not sure if anyone thought of this....

[Atlantis419]

Well before anything, idk if this will help or not but it shouldn't hurt. While most people believe this is on sega's side and it is very likely, we don't know for sure. With tracerts appearing to not even leave the cities nor pings for that matter I figured why not call up my isp (twc) get them to put me through to their highest level tech support and inform them and send them copies of the tracerts and pings. So that's exactly what I did, the support informed me that he would send the technicians the tracert copies and let them know and that they work directly with level 3 (backbone for both Comcast and twc) and would look into this matter. He also told me I should inform the rest of the community that are having these issues to call in and let their isp's know because it could help to get things expedited. So this is me letting everyone know.

[Edson Drake]

I was thinking about doing the same. Let us know how that goes on your side.

[GHNeko]

I'm doing it right now with Cox. I'll let you guys know how it plays out.

[Shinamori]

I'll give it a whirl.

[Sychosis]

I e-mailed my ISP 2 days ago. I should have a response by midnight. I did notice yesterday that my connection timed out right after my router for a little while, so maybe someone started poking around. I'm not going to hold my breath until I get on the phone and speak to a real technician tomorrow. Even then I don't expect them to do anything if DDoS traffic is still flowing in great enough numbers.

[nanamin]

I would do this, but my Swedish knowledge is quite limited, so I'll wait until I can find someone that can help.

[EspeonageTieler]

i contacted mine and they jsut told me that it was only available for people in japan

[Daiyousei]

i contacted mine and they jsut told me that it was only available for people in japan

You probably got someone who can't be bothered. I've had quite a bad customer service experience with one company where over several support tickets they gave it to a different person, as a result the new guy doesn't know what the previous guy did and they gave responces completely all over the place. Tried calling them and I just get forwarded back and forth, even once got forwarded back to the same person that forwarded me to someone else who then forwarded me back.

[GHNeko]

Okay SO thanks to the marvelous tech support at Cox, I have a pretty solid grasp of what the hell the issue is.

MORE TO COME @ 1445 -0500 EST.

brb chores.

[nanamin]

Teaser ><

[GHNeko]

Ok.

SO.

Essentially.

It's nothing that we don't know, or at least, we're not aware of in a general sense. This is more of a detailed...explanation? Conversation? Reason? Conjecture? Whatever; in regards to the idea of Backend Provider being the cause of these issues.

Nothing was officially confirmed per-say, but I explained the situation of what's going on right now. I explained that I did tracerts and pings, and used tunneling and VPN programs. I explained my results and the results that other people among the forum got.


And the response was this.


More than likely, the connections to the servers are being blacklisted automatically by companies/services of whom are tasked with monitoring the status of servers around the world.

The way it works is that the backend providers all subscribe to services that monitor server status (think the adblock subscription list when you first install the addon). The services will monitor shit. When a server is deemed a threat/problem either by DDOS, Infection, Spam issues, Hacking, etc, then the service will blacklist the server and update it's list of which the backend providers will automatically block connections to that server.

According to highest level tech support of Cox (which apparently is a Level 2 Backend provider itself and provides a lot of infrastructure itself), this is most likely what happened. The DDOS got Sega's servers blacklisted by the server-monitoring service and as such, the backend providers who subscribe to this service automatically blocked connections. ISPs who rely on the backend providers are inherently affected by this.

I asked if Sega can request for these blocks to happen and I didn't get a clear answer, but I'm lead to believe that he's implying that it all happened automatically. Sega, however, can manually get itself de-listed early if it takes the initiative.

However, if Sega doesn't do such a thing, the blacklist will remain until the server-monitoring service discerns that Sega's servers are no longer an issue, meaning, the automated service has to say that, "Okay. Looks like the coast is clear. Kgo."

How long that will take, Cox couldn't say because the process is automated. But if Sega did do their job, then over the course of time we should see ourselves able to play once again as the service will stop blacklisting Sega's servers and that would be reflected by our ISPs.

(This also leads me to believe that Verizon is not legit, and is shit because it's subscribed to a blacklisting service that sucks at detection. That or is actually IS legit, and it updated its info mad fast and shit. I personally believe the prior over the latter.)



tl;dr - Cox says this is more than likely a backend provider issue in the sense that the server-monitoring service has automatically blacklisted Sega's servers due to DDOS nonsense and that everything will go back to normal whenever the service detects that the DDOS nonsense is no longer a thing. When that is, however, cannot be determined at this time. Sega can get it fixed early if they so please, but as far as the conversation went, it was implied that Sega did not / cannot actually trigger the blacklist themselves.


Take this as you will guys.

