Connection Problems

[eyeless5150]

For some reason starting several months ago it has been almost impossible for any computer on my home internet connection (Time Warner T1) to successfully connect to the servers. I have lots of different symptoms.

The server select screen only shows a blank list, no servers. I have to re-login anywhere from 1 - 20 times (sometimes more) before the server list is populated.

When the servers finally show, I will select a server (any server) and click play. *Sometimes* the loading screen will pop up... But the game will almost always hang and freeze before I even get to the character select screen.

*If* I get to the character select screen, more problems occur. Sometimes all my characters are gone and only new characters can be created. Sometimes I get the "Your spell file is outdated" message with more blank characters. On a very rare occasions, I can get all of my characters to show up, but once again there is the fear of a hang and freeze when I select a character and click play.

On an even *rarer* occasion, I can successfully login to my character. however, it seems like I have to stay in a zone as I am plagued by zone crashes and have to start the whole process over again.

As many of you could imagine, this is incredibly frustrating! It first started happening towards the end of last year and progressively got WORSE! We used to be able to work around it, as this was mostly unnoticeable at first.

None of these symptoms are apparent in the least when i try to connect on another internet. i.e. at my girlfriends house on some of the same laptops and computers on her home internet connection (frontiernet DSL). everything is gravy and I can play just fine.

I can't imagine what has happened and there must be a fix. I've asked the EQEmu forums but no real help yet.