Rapidly dropping connection

May not apply but windows update issued a patch that does exactly what you say ,they have now issued a repair and a diag tool
good luck

They do? You don't happen to know which one do you? As far as I know, both machines have the latest patches istalled.

I'm having this problem as well.. no lag, it doesn't seem to be an issue with the connection, it just suddenly returns to the primary machine. xSCORPx: can you give us a hint on what this repair and diagnostic tool is and/or how we might find it?

If Multiplicity suddenly returns to the primary (usually the top right corner) this means the network connection between the 2 pcs had a problem.  Multiplicity will then try to reconnect in the background.

If you are not using MP 1.05 then I would suggest you upgrade to that as we tweaked the code to detect dropped connections.  Please make sure the primary & secondary pcs are running 1.05 as mixing versions will not work correctly.

If the drop happens every X seconds like clockwork then it is likely to be a case of mismatched files (usually every 6-10 seconds when that happens)

Wireless networks may drop due to interference and if you are using a wired network I would check that there is no damage to the cables.  A minor cable fault can remain undetected for months. 

The other thing to check is that the network is not saturated or the router (if you are using one) is not struggling with other work.  Some 10MBit routers have been known to break when connected to a fast internet connection of similar speeds.

Also make sure quick machine disconnect detection is disabled in MP (controlled via system tray menu->advanced user settings dialog)

Both machines are using 1.05. Interestingly, when it drops, it does move the mouse to the top right, but if I move the mouse to the left side and try to get back to the slave machine, it always reconnects instantly (in fact it does so so quickly it's not at all obvious that it dropped).

The drop can happen really often, but I'm not sure that it's a predictable period, I'll have to look at this more carefully.

I get the same behavior on both my wireless and lan connection. The lan is going through a 100MBit switch, so I'd have thought that it's not saturated.

Neither machine as quick machine disconnect detection enabled.

What's weird is that it worked perfectly for quite a while, but now it's started misbehaving, it's really misbehaving.

It was working just fine with the desktop on the wired connection for some time before this started happening, but then it started happening suddenly, without anything having changed. The suggestion of a Windows Update does make sense, as it seems like it was around that time that it started happening. Even if not a direct cause, but maybe something along the lines of it affecting my firewall, etc., which in turn affects the connection. I use NOD32 on the system that it's disconnecting from, but I can say that I saw some noticible improvment with one of my other machines when I disabled Kaspersky v6 and Prevx1 on the primary desktop, and eliminated a whole lot of lag when I uninstalled SocketShield (filters exploit code out of HTTP traffic).The laptops on the WiFi connection got a little flakey from time to time, but that was obviously a WiFi issue.

I've spend enormous amounts of time working with Multiplicity Pro since I got it 4 months ago; tweaking the network, uninstalling, reinstalling, changing settings, tweaking Windows, finding and installing tools, tweaking/uninstalling other apps, formatting, sending emails, even new networking hardware, and it only gets resolved for a week or two, at most, before something new (but similar) crops up. I'm sorry, but I'm no longer willing to accept "it's your network", "you probably have mismatched versions", or "uninstall/reinstall Multiplicity and/or Stardock Central". I've been doing that endlessly, and in the end I've had to find what did work on my own. The fact that Synergy is working just fine suggests to me that these problems are nothing that can't be worked around within the program, and my guess is that it just needs some additonal optimization and error control. Synergy is open source, so why not take a look and see what they're doing differently? One striking difference is that even when a system does get those quick disconnects/reconnects (my old test machine did this), Synergy just pauses for a second - The cursor doesn't go back to the primary machine or anything, it just stays right where it is and picks right back up when the connection returns.

I've offered to work with Stardock several times now, to give them anything and everything they might need to see this stuff resolved, and Stardock is the first company I've encountered that has not been willing to take me up on that. The offer still stands, but unfortuantely I think I'm at the point that I just have to give up on trying to dig up some worthwhile information on my own without getting any feedback. Until it gets fixed, I'm going to have to just use Synergy, which I really didn't want to do.

The diagnostic tool is KB914440 ,it mentions use with a service person or remote type help, whether oneself can use it i have no idea ,i also can't confirm if the connecton to the adsl that i have was affected by any particular patch as there were issues with my jack point as well as two bloom'n filters at exactly your time frame...lol...i only new about a patch issue thru a newsletter email from tech republic,and once i went to ms update site it was there ready for download as was a few patches ,the only thing i can suggest as a test is do a roll back before any june updates and see how it goes,if it works then one of those patches is the cause that includes a roll back of any updates to the stardock software also

Don't know if it applies but what about a normal network connection between the two comps without the two desk thing if it can hold it then it narrows the field,finally if your unable to fix i need a couple of new comps
try these sites for help
tech republic
caedes
cyber tech help
pc mechanic
cnet
Help2Go

unrelated useful sites
afterdawn.com
radified forums

EDIT: even try disabling antivirus,firewalls,real time spyware scanners etc ,use a diff wire,any filters,modem other than that i'm out of my depth

We have tweaked a future build to attempt a reconnect quickly in the event of a disconnect & only throw the mouse back to the primary if this connect does not happen with 1 second.  This should help I think.

Obviously we have to throw the mouse back to the primary at some point when connections are lost because otherwise you would find your mouse was stuck on the other PC which would be a problem.

Applications which fiddle with the network sockets may well cause problems because most MP packets are time sensitive.  Any delays and the mouse will start to lag on the secondary.  A 0.25 second delay on sending data to a web site is unlikely to be noticed, but will be very obvious with Multiplicity.

If Multiplicity was working fine for a long period of time and then suddenly stopped working correctly then assuming Multiplicity was not updated, it seems logical to assume an outside factor is causing the problem.

