Im currently having this pain in the *** error, seems like these people had it 2 years ago. sigh

In most cases, if you will look after the POL problem, you will see you don't have a Global IP address. It needs to asssign your system a new address and what has to happen first is the program needs to do a time out after searching for so long, then assign the new address. I was told the time out could take anywhere from 10 min to an hour. SE needs to find out why it keeps losing Global IP's.

The reason we get these errors is because of the over load of players trying to upload, atleast thats y I get them. If there was a better srver to hadle all the unploading simutaneously then maybe it wouldn't take so long to upload. I figure if I am the first to start the upload, or the last to upload thenI will be ok. Uploading while everyone else is uploading is a disaster and never will be fixed unless the get better servers.º^º;

every time I read one of these updates from SE themselves, I find grammatical/spelling errors.
Did the SE staff fail english?

it's A WHILE.
TWO WORDS
not AWHILE.

they make that mistake EVERY TIME!

first time i've logged out since the update was succesfull, Version update on the POL viewer -> POL-1160, Rate up for RealityBytes.

Now to ponder violating POL ToS by breaking their network code >_>

i foresee an offline update for this one ;)

I think from now on I'm going to temp log and leave POL open in my taskbar, because I logged out this morning at 5:00am after a 6 hour WHM session, and was excited to get back on today, 5 hours later, and no dice.. for like an hour.. rebooted like 5 times, enabled/disabled network connection.. none of it works.. I think Square decided that 6 Woodworking levels and 3 WHM levels is way too much, and doesn't want to let me back on for more..

Update..
OMFG.. Pol finally connects to the Update server and I'm allowed to go through, so I figured I was in.. but no, I hit play to go into FFXI and I get hung up on the second Update server for FFXI.. ; ;

Edited, Fri Jul 22 10:56:09 2005

I to understand how you feel with that one, since I only have been able to access the actual game once since the update. I believe that I was lucky because I accesed the day of the update, but since then I have never been able to get into the game. Usually I can log onto POL (not always) but not the game and ever time I do get on I get Error 1160 when trying to get onto the game itself.

So rate up Reality, and thanks for the info on how the system works I feel like it is less my fault now.

One of the major reason for the update headache is, quite frankly, POL sucks at connecting to Play Online. There are about 10 different servers (connections) that have to be made in order for you to start playing FFXI, and each one of these connections have to be made successfully before it allows you to continue. If it does fail, POL will step back to redo the previous steps, instead of retrying the step that failed. And certain steps in the process has a Cancel button that is greyed out, which means that your only option if it isn't connecting is to wait for the timeout, or to force quit POL. And the error it displays blames the end user for the snafu, instead of acknowledging that the software design team for POL fubared.

On the more technical side, POL refuses to acknowledge a half-closed connection (TCP connection in CLOSE_WAIT state), so if during update it the connection closes, it will wait for TCP timeout(!) before notifying the user that the connection failed, which is usually 15 minutes IIRC on the Win32 stack. This is a big issue especially during update, as, from what I've seen the following connections are made to update:
1. Connect to POL Lobby server to start FFXI
2. Connect to FFXI update check server
3. Connect to FFXI update server to download update list
4. Check all the files locally
5. Connect to FFXI update server to download all the files required, in a single TCP connection. None of the downloaded files are installed until everything is downloaded, and if the "update" fails it will delete all the downloaded files.

If for whatever reason it cannot connect to the servers, it throws a POL-1160 and starts from step 1. If the connection is terminated, POL blindly tells the user the update is progressing while the connection is in CLOSE_WAIT, and when TCP timeout does occur, it starts at step 1 again.

The content design team for FFXI does a pretty decent job at making Vana'diel an interesting place, although they do make some idiotic decisions like making most new items R/E and most new NM 21-24 pop. However, the software deign team for both FFXI and POL really have no clue when it comes to designing a MMORPG, either from a MMO (the update snafu) or RPG (claiming mechanism) standpoint.

-- Starfox

Edited, Fri Jul 22 08:35:22 2005