Me?

I'm like now 99% sure its not an IP block and we're just victims of automation and SegaC being SegaC.

EDIT: Cox did mention using a website like Safehaus.org in order to find out if the servers are indeed blacklisted, but that's not something us mere mortals can access freely, unfortunately. So I have nothing concrete to offer outside of "he-said she-said" with the highest level tech support at Cox.

[Sychosis]

Ah, sweet vindication.

[Shinji Kazuya]

Neko you just got my hopes up again, thank you! :3

[nanamin]

Nice to hear this! Thanks for making the effort and contacting your ISP.

[GHNeko]

Ah, sweet vindication.


yo.

son.

home slice.

my nigga.

TELL ME ABOUT IT.

I most deff was having a sensible_chuckle.gif (http://i.imgur.com/jmN8Mul.gif) after I finished the conversation.


Neko you just got my hopes up again, thank you! :3

No problem. Again, there is nothing official or concrete. It's still conjecture. So don't get them up too high. :V


Nice to hear this! Thanks for making the effort and contacting your ISP.

i luv muh pso2 brah. dont even sweat it.

[ZooL]

Let me point out the one thing that makes no sense at all about the COX guys story:

PSO2.jp was reachable until the last maintenance. From that very moment most of us could not access it. And the game server aswell. So if this was automated, this should not happen for every provider at the same time and it would be a very big coincident that it happens exactly after the maintenence.
It could really be that sega requested the block themself. In this case it might not go away until sega gets active again. But this is a bit unlikely. I think they will work on this until all japanese players have no more problems and then just stop. Because from this point on it is not worth their time and money to investigate anymore. If this could really happen and what this means is still to be seen. But i dont believe this was an automated thing.

[btw-Niji]

Yep, as soon as the game servers came back online, I could not connect to pso2.jp

I remember checking pso2.jp ~30 mins before that for the status report and the page loaded fine.

Strange, huh?

[nanamin]

Let me point out the one thing that makes no sense at all about the COX guys story:

PSO2.jp was reachable until the last maintenance. From that very moment most of us could not access it. And the game server aswell. So if this was automated, this should not happen for every provider at the same time and it would be a very big coincident that it happens exactly after the maintenence.
It could really be that sega requested the block themself. In this case it might not go away until sega gets active again. But this is a bit unlikely. I think they will work on this until all japanese players have no more problems and then just stop. Because from this point on it is not worth their time and money to investigate anymore. If this could really happen and what this means is still to be seen. But i dont believe this was an automated thing.

Oh come on, even if that's the case, you don't have to poop the party. Let us dream for crying out loud. >.<

[GHNeko]

Let me point out the one thing that makes no sense at all about the COX guys story:

PSO2.jp was reachable until the last maintenance. From that very moment most of us could not access it. And the game server aswell. So if this was automated, this should not happen for every provider at the same time and it would be a very big coincident that it happens exactly after the maintenence.
It could really be that sega requested the block themself. In this case it might not go away until sega gets active again. But this is a bit unlikely. I think they will work on this until all japanese players have no more problems and then just stop. Because from this point on it is not worth their time and money to investigate anymore. If this could really happen and what this means is still to be seen. But i dont believe this was an automated thing.

Was PSO2.jp reachable for just you? Or for everyone? Because it wasnt and still isnt reachable for me. Both before the game servers came online, and afrod.

I'm sure you're aware that when it comes to the internet, distance matters.

Also, some short period of time before the DDOS, was there a thread about how the TPP wire was being worked on or some shit, which was causing a lot of issues (including lag and DC issues) for pretty much a lot of people, including most people who reside in the Americas?

I understand the internet is blazing fast, but not everything reaches the same conclusion and destination at the same time.

Also there is not just ONE service monitoring service. There are multiple services that are automated, so the results of one can occur much faster/slower than the others.

The fact that some Verizon FIOS connections arent really affected can be a testament to this notion of they have a subscription to a very good (or bad) server-monitoring service.

Not to say that you're incorrect or anything because we're working off assumptions and conjecture (boy I am using that word a lot today), but I do challenge your post with this one.

[moorebounce]

I couldn't get on after they shut the servers down and it didn't have anything to do with any maintenance. It might have gotten blacklisted which would explain why so many providers got hit all at once. Not many companies handle stuff like that so it's possible. That's why PZ is working without being on the whole time you play. It just needs to get around the blacklisted services and Sega is making sure all the Japanese region is taken care of ATM.

I hope this puts a fire up Sega's ass to release the NA/EU version.

[Sychosis]

Strange, huh?

No, allow me to explain using this scientific diagram.