Has the networking been touched in any way, have you installed a new driver, or filter driver (say a VPN).  Has the firewall been updated?

Remember to include both the primary & secondary machines when you think about these things.  It may be the secondary is dropping the connection rather than the primary.

Additionally, we should see if your machines have anything in common.  Do you have MP or MP Pro, how many secondary pcs do you have connected, are they both on at the same time and are they both connected via wireless or wired connections, what firewalls are used, what network adapters (if its nvidia then please turn off any 'offloading' features it has).

A large number of machines at Stardock are running Multiplicity and I do all my vista development via it without any problems, so its not a case of Multiplicity is inherently unreliable.  Something is causing the network connections to drop.  Either Multiplicity is dropping it because the 'are you alive check' fails (not sure if synergy has one of those), or because the network stack has detected a problem and has dropped the connection.

Well fortunately for me, and unfortunately for you; work did a host of networking changes over the holiday weekend, changing switches, changing our whole network configuration etc. As of this morning, Multiplicity worked all day with no hitch. As I said, good for me, but not really good from the point of view of finding out exactly what sort of blip was causing the problem.

That said, I've not actually noticed too much of a change on any other networked infrastructure, I mean I can do builds on samba and nfs shares with no problem and only a little bit faster then I could do previously. I'm sure that you are right and there was some sort of network issue causing all of this, but with no diagnosics it's very hard to help and get you any relevant information.

The bit about disabling offloading features on nVidia NICs did it for me. I'm a little surprised that never came up before. Thank you very much, Neil

I have heard the nvidia offloading feature is broken in some way and that rather proves it.  I will see if we can make MP detect that feature is on and prompt the user to turn it off.

Had you manually turned that feature on, or was it on by default?

It was on by default, I don't normally go into the advanced features for onboard components. This was on an nForce3 board, in case it matters.

I also ended up reformatting this machine shortly after that, and those features didn't seem to make a difference after a fresh install (although I disabled them anyway). Considering that it started like that before and then started flaking out a couple/few weeks afterwards, I rather wonder if this is more of a cumulative effect.

Was the machine with the nforce board the primary or secondary?

It was the primary. The problem was occuring on all machines, and stopped on all machines when I changed the settings.

I was having a similar problem - MP worked fine until recently but then I started losing the connection within 1-2 seconds. Cursor did NOT come back to the primary. 1.05 update did not fix, but reinstalling the OS on the secondary did. Win2003, SP1, have not applied other updates yet - connected via crossover cable at the moment. Had shared the box with someone else & something happened. Will never know what.

Well it has started happening for me again. It's not as bad as it was, but every so often it will drop. It's just like before where it disconnects when the primary machine sends a TCP out, for whatever reason. I'm sure you, Neil, know what this is.. it happens every couple mins, but previously it was not causing a disconnect. This is still the newer SiS onboard, which has only a couple features in the driver.


Note: I did update all machines to 1.05b(b).004, but the problem started before the update and continued. It started out once in a great while and has steadily grown more frequent.

It sounds like something on your network is failing if the problem is becoming more & more common.

I would strongly suggest changing the network cable if possible.

Unfortunately no such luck. Swapped out the cable and same thing. It's just like last time, though, where it was fine after format and about a month later...

I have noticed that disabling Kaspersky's web scanner on the primary machine does show some improvment. My other systems run NOD32 and all use Prevx1.

Updating my NIC driver (Marvell Yukon) worked for a few days, but then today I was working and Multiplicity was just gone.. it seemed to have just crashed without any error message or other indication of having done so. Later, after restarting it, I realized that it wasn't showing the status screen anymore, so I re-enabled that and also set "quick detection of disconnected secondary machines" and the problem immediatly came back. It happened a bit less when I disabled 'quick detection' again, but it still happened. I ran NOD32's feature to repair the network (which refreshes the network stack, renumbers LSPs, unloads and reloads the network driver, and whatever else), rebooted, and all seems well for the time being. The network connection seemed perfectly fine otherwise.

Please do not enable quick disconnection.

It is an advanced user feature for very specific cases (basically when you are using the secondary machine under a debugger and wish to regain control on the primary very quickly)  By its nature it will disconnect you if the network delays by even quite a small amount.

Long since disabled now. I had started using it after first experiencing these issues because in previous versions it would sometimes take several seconds to reconnect after these disconnections, and that feature helped a bit.

I'm convinced that this is a problem with 1.05. I was running 1.02 between 2 machines without a single problem for months, I reinstalled XP on the machine without changing a ny hardware, and suddenly my connection drop every 45 seconds. I've had to go back to a second keyboard and mouse because I can't stay connected long enough to get anything done. Is there a location where I can download 1.02 to see if the problem is still there? I have exactly the same config, SP's and hotfixes as on the old install.

OK, thanks to Google Desktop I found my old download of 1.02, and guess what? I don't have the problem with 1.02.

Here is what I did.

Uninstalled 1.05 which had the problems.
Rebooted
Installed 1.02
Rebooted
Problem gone.
Uninstalled 1.02
Rebooted
Re-installed 1.05, problem was back.

Then I went back to 1.02. SOMETHING changed in 1.05 that made this happen.

scot3818:  When upgrading to MP 1.05 you MUST ensure the secondary is also upgraded correctly.  If it is not then Multiplicity will automatically drop the connection as the are you alive check changed between 1.02 and 1.05.

A fixed pattern of disconnects is almost certainly a mismatched version issue.

Neil; I did upgrade both machines at the same time, as a matter of fact my secondary is still running 1.05 while the primary is 1.02 and all is just fine. When both machines were on 1.05 I had the problems I explained. If there is indeed a problem when 2 machines are not on the same version, wouldn't it also be an idea to add a warning box alerting the user of that fact?