Disconnect. When Did It Happen?

So i leave my bazaar mule out in Rolan from time to time when i'm at work. When i come home the char is disconnected. I know my provider sucks and i d/c every day, but is there any way to find out WHEN EXACTLY i d/ced?
Something like a log file or idk what.

If i d/c after 30~60 mins it wouldnt be worth it at all to leave the char online, so it would be good to know for how long the char stays ingame.

(Note: I turned off the automatic-log out feature after being inactive for a certain amount of time)

No way to really know for sure when it happened. It also happened to me last night. My best guess for me is around 11:00 pm CST. I can only say this because i use the chat log function of Windower to get ToD's on NM's.

When I got home from work at around 8:45 this morning i noticed my character disconnected and the Windower's stored chat log stopped around 11pm. Otherwise there's no other way I can think of to get the time.

You can call your ISP and ask them.

Or, if you use windower, you can use the Logger plug in. It records your chat log and makes it into a text file. Just start it up before you go to work, and see where it ends. It's not a guaranteed way, but it'll at least give you an estimate.

When I was plagued with dcs all the time, I left myself logged in to my Ventrilo server, and checked the logs on my host's site after i got home from work and saw I was dc'd from FFXI. That way when I called my ISP to report the problem, I had an exact time frame.

Granted, I realize not everyone owns a Ventrilo server, but that's how I did it.

I'm pretty sure you can do it with windower, there's a plugin that records your chat-log to a text file or something (I've never actually used it), so you could use that. Then just to be sure you can set up a looping script to that just says /echo - every 5 minutes or something. I also can't remember how to set-up a looping script, but you could just copy and paste this a whole heap of times into a regular script:

input /echo -;
wait 300

That's my super low-tech solution if no-one comes up with a better one.

edit: okay two people beat me to it, so yeah, setting up a simple script as well as using logger will help you pinpoint the time.

if you ever dc while you go afk you may want to make sure you have the auto logout *** set to never. if that's already set, then your best bet is to get logger and see when the last time you got checked is and then assume it was somewhere within the last 4-5minutes of that.

I work as third line technical support, so I don't know if you would consider this "outside of your comfort zone" but if I was asked to provide you with the time at which you lost connection, I wouldn't use either the game or your ISP to try and establish an answer.

If you know how / are comfortable with logging in to your router, then almost all routers now days keep log files and the stats screens will show "connection up-time" and other such information.

Your ISP are not likely to log blips, nor care to provide you with such information if you were to phone them. However if you log on to your router, it will tell you very simply how long the current connection has been up for. This of course will only tell you how long the connection has been up since the most recent loss of connectivity, but if it stores logs (which most modern routers do), it will be able to tell you to the minute how many times / when you lost internet throughout the day.

Hope it helps!

Here's what I did when the same thing was happening to me. Before I would leave myself AFK I would make a note of my time played, and then when I would come back, if I was dced I would look at my time played again which would give me a rough estimate of how long it was before I disconnected.

if you are in an area where those hourly conquest updates are done, you could use those to narrow it down a bit.

- an idea why you might be dropping too though. Back a few years I worked part time with Comcast in the DC area. We did CMTS (basically the main brain units for the cable modems) reboots daily. They were rotated so all where never shut off at the same time and always had more than one up/down frequency for each channel going as well. 99% of the user base would never notice when maintenance was done because it never dropped your connection completely. Some games and VPN clients would notice it but only enough to kick them a second or less. I didn't play FFXI then, not sure if that hit it or not.

- Also our EAS (Emergency Alert System) would run a test at the exact same time to specific models of the new (at the time...) digital cable boxes. It's just a packet of info that tells the box to switch to the EAS channel for a real or test message. You know the "this is only a test. if this had been an actual emergency ..." message you get on the radio and TV sometimes? Same thing. Well, that pulse of information screws with some older cable modems floating around and drops them for a second. Usually a firmware update (if your manuf. has one) will fix it.

If you live in the DC area using Comcast cable, and your FFXI randomly drops every night at exactly the same time -- there's a pretty good guess why.

Lastly ... Comcast can kiss my *** -- one of the worst companies in the world to work for [i.e. "sorry ma'am, your computer is too old or defective" but I really know it's our shotty fiber nodes and rusty cable taps in your neighborhood that aren't on this years budget to replace and I just can't tell you because my nondisclosure statement said I wouldn't while employed with the company]) -- thank you.

***I just wasted most my internet time today on that paragraph haha ... damn 15 min time limits while deployed, oh well back to work.