[spoiler-box]http://i.imgur.com/Pnte6ML.png[/spoiler-box]

[ZooL]

i can only speak for me and my friends here, but we are 5 people across europe who were checking the page on a 30 mins basis during that time. and after the initial downtime it was reachable for all of us for several days until the last maintenance that lead to the server reopening. from that point noone could connect except one lucky guy who uses T-online. and this makes total sense. T-online has their own infra structure in germany and it is the only ISP stubborn enough to not cooperate with a company like sega. yes, its all speculation but from my point of view its the most likely story.
and the problem really is this: why would sega care? they tollerated us in the first place. but i am sure we gaijins made a sub 1% fraction of the monthly revenue. So we have no real value to them. and it would cost alot of time and money to lift those ip blocks, look into each region and manualy block finer ip ranges according to the real source of the DDOS. On top, this is typical Japanese thinking. if there exist problems on the outside, isolate your self.

[redroses]

I don't know if this matters, but I was able to access the site once after the servers went back up.
I saw the threads of people having trouble accessing the site and pso2, so I checked the site and it loaded, but only the html version. So, I tried a refresh, and after that, the site hasn't worked since. So, for me, it wasn't blocked from the moment the servers went back up. Maybe this information is in anyway useful?

[btw-Niji]

Was PSO2.jp reachable for just you? Or for everyone? Because it wasnt and still isnt reachable for me. Both before the game servers came online, and afrod.
Myself and 7 other people on Skype could connect to pso2.jp just fine before the game servers went up that night... and after everything went online, we could no longer connect to the website.

[GHNeko]

No, allow me to explain using this scientific diagram.

[spoiler-box]http://i.imgur.com/Pnte6ML.png[/spoiler-box]

Okay. I legit laughed.

I love you for this.


Myself and 7 other people on Skype could connect to pso2.jp just fine before the game servers went up that night... and after game went online, we could no longer connect to the website.

Fair enough. My only counter-response to that is what Sychosis posted, but in a far less...hilarious but slightly patronizing fashion.

The big issue is that despite all this digging we're doing, no one has anything concrete or official and even the sysadmin niggas on the board can only figure out so much because we're mere mortals to lack access to the God's Realm (SegaC Server Infra).

So yeah. All we really can do at this point IS wait. Unless someone is wanting to do some super sleuthing or some shit, or head down to SoJ's building, bust through the doors, and demand answers or else people will get hurt.

[ZooL]

yes, we can only wait but if we cannot connect after tonights maintenece it really might be GAME OVER for us gaijins.

On a side note, i also talked to my isp yesterday and they are investitating. I could allways switch isp and play again without problems, but with the majority of us not able to connect, the game is nearly ruined.

[Sychosis]

yes, we can only wait but if we cannot connect after tonights maintenece it really might be GAME OVER for us gaijins.

You seem to be misunderstanding. This is not an issue SEGA has any control over (technically they could speed it up if they wanted to but they do not have any obligation to do so). This issue will sort itself out on its own.

The Japanese are not wringing their hands, plotting your demise.

As an aside, the idea of there being a threat monitoring service that telcoms subscribe to is something I never even thought of but makes absolutely perfect sense. Like the Associated Press, but with less news and more PANIC.

[Miyuki_Kamiko]

Chill Out you guys really need to
PSO2.JP likely has the same protection as PSO2 Right now you want to know why?
because Sega is making sure there Cash shop/ AC buying section is secure before they re open there servers to the rest of the world

as for those of you who thinks sega hates money your wrong what there priorities right now is getting anything that makes them cash back online and secure
the english community even if Sakai likes us is the Last thing on there list to please

[Atlantis419]

Well that's the exact reason I had to contact my isp and get them to investigate. Seemed a lot of people were banking on the maintenance to open the doors to the majority of us foreigners. While there is that possibility, if it doesn't happen tonight I can see the community getting desperate and jumping the gun on vpn's and other such methods. Problem is, if it is on our end and not sega's and everyone gets themselves banned it will be the same exact shit when the servers get off the black list and you would have been able to get on, no body left. I'm pretty frustrated too, but I know for sure what I can do, and thats to make sure I cause my isp as much aggravation and to be the biggest pain in the ass I can and make them do some work to make sure it's not just us. Also I haven't been able to access the site since they said their site was also getting attacked. So I guess it could be whatever backbones our various isp's fall under.

