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BBO thinks I'm offline


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BBO's timer to test whether I have stopped playing has been broken for months.

 

It comes up even if I'm in the middle of playing a hand in a BBO tournament.

 

I try to report bugs to your technical staff and they just point me to the Forums. I was the bridge designer and programmer for The Sierra Network and Hoyle Classic Bridge, so I know a fair bit about bridge AI and online bridge.

 

Please fix it. It can come up inappropriately and really harm my play.

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Its not BBO, its your ISP slugging the background handshakes between the client and host. They only way to fix it is to get a better ISP. I find my mobile 3G is fine, my 15M fibre landline is useless (Oh, and I spent 30 years in the computer and communications industry).
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Its not the speed that is the issue, that's the point I'm making. Its almost as if the ISP is collecting a bundle of handshake messages and sending them as a single packet - it reduces the overheads and improves bandwidth efficiency. Great for the ISP, bad for a time critical transmission - BBO should really be using the VoIP protocols to avoid that happening. The mobile network however doesn't bother to collect a bundle as it doesn't know which base station your next packet will be routed through - so it just gets on with sending it.

 

Whilst using my fibre landline my BCR was gradually dropping to 95% courtesy of BBO disconnecting me. Using my mobile 3G I've got it back upto 100%.

 

Go figure.

 

P.S. My mobile gives 2.28/1.57 and my landline gives 11.1/2.28 - speed is irrelevant, it's the ISP's prioritising and packaging algorithms that are the hurdle.

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My experience of moving an entire club onto BBO confirmed that mobile (4G and even 3G) was the least problematic connection, but with fibre just behind. The chronic problems were with ADSL over phone lines, which perhaps suggests that it is a handshake from the client taking too long for the server's tastes (although ADSL tends to coincide with sluggish old PCs too).
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