[cuckoo5]

hi, please can someone help me! for the past 3 weeks, I am regularly unable to log in to BBO, for longer than 30 secs,,, then I lose connection. I can sign in as a visitor and that works perfectly - even watching Vugraphs as visitor,works. But when I log in with my account, I am unable to play. However, it occasionally works! Please can a computer wiz help me!! many thanks

[barmar]

I see another username logging in from the same IP as you. Do you have problems with both accounts, or just cuckoo5?

[cuckoo5]

hi... we are having exactly the same problem, with both accounts. i have contacted my service provider, as BBO suggested that we are experiencing 'packet loss'. Our service provider tested, and determined that there is 0% packet loss. this has been occurring every day, for about a month. but i have determined that when BBO has less than 10 000 users online .... I have no problem. It seems as that as soon as approx 10 000+ users, then I cannot play. I wonder if this has something to do number of BBO users,,, or if its congestion on line, time related, or something else. Our service provider insists that our line is 100%, and that it is a BBO/live gaming problem. Also, if I go onto BBo as a visitor (zzz...) then I am able to kib, etc, and never get disconnected. In fact, this has just occurred now... I went onto BBO with my username, to watch a lesson, and was disconnected immediately, a number of times. So I signed in as a visitor, and I was able to watch lesson for 90mins, without losing connection. This is getting so frustrating, as I can only play live, when the site is not busy, it seems. I am a paid-up BIL member, and am missing mentoring/teaching sessions as well.
How I wish someone can help me! many thanks for any help or advice

[barmar]

When your ISP tested packet loss, did they do it to our servers, or just on your local connection? The problem may be that connectivity between South Africa and the US is not very good, so the connection to your ISP is not the problem. It looks like you have the most trouble around mid-to-late afternoon in S.Africa. This isn't our peak time (it's morning here), so I don't think the problem is load on our servers or our Internet connection, but it's very likely that your ISP's connections to the rest of the world are more heavily loaded at that time.

The Flash version of BBO isn't very sensitive to the number of users logged in. It gets frequent updates about friends, hosts, stars, and people at your table, but not all the other users. The only significant difference between logging in anonymously and with a username is the friends. But you don't have lots of BBO friends, so I doubt that's the issue -- I think it may just be coincidence that you haven't had as much trouble when logging in anonymously.

There isn't really much we can do about this. We can't fix Internet connectivity problems, and there's no other reason we know of why you'd get disconnected.

[cuckoo5]

hi barmar, thank you so much for trying to help me. Unfortunately, this situation has not improved, and,daily, after about 1pm South African time, I am unable to get onto BBO. As mentioned, I can logon onto BBO for 5 seconds, and then I lose connection, and msg 'Connection Lost' appears on the screen. The 'connectivity bars' in top right hand corner, are completely missing! Is there a less complex version of BBO around, which is less 'bandwidth hungry', which I could try? Do you know if any other South Africans are having this problem? many thanks

[barmar]

The web version IS our less bandwidth hungry version.

If you have no bars in the corner, it means you have a really bad connection to us. There's probably nothing we can do to make it better.

[celosia]

I have been experiencing frequent disconnects from BBO both during play at a table and when not logged in, playing anonymously with robots. My carrier is Verizon, I don't think that's the problem. It's only been in the last month or two. What's going on?