[Sp-24]

Chill Out you guys really need to
PSO2.JP likely has the same protection as PSO2 Right now you want to know why?
because Sega is making sure there Cash shop/ AC buying section is secure before they re open there servers to the rest of the world

as for those of you who thinks sega hates money your wrong what there priorities right now is getting anything that makes them cash back online and secure
the english community even if Sakai likes us is the Last thing on there list to please
Well, we know that some things, such as error 107, are caused by their "measures". We know that because Sega directly addressed them. By writing about them on the site that we can't access.

If the site really was accidentally hit by those measures, you'd think Sega would at least mention it, instead of linking to it from their it-tells page and blog when talking about other problems that were caused by their DDoS protection.

[Gama]

Well, we know that some things, such as error 107, are caused by their "measures". We know that because Sega directly addressed them. By writing about them on the site that we can't access.

If the site really was accidentally hit by those measures, you'd think Sega would at least mention it, instead of linking to it from their it-tells page and blog when talking about other problems that were caused by their DDoS protection.

i agree, and think that sega will either fix it on this update, or unlock area per area.

hope they dont think something like...

hey these gajins cant login! ok lets keep this shit up.

but its unlikely.

[ZooL]

The false assumption many seem to be making is that we, the gaijins present potential revenue for sega. We are such a small group and since you can not buy AC the easy way from outside jp, i am very confident we are somewhere around 0,1% of the overall revenue. Thus sega won't miss us at all from a buisness standpoint. They wont even notice on the monthly bills. I am not saying they dont want us, but we are not a factor for them. So if they blocked out alot of us unintentionally just to protect what is important to them, their jp customers who represent maybe 99,9% of their money. Why would they ever take the risk + additional time and effort until everyone of us can play again? If it will happen automaticaly or out of sheer luck, then i am sure sega won't mind. But if they actively requested/set up those wide ip blocks and now everything is working fine for all of their JP customers, why on earth would they do a thing? never change a running system.

[ZooL]

Well that's the exact reason I had to contact my isp and get them to investigate. Seemed a lot of people were banking on the maintenance to open the doors to the majority of us foreigners. While there is that possibility, if it doesn't happen tonight I can see the community getting desperate and jumping the gun on vpn's and other such methods. Problem is, if it is on our end and not sega's and everyone gets themselves banned it will be the same exact shit when the servers get off the black list and you would have been able to get on, no body left. I'm pretty frustrated too, but I know for sure what I can do, and thats to make sure I cause my isp as much aggravation and to be the biggest pain in the ass I can and make them do some work to make sure it's not just us. Also I haven't been able to access the site since they said their site was also getting attacked. So I guess it could be whatever backbones our various isp's fall under.

i have been doing this aswell, but even if i can get in again because of this, or if i change isp to get in, the english speaking community will still be dead.

[GHNeko]

That is assuming, we cant get back on after this.

When (if) this nonsense passes, everyone will come back. Only those who didnt have much an attention span, those who cant be bothered, the ones who were really bored, those who were on the fence about PSO2 and/or already fixin' to roll out, are the ones who wont be back after this evolution.

[Zipzo]

Okay SO thanks to the marvelous tech support at Cox, I have a pretty solid grasp of what the hell the issue is.

MORE TO COME @ 1445 -0500 EST.

brb chores.

Pretty sure it doesn't take a rocket scientist.

[ZooL]

That is assuming, we cant get back on after this.

When (if) this nonsense passes, everyone will come back. Only those who didnt have much an attention span, those who cant be bothered, the ones who were really bored, those who were on the fence about PSO2 and/or already fixin' to roll out, are the ones who wont be back after this evolution.

oh yes, definitly. Don't get me wrong, i hope so much that everything will be fine tomorrow morning. but i am trying to be realistic here.
Maybe the japanese will miss us and address sega. But yeah, thats unlikely aswell...

[GHNeko]

Pretty sure it doesn't take a rocket scientist.


...you do realize where you're conversing right?

Especially now considering the state of alarm and paranoia most players are in lmfao.

[viciousbrandon]

So I just got done speaking with my ISP (Comcast). And did find that PSO2.jp site and game server is on their blacklist. I asked how we can get it removed from the blacklist. I did tell him that its servers were hit by a DDOS around June 16th and that they came up around June 27th. I was told that for it to clear the blacklist it can take up to 30 days after the attack ceased. Once they ping the server and it comes back clean/healthy it will automatically be removed from the blacklist.

This can also most likely be the same for other ISPs like AT&T and others. And why those on Verzion can access is mostly likely due to them clearing PSO off its blacklist sooner or they are more lax in security. But overall I'm hoping this can least help give some hope to the community.

On a side note I did tell the level 3 tech that I will keep calling to check the status as I made them open a ticket/case file under my name .

