Factorio Forums

EDIT: Solution was to get new cable modem.

When my friends and I are playing on my headless server my outbound internet will (randomly?) once every 2 - 4 hours of continuous play stop working requiring me to reboot the cable modem.
We are just doing random stuff, we haven't noticed any pattern from an action in game to my internet going out. No one is connecting/disconnecting from server at the time.

I have only experienced this behavior with version Factorio .15.x. I think it has happened about 8 times so far over span of a week.
I have hosted other game servers such as ARK without any issues.
Never experienced this behavior when hosting Factorio .13, but that was back before .14 was out. (have not played with 0.14)
I mention outbound only as issue, because when it happens I can still hear everyone yelling at me on discord voip that the server isn't working anymore but I cannot respond back.
All of my internet services are affected when it happens. TV streaming, google searches ect... are not available.
Has happened with 2 - 4 remote assistant worker robot clients connected.
I have no mods installed.
All of my hardware equipment (modem, router) appear like they are working fine without any error indicators that I would normally see with the rare issue from ISP.
I suspect that the hardware having issue is a node outside my network and rebooting cable modem forces connection to re-establish.
I continue to play without issue within my own LAN.

Setup:
Headless Dedicated Server PC on my LAN. (windows 7 64bit)
My Client PC on my LAN . (windows 10 64bit)
Router: ASUS RT-AC87U Firmware: 3.0.0.4.380_7378 (latest)
Cable modem: netgear CMD31T
Remote clients are all windows 10 I think.

hola!

Sounds like its an ISP issue or the internal chip of router / modem is getting overloaded.
The other option would be that the modem / router thinks he's under a DoS and disconnects all internet acces due to safety features.
Considering discord keeps running, the connection is not completely gone. This makes it a bit tricky, unless it disconnects after a bit too? (without resetting ofcourse, this would be an obvious disconnect)

i do not know how the configuration on the modem and router is, so will try to do some suggestions.

1. download pingplotter or use a constant ping command for monitoring (ping www.google.com -t)
1.a. pingplotter will do ping and trace route simultaneously to see where the data stops, this would be easier for troubleshooting purposes
2. turn on DMZ towards the router from modem (recommended for testing only, unless you know how to secure your network properly)
3. turn on DMZ towards server from router (recommended for testing only, unless you know how to secure your server properly)
--- this will turn off any security features from and towards the server
4. try a different port to host the server on (like with hosting multiples, you can assign a different port with the --server -port command)
5. You may want to monitor your own external IP address (ISP's using DHCP instead of dedicated ip may cause this and this may simply be an update to your lease giving you a different ip) (i work at an ISP myself, this usually happens at / around a fixed time of the day)
6. this may sound weird, but sometimes its electric interference causing resyncs. Check your cables for damage or try another (temporary) cable in the route towards your server (say replace the cable between route and modem, or the cable between modem and IS/RA, don't know proper definition in english)
6.a. remove disturbers, such as dimmable lights and electricity cables, from network cables.

Gracias Caennanu for the suggestions.

Discord will notice there is a problem and disconnect after about 30-60 seconds and start trying to reconnect, but I hear everyone talking about having lost connection to server until then.
Factorio has started showing messages about them being disconnected about same time, probably similar timeout thresholds.

The "Enable DoS protection" feature in the router is turned off and modem doesn't appear to have any configurable options.
I do have the routers built in TrendMicro AiProtection turned on which could cause issues if it is falsely detecting something. I turned on notifications (must have got turned off last firmware update) so hopefully it will let me know if its stopping something during that time.
For router setup I haven't done anything fancy, I just have Factorio's default port 34197 forwarded to server.

I got pingplotter ready for next play session. Based on what it captures hopefully it will give me an idea on which things to try next.

I'll report back when I have something.

I was able to capture some data with pingplotter and found that hop 1, my router responded fine, but hop 2, [10.156.0.1] would not respond during the issue.
I think that hop would be my cable modem?
Maybe it is as you said, it is getting overwhelmed with # of packets and locking up.
I was able to still view its status web page using its internal address to view modem stats though (192.168.100.1) and it showed signals still ok.

I ordered new one, since it looks like it might be worth upgrading modem anyway as my ISP doesn't recommend my modem for my tier internet anymore, not enough channels (4x4).
Getting a Zoom 16x4 Cable Modem, 686 Mbps DOCSIS 3.0, Model 5370.

I will post back with results. It should arrive Saturday.

Can't wait to see if a new modem resolved your issues.
The 10. ip you submitted seems to be a non existant one, so is probably your external ip address.
which would in turn mean your modem is faulty.

Keeping my fingers crossed for ya.

Issue appears to be solved.

Had a fairly long multiplayer session last night and no one got disconnected.

I believe 10.156.0.1 is the cable modem gateway. The new modem has more info available. I can see its external IP and it is in same subnet.

While playing I still rarely see ping packets get dropped on that gateway IP, so I think whatever error condition happens the old modem couldn't handle it and locked up and the new one handles it.