Pinging Players

[ciscokid]

When there is a delay in someone bidding or playing, it is not possible to know if the player is thinking (unless you ask) or whether the problem is with someone's IPS connection. Outside of the red dot that flickers when there are connection problems (what tirggers this? what does this tell us?) you cannot tell the ping times of the individual players.

 

Is this something that can be added to the next version? Is the reason why it is not available due to the bandwith overhead this might consume?

 

-CK

[JRG]

Ping will not always work. Operating Systems can be configured to ignore ICMP Echo Messages (which is what ping uses). This is being done much more as a means of stopping hackers from locating hosts to attack. Any decent firewall software will make ping inoperative.

[bearmum]

Ping will not always work. Operating Systems can be configured to ignore ICMP Echo Messages (which is what ping uses). This is being done much more as a means of stopping hackers from locating hosts to attack. Any decent firewall software will make ping inoperative.

I have firewall and in another site PING works well - I don't know HOW to 'ping' in BBO tho :rolleyes:(

[Gerardo]

Red dots are an indication of a ping (or similar) going wrong, they are a remnant of an permanent tristate indicator (green, yellow or red) Who remembers those? :rolleyes: (it was annoying)

Maybe the yellow state should be back (maybe not), and/or the parameters tweaked.

[JRG]

Ping will not always work. Operating Systems can be configured to ignore ICMP Echo Messages (which is what ping uses). This is being done much more as a means of stopping hackers from locating hosts to attack. Any decent firewall software will make ping inoperative.

I have firewall and in another site PING works well - I don't know HOW to 'ping' in BBO tho :rolleyes:(

I didn't mean that you cannot initiate a ping from behind a firewall. What I meant was that if your connection is from behind a firewall (and it is any good), that other people cannot ping you.

 

So, attempts to ping some, but not all, players' hosts should fail. Ping is no longer a reliable means of telling if a host is alive.

[uday]

It is true that a real "ping" is not reliable.

 

We have the ability to send a "ping" withing the application. I use this to determine when to put the red dot up. In general I think the server/client should be pro-active about letting you know when a PC is not responding, and that the end-user should not need to be pinging anyone.

 

The red dots do that. A flickering red dot is an artifact of some imperfect code and can be ignored. A steady red dot will always manifest if someone at the table has an unresponsive connection, and will, in theory, do so in under 20 seconds from when the problem started ( and probably in less time than that)

[mink]

Thanks Uday

 

It is fine with me that I do not have to ping myself and the software does the job for me and shows the result with the red dot.

 

But if I run a tourney, I find players that have the red dot much longer than the others are willing to wait. So I have to apply the subbing procedure that requires me to type in 2 names, which really takes some time. Also, software does not ask the sub for permission if this method is used. So I have to ask the sub after I subbed him in if it was ok for him and sub again if I took a player who is away from his computer. Or I get someone who is already registered for some other tourney and did not care to remove himself from the sub list ---> players should be removed from all sub lists automatically when they register for a tourney.

 

Therefore I suggest that after 2 or 3 minutes (I would say 2) with a red dot a player should become totally red and this way candidate for the easy subbing procedure that can be applied by his partner, too.

 

The other problem with unresponsive players are those who do not produce a red dot. This can be caused by a player who is away from his computer, but I often had the impression that it may be some kind of connection problem, too, but the internal ping is still working. But, if you use only one tcp connection for each client, this cannt be possible, as tcp guarantees that the sequence of data is not disrupted. Maybe you have an explanation for this.

 

In case that a player really thinks for more than 2 minutes I would suggest that the client asks him if he is still there, and puts him into a subbable state if he does not answer this question within 15 seconds - just for the people who think that the incoming phone call is urgent enough to let 3 others wait and probably create an unfinished board.

 

Karl