[Shinamori]

Ah. So it can take until Episode 3 :P

[EvilMag]

If anyone is willing to contact AT&T do so. I would but they keep lining me up with people who have no fucking idea what they are doing. Most of them kept telling me to reset my modem. >_>

[sabitsuki]

If anyone is willing to contact AT&T do so. I would but they keep lining me up with people who have no fucking idea what they are doing. Most of them kept telling me to reset my modem. >_>
My first representative sent me to a subscription-only tech support site, the 2nd one just told me that it takes a while for the ISP to confirm that the site is up and running normally.

[Skize]

The false assumption many seem to be making is that we, the gaijins present potential revenue for sega. We are such a small group and since you can not buy AC the easy way from outside jp, i am very confident we are somewhere around 0,1% of the overall revenue. Thus sega won't miss us at all from a buisness standpoint. They wont even notice on the monthly bills. I am not saying they dont want us, but we are not a factor for them. So if they blocked out alot of us unintentionally just to protect what is important to them, their jp customers who represent maybe 99,9% of their money. Why would they ever take the risk + additional time and effort until everyone of us can play again? If it will happen automaticaly or out of sheer luck, then i am sure sega won't mind. But if they actively requested/set up those wide ip blocks and now everything is working fine for all of their JP customers, why on earth would they do a thing? never change a running system.

Actually, this is false. Gaijins do present a noticeable amount of revenue for Sega. Mainly because Gaijins don't represent just the English speaking community, but from around the world. There are a lot of players from Brazil, Spain, etc. Also, 75% of my team actually have spent, or is spending money for AC and that's out of 80 people. On a larger scale, there are quite a lot of gaijins that have spent money on this game as well. Especially for premium.

Edit: If you're calling At&t, you need to tell them you want to talk to the supervisor, etc. Just like any technical support, they have multiple levels of it. The people that are telling you to reset your modem are level 1 tech supports. You need to go higher.

[Sychosis]

Got a response from my ISP. A know-nothing tech who couldn't understand my questions. As expected. At least the response had a few typos so I know it wasn't some robo response.

Guess I'll just have to call them tomorrow and accidentally let it slip that Verizon has PSO2 unblocked and just so happens to be available in the area.

[Edson Drake]

Actually, this is false. Gaijins do present a noticeable amount of revenue for Sega. Mainly because Gaijins don't represent just the English speaking community, but from around the world. There are a lot of players from Brazil, Spain, etc. Also, 75% of my team actually have spent, or is spending money for AC and that's out of 80 people. On a larger scale, there are quite a lot of gaijins that have spent money on this game as well. Especially for premium.

Edit: If you're calling At&t, you need to tell them you want to talk to the supervisor, etc. Just like any technical support, they have multiple levels of it. The people that are telling you to reset your modem are level 1 tech supports. You need to go higher.

Agreed. Most of the people I know in-game do pay! Because you don't see B20 with filled Premium block during EQs is because they migrate to other blocks.

There are free players no doubt, but I strongly believe the majority pay. Not that would matter much to Sega, mind.

[EvilMag]

Well if you really want an idea on how much revenue we have for sega go contact Celestial. Kinda scary to think how much money those guys have spent on this game..

Also getting to a supervisor is such a pain in the ass. May try tomorrow.

[Z-0]

Do you think they spent more than 1% though? That would be $360,000 in a year. I sort of doubt it, myself.

[The Walrus]

Man, now I'm curious how much Celestial has spent...

[GHNeko]

Do you think they spent more than 1% though? That would be $360,000 in a year. I sort of doubt it, myself.

World wide?

That's...very much possible.

That'd be $30k a month spread globally, not even counting japan.

[Enforcer MKV]

Depends on the member, honestly. I haven't spent an 'insane' amount of money on the game, personally.

Kyr, on the other hand...*shakes head* The number of times he redesigned his character....

Boggles the mind, sometimes. :rolleyes:

That being said, peeps like to exaggerate.

[vazzz]

i tried to talk to my ISP penteledata in pennsylvania they didnt tell me shit x.x said we cant provide information on a blacklisted domain... too bad im just outside of verizon service area x.x

[Zipzo]

Ok.

SO.

Essentially.

It's nothing that we don't know, or at least, we're not aware of in a general sense. This is more of a detailed...explanation? Conversation? Reason? Conjecture? Whatever; in regards to the idea of Backend Provider being the cause of these issues.

Nothing was officially confirmed per-say, but I explained the situation of what's going on right now. I explained that I did tracerts and pings, and used tunneling and VPN programs. I explained my results and the results that other people among the forum got.


And the response was this.


