Info Needed Universal Chat service issue

Looks like it's really down at the moment, everyone in guild reporting it is down.

07:46:45 FV universal chat service is temporarily unavailable.

I got it fixed. Probably not a fix for everyone, and I'm just sharing what worked for me

I went out of town on vacation and outside of my home the universal chat service worked fine at the place I was staying at, after months of it not working after 10 minutes or less in the game/zoning. (you can see my posts in this thread for my issues) I came home and I was still having the same chat issues here at home. So I realized it was local to my home, not the service (for me anyway).

So I asked an IT friend about it and he said it may be an issue with my internet provider's modem/router's protocols (Xfinity). So I got out an old independent router (linksys) configured and connected it, put my internet provider's router/modem on "bridge mode" (my IT buddy told me to do that, I know nothing) and voila, my universal chat service works now without dropping 10 minutes into the game. It's actually worked fine for 2 days now since I did the new setup.

Again, just thought I would share.

FT

In your case, if you could learn what the difference was, then you could enable that setting on the Xfinity router to match the replacement router. I wonder what the difference is?

This if from my IT friend, not me. I can ask more specific questions if you need me to. (he did tool around in my Xfinity router before I set up the new one and could not solve the problem)

"Its either the xfinity router has some kind of filtering you can’t turn off or using Comcast dns has some type of filtering on their side at the dns level.

Setting the xfinity modem to bridge mode rules out filtering on the xfinity modem (theoretically) and setting your dns to 1.1.1.1 bypasses any dns filtering that Comcast has on their dns servers. "

FT

Cloudflare DNS (1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1) is free and fast and private. Using their DNS instead of your internet provider means you never have to worry about anyone filtering. You can also if you wish use the optional Cloudflare for Families DNS, which will block malware and/or adult content, instead of the regular Cloudflare DNS, if desired.

Simply replace the DNS numbers on any device with the ones provided in the link below:

https://developers.cloudflare.com/1.1.1.1/ip-addresses/

And glad to hear you have resolved this issue.

Rather not mess with my router settings and screw up wifi for my home and then not have needed connections, like Alexa, roomba, tv streaming.... has to be a better way like DB fixing it.

There was a broadcast message the other night about needed to log out and back in because they had pushed a new chat client to the game. It made no difference.

I logged in last night and it was just constant "The Universal Chat Service is unavailable..." throughout the evening. It would come and go constantly.

Curious if could be related to Norton 360 services. When they patch anything for next few days anytime I log in have to click on this Norton popup to say basically "always allow" EQ to make changes. Eventually it stops asking me.

One difference I can think of is that Xfinity routers have Advanced Security on all of their modern routers.

If the user has the Xfinity app, under Security->Advanced Security at the top it will say if anything has been blocked within the last 7 days. It's not very detailed so it might take some experimentation to confirm.

That being said, I also use Xfinity and have no notifcations within the last week that anything has been blocked.

If it is a DNS issue, 75.75.75.75 or 75.75.76.76 are Xfinity's DNS servers if you'd like to do some testing.

It's constant on Firona Vie, autojoining or joining general does nothing, it says 400 people in channel, channel not found

Wouldn't be so bad if the chat client would ever spin up overflow channels like it used to.

Rathe

After 5 minutes... Chat Service unavailable. Can't join any channels or even /list channels.

No offense, but I hate that solution. You miss out being able to talk to 400 people and instead get a channel with 15. They need to restructure chat so you can have as many people as are logged in.

I agree...channels should be unlimited with respect to how many people join them. Caps are stupid.

But those aren't the rules they set up...they capped them at 400 and then coded it to automatically create new channels when the cap is hit. But that part stopped working nearly 2 years ago.

So, they either need to fix the overflow channels or remove the cap. I don't care which, they just need to pick a solution and fix their GD game.

I would be happy with **WORKING** channels capped at 400...

The very least a work around command to reload universal chat in game? /reloadchat or /reloaduniversal

So this "Universal Chat Service is unavailable" issue has been happening to me a lot. It was not an issue prior to maybe a few months ago. However I did fix it on my side doing what another user had to do.

I tried to identify the port that the Universal Chat Service uses. After googling and watching my network logs, I made an assumption it is port 9875. I may be wrong.

My attempts at troubleshooting:

• My network logs show I connect to it just fine. I didn't think a port forward would help, but I tried setting up a port forward for 9875 in my router anyway. This did not resolve the issue.
• I have Comcast/Xfinity so I tried disabling their advanced security. This did not resolve the issue.
• I tried intentionally white listing that port in Windows firewall. This did not resolve the issue.

What worked:

• I took the other user's advice and got a separate router. I was using the XB7 combo router/modem from Comast/Xfinity. I put the XB7 in bridge mode so it acted just like a modem and plugged in my router separately. I did NOT have to change the DNS, so it appears to not be a DNS issue on the Xfinity side. I am using the same DNS, just not using the XB7 from Comcast as the router.
• I don't have access to all the logs I would need to troubleshoot, but my only guess is maybe there is a timeout for the UDP connection on that port and maybe a keep alive is not being handled properly by the router?
• Again, I have had the XB7 for a while and it wasn't an issue prior to a few months ago, so I can't say where the issue is, it just happened to be the Comcast XB7 router for me.

This issue is getting beyond annoying. Everyone saying it is Xfinity but I have never had an issue until LS launch, and since my chats have not worked for more than a couple of minutes after zoning. That is 100% proof that DB did something. If they could tell us what ports we need to open or settings they changed it would be an easy fix but they are just trying to pass the buck.

I will not get a new modem or route like someone else mentioned as it will disrupt too many things in my home and we should not have to do that.

I’m sorry, I know it’s frustrating. It was disappointing for me too.

It seems to be a common issue among those of us using Comcast/internet company supplied routers (since multiple companies may use the same rebranded hardware). I am not sure, since other folks haven’t said if they are using their own routers and still having this issue.

There is a chance DB changed something and can hopefully identify and fix it. It is also very possible though that our internet providers issued a firmware update to the routers that have caused the issue. I have looked, but Xfinity does not have a firmware update history to show when I may have gotten a new update to see if it lines up with this issue, and their techs claim there isn’t a date/time when it was updated that they can check either. Xfinity support is a challenge to work with.

So at this point my solution was resolving it myself with the router change, since this issue is going to be hard to debug if the culprit is on the Xfinity router side, and DB can’t identify any changes in this timeframe that could be causing this. Maybe they can provide a workaround for us folks using this hardware, but they would have to set up a lab using one of these routers. At this point though I don’t think we can definitively say that it is DB that caused the issue if there is also the possibility it was a firmware update to our routers that caused it.