June 4, 2013 Regional Circuit

[Evan Reiter]

Tonight's Regional Circuit was interrupted by technical issues. Over 30 pilots were connected at the time; most pilots and controllers lost connection to the server for a brief period.

 

At this time, we are investigating the situation and will provide additional details as they become available. The server is currently online and appears to be stable. More to come.

[Evan Reiter]

We will repeat this event (KCLE & KDTW) in next week's Regional Circuit.

[Evan Reiter]

We have looked at the cause of the technical issues during last night’s event. Unfortunately, resolving connectivity/networking problems is very complex, particularly without physical access to routing equipment. At this time there is no indication of any server security issues. The server was online throughout the event and did not “crash” or shut down at any time. FlightDesk and FSX server applications were running for the duration of the event.

 

Several members (approximately 13 pilots, 30+ observers, and most users of TeamSpeak) remained connected throughout the event while approximately 20 were disconnected in a short period of time about halfway through the event. This means the most likely case is that a router in the “pipe” between our server and most of our members’ connections was the root cause of the issue. Every computer takes a different “path” to connect to the server but at various points those paths converge. It’s likely at one of those convergence points that the router (part of the “internet backbone” and external to BVA) caused the issues for all the computers following that path.

 

Of course we’re as sorry and frustrated as you are to see the busy event disrupted by technical issues beyond the control of any of us. However, we’re happy to announce that we’ll be hosting the same KCLE & KDTW event next week. As a bonus, we’ve updated the scenery update for KCLE to 1.1 to reflect the latest changes to the airport (part of ongoing construction) and flight checked all ILS approaches to ensure that localizers and glideslopes are functioning properly. The latest version of the scenery download is accessible on the Regional Circuit Page.