More than likely, the connections to the servers are being blacklisted automatically by companies/services of whom are tasked with monitoring the status of servers around the world.

The way it works is that the backend providers all subscribe to services that monitor server status (think the adblock subscription list when you first install the addon). The services will monitor shit. When a server is deemed a threat/problem either by DDOS, Infection, Spam issues, Hacking, etc, then the service will blacklist the server and update it's list of which the backend providers will automatically block connections to that server.

According to highest level tech support of Cox (which apparently is a Level 2 Backend provider itself and provides a lot of infrastructure itself), this is most likely what happened. The DDOS got Sega's servers blacklisted by the server-monitoring service and as such, the backend providers who subscribe to this service automatically blocked connections. ISPs who rely on the backend providers are inherently affected by this.

I asked if Sega can request for these blocks to happen and I didn't get a clear answer, but I'm lead to believe that he's implying that it all happened automatically. Sega, however, can manually get itself de-listed early if it takes the initiative.

However, if Sega doesn't do such a thing, the blacklist will remain until the server-monitoring service discerns that Sega's servers are no longer an issue, meaning, the automated service has to say that, "Okay. Looks like the coast is clear. Kgo."

How long that will take, Cox couldn't say because the process is automated. But if Sega did do their job, then over the course of time we should see ourselves able to play once again as the service will stop blacklisting Sega's servers and that would be reflected by our ISPs.

(This also leads me to believe that Verizon is not legit, and is shit because it's subscribed to a blacklisting service that sucks at detection. That or is actually IS legit, and it updated its info mad fast and shit. I personally believe the prior over the latter.)



tl;dr - Cox says this is more than likely a backend provider issue in the sense that the server-monitoring service has automatically blacklisted Sega's servers due to DDOS nonsense and that everything will go back to normal whenever the service detects that the DDOS nonsense is no longer a thing. When that is, however, cannot be determined at this time. Sega can get it fixed early if they so please, but as far as the conversation went, it was implied that Sega did not / cannot actually trigger the blacklist themselves.


Take this as you will guys.

Me?

I'm like now 99% sure its not an IP block and we're just victims of automation and SegaC being SegaC.

EDIT: Cox did mention using a website like Safehaus.org in order to find out if the servers are indeed blacklisted, but that's not something us mere mortals can access freely, unfortunately. So I have nothing concrete to offer outside of "he-said she-said" with the highest level tech support at Cox.

I hate to rain on your parade here, and I know you're probably feeling very informative, but they really have no method for which to understand the situation much better than you do by simply understanding communications and connections. It maybe goes one level deeper than you can go.

This proves nothing, the people you're speaking to are simply making educated guesses like any of you can make.

[The Walrus]

So the only way to really find out is send a crack team of ninjas to Sega HQ and interrogate Sakai?

[Sanguine2009]

it might not prove anything but its a hell of alot better than than people panicking and freaking out over speculation.

[Zipzo]

So the only way to really find out is send a crack team of ninjas to Sega HQ and interrogate Sakai?

Pretty much. I'd sign up.

[UnLucky]

It totally confirms that such a thing is possible and really happens in the real world and could very well exist at this very moment.

[Zipzo]

It totally confirms that such a thing is possible and really happens in the real world and could very well exist at this very moment.

It's about as much confirmation of anything as witness accounts of Bigfoot are a proof of the existence of Bigfoot.

The key here is SEGA JP, they will either choose to say something about it or not...hopefully they do...

[Z-0]

it might not prove anything but its a hell of alot better than than people panicking and freaking out over speculation.
Over-the-top optimism and over-the-top pessimism is a whole lot worse than speculating on findings and observations, though, which apparently is a no-no on PSO-World.

And if those people "freaking out" are wrong, though? They'll be pleasantly surprised they were wrong all along, and nobody will care who was right/wrong in this situation, at all, except people who will be all like "Told you so! Should never jump to conclusions" even though they were doing the exact same thing, just on the opposite end of the spectrum.

[MegaRocker1987]

Ok.

SO.

Essentially.

It's nothing that we don't know, or at least, we're not aware of in a general sense. This is more of a detailed...explanation? Conversation? Reason? Conjecture? Whatever; in regards to the idea of Backend Provider being the cause of these issues.

Nothing was officially confirmed per-say, but I explained the situation of what's going on right now. I explained that I did tracerts and pings, and used tunneling and VPN programs. I explained my results and the results that other people among the forum got.


And the response was this.


More than likely, the connections to the servers are being blacklisted automatically by companies/services of whom are tasked with monitoring the status of servers around the world.

