Players are getting their API request failed

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gamerishere asked Sep 13, '18

Players are getting their API request failed

Hi,

I created a thread where I asked some help regarding Photon and PlayFab, but found that Photon issue was completely related to PlayFab. At first, I thought it's PlayFab, then second time when i was able to connect properly using anohter internet (ISP), I thought it's my ISP.

BUT NOW, my players started complaining that they are getting their API requests failed and stuck in connecting (because I kept the settings in result section of API result which is not coming and instead, error is being thrown).

I tested the problem myself earlier and I used to get two related errors:

"Couldn't connect to server" and "Timeout was reached".

@brendan told me it's completely related to ISP, so I investigated the issue with them and they showed complete support and were 100% sure that they didn't change anything.

In my case, the issue continued for 3 days and now it got solved "automatically" in my main internet where I had issues before. I asked my ISP if they fixed anything and they are saying they didn't change anything.

There are five things that bring me to the conclusion that the problem is "completely" from PlayFab or its servers or where their servers are located and those things are:

- If it would be only related to my own ISP, there won't be any coincidence that my players from Bangladesh started getting such errors. It's very unlikely to be an ISP issue.

- I instructed my player to ask his ISP and check the problem with them, he contacted and their ISP gave the same reply as my ISP gave which was "we have nothing to do with your calls failure and are not blocking anything.

- I instructed him to check with another internet connection and he checked with cellular network, worked like a charm. Just like me.

- The issue is happening with only some of the players and not all. My personal case solved automatically and my game started working properly on my internet where I had issues.

- The game is live from several months and had no problems in the past so, it's all of a sudden that we are getting these strange f**king errors.

Please check the situation with:

- Your PlayFab API things

- Your PlayFab servers

- Check with AWS if your servers are located there.

- Anywhere you feel the issue is coming from.

As for my Fiddler, there is no need and no way to get fiddler captures now because my personal issue is resolved "automatically" without any fix from ISP or from PlayFab. I can't request my clients to get fiddler captures as they may not be technical enough to do that. DO SOMETHING FOR IT PLEASE! It really hurts.

Player Data

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Answer 1 · 2018-09-14T03:44:04Z

Andy answered Sep 14, '18

Hi gamerishere,

Based on your reports, you were hitting http 502 errors communicating messages to our servers. 502 errors are notoriously hard to track down as they can originate from any hop a request makes through the internet. Additionally, we have seen no other similar reports from any other titles. I'm truly sorry that you ran into the issues you did, but I assure you, we made no changes to our service configuration over the last couple weeks that would have impacted your game in the way you describe.

You did mention, at some point, that the errors were intermixed with successes. This seems to indicate a transient issue. It also indicates that a robust retry strategy could potentially mitigate this and other connectivity issues that could arise. If you'd like to go down that route, I'd be happy to advise on things like retry frequency and back-off strategy.

5

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brendan commented · Sep 14, 2018 at 03:53 AM

Yes, to be clear, what I stated in the other thread is that you were having an issue with packets simply not reaching us. The most common reason for this is an ISP, but as Andy says, it can happen literally anywhere in the communication path.

I can assure you though, if there were any issue with the PlayFab services a) you wouldn't be the only person running into it, and b) we would be getting alerts. Neither of those things are the case, so we have to conclude that the issue is somewhere in the path between us.

For retries, please be sure to include an exponential backoff - so, if a call fails, wait a second before trying again. If it fails again, wait a few seconds. Then maybe 15, then 30, etc. Basically, don't re-try immediately after getting an error, as if there's a temporary performance issue, that just creates a "logjam" that takes time to clear.

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Brian Jordan brendan commented · Sep 15, 2018 at 07:38 PM

Hmm interesting, we started seeing what we believe is a Custom Game Server performance regression in the past couple of days https://community.playfab.com/questions/23216/active-server-or-network-performance-issues-with-c.html

This other perf-related thread popped up yesterday, but sounds even more unrelated: https://community.playfab.com/questions/23182/game-manager-performance-issues.html

Not sure what the network/server topology looks like, but wonder if some part of this could be somehow related. (Likely just coincidence though)

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brendan Brian Jordan commented · Sep 16, 2018 at 12:05 AM

Those would be unrelated. What this thread concerns is that he has clients making API calls, and those calls aren't reaching the PlayFab servers (which are completely distinct from hosted custom game servers).

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gamerishere brendan commented · Sep 15, 2018 at 11:18 PM

I don't know and I'm still unsure how it could be related to ISP. My player just reported that he got everything correctly in the morning but the problem started again in the evening. He says he checked his internet which is working fine.

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brendan gamerishere commented · Sep 16, 2018 at 12:12 AM

So again, no one's saying it's your ISP. What we said was that the most common cause of issues like this is the ISP mucking with firewall settings or throttling the connection. It could just as easily be some other software on your client device interfering - virus software, local firewalls, etc. - or any of a number of other issues with the user's internet connection.

For example, if your player is on a cable modem connection, his bandwidth may well be shared with several houses around him (or if he's in a condo/apartment, by any number of neighboring units). In the evening, if all his neighbors are watching streaming videos, that could result in a worse connection for him.

When you get a report like this, the things to check are:

Do you get the same result on multiple devices at that location?

Do you get the same result if you try from a completely different location?

Connectivity issues can be caused by a massive array of things - there's no single simple cause for all of them. But if there were ever any issues on our side, you would see them in our status page, here: http://status.playfab.com

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