PS2/Comcast connection problemsFollow

Sorry about the long-windedness, I'm a teensy bit frustrated. About three weeks ago, I bought the PS2(SCPH-50001 or 50010), HDD(SCPH-20401), Network adapter, and had the cable modem installed at the same time. For about a week and a half I had no problems connecting.

Last Wednesday while trying to connect, I got a POL error message during the PlayOnline connection process. I tried many different connection configurations attempting to alleviate the problem. I got a heap of error messages(POL-0673, POL-0008, POL-0673, POL-1160, POL-0011). I finally managed to connect to FFXI and was playing for about an hour...when...

While zoning the game hung for a few minutes at the black screen where it says Downloading...The error message it eventually gave me was FFXI-4001. Reconnecting was a fruitless endeavor. I gave up playing for the night. The following day, I was able to connect without a problem.

Friday comes and I get one of the POL errors (don't know which) at POL connect screen. Well I thought, "I'll get to the bottom of this" and called POL tech support. It was nearly 6 p.m. and they were about to close, but I manage to talk to this guy for about 15 minutes. He tells me to call Comcast and establish a static DNS # then starts laughing and hangs up. Thanks POL.

After extensive surfing of POL help, and this site, I call Comcast to find out if I can get a static DNS. They say no, only dynamic. I press the issue further to find out that they do NOT block any of the ports necessary for running FFXI. So I proceed to run system utilities on PS2 to verify that no POL, FFXI, or HDD files are corrupt. They all turned out fine, so I deleted and reinstalled POL & FFXI to the HDD.

Saturday morning I get up to check progress and everything is installed. Try to boot up FFXI and ka-blammo; error message POL-1160 greets me. So I did the next logical step (sarcasm) and reformatted the HDD and reinstalled the software all over again. However, I was still not able to connect until later that day (3 hours)...I was able to play for a few hours and I hadn't even done anything different.

Sunday morning I was able to start up POL no problem. When I tried to boot FFXI however, during the connection process it would hang at connecting to Lobby Server and give me error FFXI-3100 (Could not connect to Lobby Server). Sunday evening I connected no prob.

Monday afternoon I come home from work early to fail connection again but yay it was early, I could call POL during normal business hours. After spending 30 minutes on the phone, they say call Comcast and get static DNS. Comcast says call POL or Sony because we don't do their tech support and we only have dynamic DNS.

"?*%&$# &*()%#$@" says I.

2 hours later I was able to connect until I went to bed. One note on this DNS thing: when I connect to the POL navigator, it always displays the same DNS # on connect information even though I have the game set to acquire automatically. Additionally, my friend plays in the same area as I, and when I asked him to check this DNS #, he shows the same one.

Well that brings us up to present (Tuesday, almost a week later). I connected fine upon returning from work. Upon zoning from Windurst to Sarutabaruta my download screen hangs, error message FFXI-4001 Lost Server Connection. After failing reconnect with that character, I tried with another. Funny thing is, I could connect with the other character (my fiancee's on the same POL account). I contact a GM who gives me same old shpeal. So I try to zone Windurst to Sarutabaruta; error message FFXI-4001 Lost Server Connection...now neither one will connect.

My hair is turning grey and clumps are falling out. Short of changing ISP's (I will be sorry I spent money on installation and two months of cable access) or reprogramming my PS2 with a hatchet (this is very, very appealing), does anybody know of any fixes?

P.S. Does anybody have the phone number for the Unabomber?

P.P.S. Sorry, just kidding about the Unabomber.

P.P.S. (Slightly Off Topic) What is the general opinion about satellite television? DirecTV etc...

a) I love my satellite TV. I hate cable with a passion. I dumped my cable modem and cable TV about 2 years ago and got DSL and a Satellite. The overall cost is about $15 more in total, but I've had maybe 2 problems in the past 2 years. Cable was giving me a problem every other day with the modem.

b) I don't see what DNS has to do with your issue. I think Haggan is right though. Sounds like your signal is low and when there is high traffic on the cable network, you get issues connecting.
See, what I noticed with cable is that the information comes in spurts. So say you're loading a page that has 100k of info on it. You'd get a spurt of 30k. Wait 3 seconds. A spurt of 15k. Wait 1.8 seconds. A spurt of 20k. etc. I don't think FFXI likes that.

I could be dead wrong about the spurt thing, but it's what I had when I had cable. They boosted my signal and I was more consistent for about 2 weeks and then they de-boosted it and told me I had boosted it illegally. But that's another story.

What I would suggest is trying a dial-up account. Just to see if you can connect and keep it stable. If you can, then flip the cable company off and go get DSL :P

Ping is a measure of how many of your sent and recieved packets are going through sucessfully, so it is possibly to have good ping with a weak signle transmtting on a fast connection. You can test for line errors here at http://www.dslreports.com/tools although they recently started charging for some of the tests. If you do have a weak signal, it would be just fine until load conditions peaked out or the line experianced an error.

Other things to check would be to see if there is a firmware upgrade for your modem. See if you have difficulties connecting to the internet from the modem right after the problem occurs.

It could also be some evil virus ******* scanning your modems port range, or trying to hack it without realizing it has a PS2 attached.

I concluded that POL and Comcast tech support don't know there @$$ from a hole in the ground. After 3 days of scouring the web for the solution to this problem, I think I finally found it. I bought a router.

*PRESTO*

Everything seems to work fine now AND as an added bonus, I get to log on to Allakhazam while playing. Thanks to all who gave me tips here, it provided a starting point for web searches that led me to a forum that recommended a router. Good luck to all in the tech support column, I feel like I've lost 5 years of my life.

Edited, Fri May 21 11:54:36 2004 by Slatchmo

I did try to restart the modem in this fashion. As I understand it, powercycling the modem resets the MAC adress lock. Depending on who you talk to, you should power the modem down for anywhere from 30 seconds to 3-4 hours. I tried it both ways with no satisfying results.

I think that there is a MAC address associated with your Comcast account held in their (Comcast's) server. I asked the tech support if they could reset this from their end and they responded with some useless negatory answer. By obtaining the router and cloning my computer's MAC address onto it, I think the Comcast server believes it is communicating with the original device set up on the account (my computer).

Hopefully the router being sent to you has an instruction manual. My experience was that I had to load the router software onto my computer, and during that process I had the option to clone the MAC address from the computer to the router. With any luck this will cure your connection blues.

It has been a week since I installed the router, and I haven't had any more connection issues. Good Luck!