I haven't been able to stay connected for more than a few minutes every time I zone. Making it hard to sell anything in /general. This has been happening for at least 3 days now.
Well with that much info i'm sure they'll be able to track it down immediately. How about what server you are on as a starting point.
I know I have that problem when I'm using the wifi hotspot on my cell phone. I have also heard people saying that disabling the UDP timeout on your router will also resolve, though I haven't experienced that issue myself. I ONLY have disconnects like you speak of when using the wifi hotspot on my cell phone.
I connect to EQ from work sometimes, and have the same issue there. From what I could find, the connection to the uchat is maintained through a random UDP port that is selected every time you enter the game or zone. On some firewalls, the default UDP Connection Inactivity Timeout is 30 seconds. Try changing the UDP Connection Inactivity Timeout value to 60 seconds for outbound UDP connections.
Aww, it's just picking on you then cause I zone and it doesn't happen . Guess it's not a universal problem.
Another option (although it sucks) if you are playing from somewhere you can't control your own firewall settings. You can hotkey /list and bind it to your movement keys, and filter the spam from listing your channels to a minimized window. Any interaction with uchat will maintain your UDP connection. It's just periods of inactivity that cause the channels to fail. This solution fails if you afk, or even just stop moving/pressing your /list hotkey for any more than like 2 minutes. If you zone again it resets.
I sit in a server wide channel and I've seen times when issues have only affected 1 or 2 servers, so yes it can matter. I've not seen any problems the last few days on AB, other than the usual chat lag.
I was traveling yesterday and had no issues at one airport (70/90 mbps!) but when I got to my next stop they had crappy 5 mbps wifi and the universal chat service was so broken I couldn't even send in-game e-mails. Zoning helped for about 15 seconds and then the service would break again. For some insane reason, the service requires an incredible amount of bandwidth to be usable.
Not bandwidth but various udp settings. I've played fine and reliably with 2mb down before with no problems.
No mater who you are your router is using NAT (Network Area Translation) It allows you to have many computers (devices) on a single ip address. This was used to solve the problem of depleting IP Addresses. Since the connection to the chat server is UDP it is one way. Sounds like the router is closing down the "Holes in your fire wall" that allows the outside traffic back in, when this happens you computer can't connect back out on the same port or vice versa. People who are having problem should post the type of device (Router) they're using, if you can find common ground I'm sure a solution can be found. Another solution would be to build into the EQ client a small ping that is sent, keep alive basically, every minute to the chat servers. Problem is this will generate more traffic but more importantly if someone determined the method they are suing to send this keep alive they could probably leverage a bot-net to overwhelm the system and grief everyone (DDoS). This is the same concept as using /list, since you're requesting information and the server is sending it back.
Didn't matter for me what router I used. No settings were changed. Different internet connections however changed it.
Bypass your router for a minute and see if things improve. I'm betting they do. If they do, reset your router to factory settings. Then update the firmware to latest version. Then try EQ again. If problem persists, time for a new router.
Router didn't matter for me. Happens with any router. And given it started suddenly while using the same router which wasn't changed in any way.....