There appears to be a problem recently with people outside Japan accessing the website (
http://pso2.jp) and servers for this game.
There are many theories flying around, including the idea that there's an IP-ban from SEGA. But I think the best one is that SEGA JP's PSO2 servers have been blacklisted on a blacklist that most ISPs around the world sign up to.
From
http://www.pso-world.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3156561&postcount=11| Quote |
More than likely, the connections to the servers are being blacklisted automatically by companies/services of whom are tasked with monitoring the status of servers around the world.
The way it works is that the backend providers all subscribe to services that monitor server status (think the adblock subscription list when you first install the addon). The services will monitor [Censored]. When a server is deemed a threat/problem either by DDOS, Infection, Spam issues, Hacking, etc, then the service will blacklist the server and update it's list of which the backend providers will automatically block connections to that server.
According to highest level tech support of Cox (which apparently is a Level 2 Backend provider itself and provides a lot of infrastructure itself), this is most likely what happened. The DDOS got Sega's servers blacklisted by the server-monitoring service and as such, the backend providers who subscribe to this service automatically blocked connections. ISPs who rely on the backend providers are inherently affected by this.
I asked if Sega can request for these blocks to happen and I didn't get a clear answer, but I'm lead to believe that he's implying that it all happened automatically. Sega, however, can manually get itself de-listed early if it takes the initiative.
However, if Sega doesn't do such a thing, the blacklist will remain until the server-monitoring service discerns that Sega's servers are no longer an issue, meaning, the automated service has to say that, "Okay. Looks like the coast is clear. Kgo."
How long that will take, Cox couldn't say because the process is automated. But if Sega did do their job, then over the course of time we should see ourselves able to play once again as the service will stop blacklisting Sega's servers and that would be reflected by our ISPs.
(This also leads me to believe that Verizon is not legit, and is [Censored] because it's subscribed to a blacklisting service that sucks at detection. That or is actually IS legit, and it updated its info mad fast and [Censored]. I personally believe the prior over the latter.)
tl;dr - Cox says this is more than likely a backend provider issue in the sense that the server-monitoring service has automatically blacklisted Sega's servers due to DDOS nonsense and that everything will go back to normal whenever the service detects that the DDOS nonsense is no longer a thing. When that is, however, cannot be determined at this time. Sega can get it fixed early if they so please, but as far as the conversation went, it was implied that Sega did not / cannot actually trigger the blacklist themselves.
Take this as you will guys.
Me?
I'm like now 99% sure its not an IP block and we're just victims of automation and SegaC being SegaC.
EDIT: Cox did mention using a website like Safehaus.org in order to find out if the servers are indeed blacklisted, but that's not something us mere mortals can access freely, unfortunately. So I have nothing concrete to offer outside of "he-said she-said" with the highest level tech support at Cox. |
I myself am noticing tracerts to sega.jp and sega.co.jp go through to Japan, but tracert to pso2.jp dies at Plusnet's routers.
C:\Users\Pyrii>tracert pso2.jp
Tracing route to pso2.jp [210.189.209.8]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.254.254
2 21 ms 53 ms 24 ms lo0-central10.ptw-ag03.plus.net [195.166.128.197]
3 20 ms 20 ms 20 ms link-b-central10.ptw-gw02.plus.net [212.159.2.154]
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 * * * Request timed out.
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 * * * Request timed out.
9 ^C
C:\Users\Pyrii>tracert sega.co.jp
Tracing route to sega.co.jp [157.109.161.11]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.254.254
2 349 ms 552 ms 739 ms lo0-central10.ptw-ag03.plus.net [195.166.128.197]
3 21 ms 20 ms 20 ms link-a-central10.ptw-gw01.plus.net [212.159.2.152]
4 20 ms 20 ms 20 ms xe-4-3-0.ptw-cr01.plus.net [212.159.0.244]
5 * * * Request timed out.
6 88 ms 88 ms 86 ms 100ge1-1.core1.nyc4.he.net [72.52.92.166]
7 153 ms 150 ms 149 ms 10ge10-3.core1.lax1.he.net [72.52.92.226]
8 153 ms 153 ms 153 ms pacnet.10gigabitethernet2-3.core1.lax1.he.net [216.218.223.206]
9 270 ms 270 ms 270 ms ip-202-147-0-52.asianetcom.net [202.147.0.52]
10 267 ms 267 ms 268 ms ge3-1-0-0.gw3.nrt4.asianetcom.net [202.147.0.55]
11 268 ms 268 ms 268 ms gi6-0-0.gw1.nrt4.asianetcom.net [202.147.0.229]
12 268 ms 268 ms 268 ms xe-1-0-3-0.gw2.nrt4.asianetcom.net [202.147.0.237]
13 268 ms 268 ms 268 ms MBI-0041-VET-0003.asianetcom.net [203.192.149.238]
14 256 ms 256 ms 256 ms ae0.transit1.nihonbashi.vectant.ne.jp [163.139.128.158]
15 268 ms 268 ms 268 ms 116.91.136.110
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 ^C
Could someone check the blacklist for PSO2 JP's servers and see if they could be removed so access to the game could be returned?
pso2.jp : 210.189.209.8
pretty much all PSO2 JP's servers: 210.189.208.0/24
I guarantee you the servers are not "In Maintenance". Apparently the client will say that even if the server is offline.