The way it works is that the backend providers all subscribe to services that monitor server status (think the adblock subscription list when you first install the addon). The services will monitor shit. When a server is deemed a threat/problem either by DDOS, Infection, Spam issues, Hacking, etc, then the service will blacklist the server and update it's list of which the backend providers will automatically block connections to that server.

According to highest level tech support of Cox (which apparently is a Level 2 Backend provider itself and provides a lot of infrastructure itself), this is most likely what happened. The DDOS got Sega's servers blacklisted by the server-monitoring service and as such, the backend providers who subscribe to this service automatically blocked connections. ISPs who rely on the backend providers are inherently affected by this.

I asked if Sega can request for these blocks to happen and I didn't get a clear answer, but I'm lead to believe that he's implying that it all happened automatically. Sega, however, can manually get itself de-listed early if it takes the initiative.

However, if Sega doesn't do such a thing, the blacklist will remain until the server-monitoring service discerns that Sega's servers are no longer an issue, meaning, the automated service has to say that, "Okay. Looks like the coast is clear. Kgo."

How long that will take, Cox couldn't say because the process is automated. But if Sega did do their job, then over the course of time we should see ourselves able to play once again as the service will stop blacklisting Sega's servers and that would be reflected by our ISPs.

(This also leads me to believe that Verizon is not legit, and is shit because it's subscribed to a blacklisting service that sucks at detection. That or is actually IS legit, and it updated its info mad fast and shit. I personally believe the prior over the latter.)



tl;dr - Cox says this is more than likely a backend provider issue in the sense that the server-monitoring service has automatically blacklisted Sega's servers due to DDOS nonsense and that everything will go back to normal whenever the service detects that the DDOS nonsense is no longer a thing. When that is, however, cannot be determined at this time. Sega can get it fixed early if they so please, but as far as the conversation went, it was implied that Sega did not / cannot actually trigger the blacklist themselves.


Take this as you will guys.

Me?

I'm like now 99% sure its not an IP block and we're just victims of automation and SegaC being SegaC.

EDIT: Cox did mention using a website like Safehaus.org in order to find out if the servers are indeed blacklisted, but that's not something us mere mortals can access freely, unfortunately. So I have nothing concrete to offer outside of "he-said she-said" with the highest level tech support at Cox.

http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/500x/51989297.jpg

Thanks for letting us know what the scoop was neko :)

[Sp-24]

I thought people had hard proof that comcast blocked everyone around the world from PSO2? I mean, you'd think they would, with how hard they condemned speculation and jumping to conclusions.

[UnLucky]

It's about as much confirmation of anything as witness accounts of Bigfoot are a proof of the existence of Bigfoot.

The key here is SEGA JP, they will either choose to say something about it or not...hopefully they do...
Sure, if Bigfoot were a real discovered species in a zoo and we're busy trying to find out if there's one in the woods nearby or if the footprints that match the hiker's guide were just a prank.

[GHNeko]

I hate to rain on your parade here, and I know you're probably feeling very informative, but they really have no method for which to understand the situation much better than you do by simply understanding communications and connections. It maybe goes one level deeper than you can go.

This proves nothing, the people you're speaking to are simply making educated guesses like any of you can make.

I fail to see how you're raining on my parade.

I've already established (more than once at that), that what I've said is pure conjecture and there is absolutely nothing concrete in regards to my posts.

The discussion I had with tech support ended up with nothing more than a probable hypothesis based on how shit like this normally would work.

So unless you didn't really read my post in its entirety and simply skimmed, I'm not sure what you're trying to get at.

I'm pretty obtuse so you might just have to spell it out for me. :V

[Reyva]

Like how people pull numbers out of their ass thinking everyone and their mom buys AC. When I see people use "most" and "lots," just exactly how much and a lot? How did you get that info? You work for segac lol? Ur buddies in ur guild don't account for the entire westerner playerbase. And people can lie about crap anyways. Yeah I spent $200 bux on AC last month.

Based on PSO/PSU, the "westerner" playerbase was never big when compared to the JP playerbase.

At the end of the day, ip ban or not, still gotta wait and I'm pretty sure many aren't going to find other means of playing either due to what you have to do or getting banned. But hey, I really want to see for the rest of the month of everyone speculating and arguing. Makes the work day go by faster.

Back to work.

[gaijin_punch]

Let me point out the one thing that makes no sense at all about the COX guys story:

PSO2.jp was reachable until the last maintenance. From that very moment most of us could not access it. And the game server aswell. So if this was automated, this should not happen for every provider at the same time and it would be a very big coincident that it happens exactly after the maintenence.

