normally run wireless also and there is much better response using the normal WiFi as opposed to the 5G.  It times as slower but the connection is more consistent which is needed with SL.  Stability over speed.

Heck, I have no clue! But I will find out. Thank you so much Rowan.

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

13 hours ago, Eirynne Sieyes said:

The screen freezes the scene and controls don't work. It stays this way maybe half a minute(?), a minute(?) before I am able to shut it down.

Have you made sure Microsoft Security essentials is set to not monitor the Cache location, the chatlog location, and also excludes the SL processes, especially Dulluhan.exe? It sounds to me very like an over-aggressive realtime protection process is kicking in.

[Jenna Huntsman]

17 hours ago, Eirynne Sieyes said:

The screen freezes the scene and controls don't work. It stays this way maybe half a minute(?), a minute(?) before I am able to shut it down.

In my experience, this is usually GPU-driver related.

Have you checked the Intel website to see if your driver is up to date?

(Note that what Rowan said about iGPUs is true, Intel GPUs have known issues with SL)

[Eirynne Sieyes]

No Dulluhan.exe anywhere. Drivers and everything else up to date. No 5G option.

With the few changes made, so far, so good, but haven't had a chance to really test it yet.

You guys are the best; I so appreciate you.

[bigmoe Whitfield]

Dulluhan is going to be needed at some point.

[Eirynne Sieyes]

What does Dulluhan do?

Otherwise, still not much difference; lots of crashing.  I want to check my aws connection. Does anyone know how to find which aws node?/server? I am connected to? 

(I still fail some tests on this page, https://cloudharmony.com/speedtest-for-aws.)

[Rowan Amore]

28 minutes ago, Eirynne Sieyes said:

What does Dulluhan do?

Otherwise, still not much difference; lots of crashing.  I want to check my aws connection. Does anyone know how to find which aws node?/server? I am connected to? 

(I still fail some tests on this page, https://cloudharmony.com/speedtest-for-aws.)

Dulluhan shows in your computer stats posted above.  Also, SL only uses the west coast AWS so only the first 3 servers on the cloud harmony site would be relevent.  As @Jenna Huntsmansaid, this is more than likely a connectivity issue especially since you're using wifi.  Have you tried rebooting your modem?  Using a wired connection just to see how that works?  

 

Dullahan: 1.8.0.202011211324
  CEF: 81.3.10+gb223419+chromium-81.0.4044.138
  Chromium: 81.0.4044.138

 

[Jaylinbridges]

20 hours ago, Eirynne Sieyes said:

I want to check my aws connection. Does anyone know how to find which aws node?/server? I am connected to? 

This is the service you want to watch:  (none of the other amazon services apply to SL or you - they are services for other countries and regions.)

All SL accounts connect to that service In north central Oregon.  I have 50/50 up/down speed, and I connect to them as shown.

You can download tcpview from Microsoft: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/tcpview

Install, and look for the Remote Address Firestorm is connected to.  It looks like this resolved to a name.  The IP# will of course be different. You can ping the aws server if you like, although aws keeps changing the IP # so you won't learn much.  If you have an intermitent connection you will never see it. That is almost always a local problem on your end.

Edited September 4, 2021 by Jaylinbridges

[Eirynne Sieyes]

16 hours ago, Jaylinbridges said:

If you have an intermitent connection you will never see it. That is almost always a local problem on your end.

This was interesting. And Dulluhan most certainly does reside in this computer. I see the aws us-west-2... server, and many instances of it along with lots of red, green, and yellow refreshing every second.

But what is it I will never see if I have an intermittent connection?

(Also, I do reboot modem when connection seems messy.)

Edited September 5, 2021 by Eirynne Sieyes

[Jaylinbridges]

7 hours ago, Eirynne Sieyes said:

But what is it I will never see if I have an intermittent connection?

Intermittent connections are just hard to catch.  You would need to monitor continuously from your computer's IP to the end point IP.  If you have poor connections in the long path from you to the end point, those problems are normally fixed by the backbone server companies - they would not continue for months. Ping Plotter can monitor your connection, but I think AWS limits your time to ping them, then it fails.  Everytime I disconnect and reconnect I connect to a different AWS IP # at us2 west, and the ping then works for awhile, and then stops. 

If your wireless is failing, you would see a problem  before the first hop to your closest net server.  Not sure how to diagnose that, but their might be tools to actually check your wireless.  Normally it is just a small dropout and missed packets, which you can only see with your packet loss stats as they build up.  Going to full wired connections is easier.  There are raw stream data monitors you can use.  They will cause blindness if you search through them for too long. Intercepting the raw stream to/from your network is what hackers can do, well used to do, if they could tap into your phone line.  Not so easy any more.  I suppose you could be having your wireless signal hacked by a neighbor.

If you still have problems connecting with wireless turned off, then its outside your computer.  Sometimes it can be a very local connection, like a rusty or damaged connection near you.  Always a problem if your broadband wires are exposed on poles.  

If you are using an AT&T service provider, just blame them.  They seem to have the most problems keeping a solid broadband stream, especially in older areas of the US midwest.

 

Edited September 5, 2021 by Jaylinbridges

[Eirynne Sieyes]

You are so way ahead of me Jaylin, as are the other posters here. Sooooo... I called my provider (not AT&T) and had them check the connection and swap the modem. I notice no difference.

It turns out I am on 5G wifi. Even though it is 4.xyz, it is considered 5 G. I cannot change it without a new router. Yes, I know wifi is lacking, but that's how its been for years, even prior to the crashes. Unfortunately, wired is inconvenient the way this house is set up.

I give up! Fortunately, I can think of lots more awful things than crashing. I can live with it.

Thanks everybody so much for the tech support! I learned lots.

Edited September 5, 2021 by Eirynne Sieyes

[Rowan Amore]

2 hours ago, Eirynne Sieyes said:

You are so way ahead of me Jaylin, as are the other posters here. Sooooo... I called my provider (not AT&T) and had them check the connection and swap the modem. I notice no difference.

It turns out I am on 5G wifi. Even though it is 4.xyz, it is considered 5 G. I cannot change it without a new router. Yes, I know wifi is lacking, but that's how its been for years, even prior to the crashes. Unfortunately, wired is inconvenient the way this house is set up.

I give up! Fortunately, I can think of lots more awful things than crashing. I can live with it.

Thanks everybody so much for the tech support! I learned lots.

I have Spectrum and there are 2:options when I pull up the internet spots on my computer.  There is the regular connection with my name and then a 5G version.  The regular connection always shows a more consistent signal and why I switched back from using the 5G.  

[Eirynne Sieyes]

40 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

I have Spectrum and there are 2:options when I pull up the internet spots on my computer.  There is the regular connection with my name and then a 5G version.  The regular connection always shows a more consistent signal and why I switched back from using the 5G.  

I have Spectrum too. The tech told me it wouldn't go to regular connection not because of the service, but because the wireless router would only do 5G or 2G.