On the good side, we can assume/hope that the game servers are falling under the same umbrella as Sega's main site. No cumpany listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange is going to have their entire website blocked from a large portion of the world. It's horribly unprofessional, no matter how xenophobic the host cuntry is, no matter how few foreigners visit the site, nor how stupid the host cumpany is.

Obviously it's not science, but it's very hard to imagine. I'm leaning in the camp that the fix is very quick and dirty, in order to get a large portion of people playing again (and eventually buying AC) which should be the most important thing. After that, fine tuning. As per before, too early to totally panic.

[Skize]

Like how people pull numbers out of their ass thinking everyone and their mom buys AC. When I see people use "most" and "lots," just exactly how much and a lot? How did you get that info? You work for segac lol? Ur buddies in ur guild don't account for the entire westerner playerbase. And people can lie about crap anyways. Yeah I spent $200 bux on AC last month.

Based on PSO/PSU, the "westerner" playerbase was never big when compared to the JP playerbase.

At the end of the day, ip ban or not, still gotta wait and I'm pretty sure many aren't going to find other means of playing either due to what you have to do or getting banned. But hey, I really want to see for the rest of the month of everyone speculating and arguing. Makes the work day go by faster.

Back to work.

But you're also ignoring the fact that this is WORLDWIDE. Not just NA. We're talking about NA, SA, EU, SEA, etc. ALL of those people are gaijins. How can someone say gaijins are less than 1% of the profit revenue when gaijins are WORLDWIDE.

[Sp-24]

On the good side, we can assume/hope that the game servers are falling under the same umbrella as Sega's main site. No cumpany listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange is going to have their entire website blocked from a large portion of the world. It's horribly unprofessional, no matter how xenophobic the host cuntry is, no matter how few foreigners visit the site, nor how stupid the host cumpany is.

Obviously it's not science, but it's very hard to imagine. I'm leaning in the camp that the fix is very quick and dirty, in order to get a large portion of people playing again (and eventually buying AC) which should be the most important thing. After that, fine tuning. As per before, too early to totally panic.
Hm? But I could access https://sega.jp/ just fine. It's their site for a regional release of their online game, http://pso2.jp/players/, that I can't visit. Naturally, since I'm not even their customer.

[gaijin_punch]

According to this thread (look at what I quoted) not everyone could/can.

EDIT: Okay, gotcha. I read that wrong.

[Sychosis]

penteledata

Oh man, my condolences. Do those jokers still have bandwidth caps? They sent me a letter informing me that I went over once and that the next time I did they would charge me. Hah, no, good riddance. I'm surprised you even managed to find someone who knew what you were talking about.

[Edson Drake]

Like how people pull numbers out of their ass thinking everyone and their mom buys AC. When I see people use "most" and "lots," just exactly how much and a lot? How did you get that info? You work for segac lol? Ur buddies in ur guild don't account for the entire westerner playerbase. And people can lie about crap anyways. Yeah I spent $200 bux on AC last month.

Based on PSO/PSU, the "westerner" playerbase was never big when compared to the JP playerbase.

At the end of the day, ip ban or not, still gotta wait and I'm pretty sure many aren't going to find other means of playing either due to what you have to do or getting banned. But hey, I really want to see for the rest of the month of everyone speculating and arguing. Makes the work day go by faster.

Back to work.

It's not pulling numbers out of our asses, it's a matter of knowing people and playing with them regurlarly. Pretty easy to do.

The Japanese are a majority? No doubt. But there's so many foreigners playing and not only on ship 2. I'm not even counting foreigners that can speak japanese and have their characters names and descriptions written in japanese so that no one could distinguish from a real Japanese citizen.

Most are paying because many have jobs and frankly, at least Premium is candy money. And it's not like it's hard to obtain AC these days either, so I don't see why you're so adamant about foreigners not buying AC.

[GHNeko]

It's skepticism.

If there is no concrete info to support that something is, then surely it must not be.

It doesn't exist until you can prove it does.

So without explicit and intricate data, he's probably going to think as such.

[Edson Drake]

It's skepticism.

If there is no concrete info to support that something is, then surely it must not be.

It doesn't exist until you can prove it does.

So without explicit and intricate data, he's probably going to think as such.

I can understand that, but how can you prove the opposite either? I mean, how can you prove people don't pay?

I can't prove anything except for putting my own word on it by basing on the people I've been playing ever since AC was easier to obtain.

[GHNeko]

You really cant.

It's like religion at this point.

Just an initial default stance where it's no different than believing or not believing in a higher power.

[Akakomuma]

I still am not worried about this. We'll be able to play, eventually. Learn some patience.