Complicated Connection Error with the EA-Servers
Hello, dear forum.
I'm writing this forum post with the little hope I have left after struggling through customer service from both my ISP and EA every day for over a week.
My problem: Since I bought "Battlefield 5", I can't start a multiplayer match. I get the following error message every time: "Game Disconnected. Connection to EA-Online timed out. Your network bandwidth and/or network latency may not meet the requirements for this game".
Here comes the funny part: I can't start a multiplayer match, however I can join my friends if they are already in the game. When I do this, my internet works fine, I can play completely normally (as in any other game). I can also access the content in the store and Battlefield menu, which require an internet connection. If I give myself a hotspot via mobile, I can also play, only then just with mediocre ping.
My investigation: (Disclaimer: The whole nonsense of "Please restart the PS4 " I've been through several times now with EA, and it's not the cause of the issue).
The problem that I'm experiencing is outside of the protocols that EA's customer service works with. They seems anyway overwhelmed with the problem. Via traceroute (is attached) I found out that the problem is with the "Zayo-Group". The "Zayo-Group" provides communications infrastructure services, including fiber and bandwidth connectivity. It seems to me that my connection is flowing through the lines of this group to the servers of EA. The traceroute shows that my connection is fine up to the hops of the "Zayo-Group". As soon as my connection reaches them, my ping increases and the connection drops. So the problem I have is with the internet routing. For some reason, it deteriorates as soon as the servers of the "Zayo Group" are reached.
My internet provider (Vodafone) has also confirmed this to me (the internet connection leaves my router flawlessly, problems only occur with the "Zayo Group").
The solution: Apparently the problem lies with the "Zayo group". They are responsible for the Internet routing. Now the question remains, which authority could solve these problems. Here, unfortunately, my ISP and EA blame each other. The technical department of my ISP has seen the data and noted that the Internet is running fine from their side. The "Zayo Group" has no cooperation with my ISP. EA on the other hand, continues to claim that the problem is with my ISP. I am told that all steps have been performed according to protocol, and therefore the problem cannot lie with EA (Between us: I doubt the competence of EA employees, as they are obviously not trained for such individual cases as mine. Maybe it is naive of me to expect that the individual employees know about EA's cooperation).
Finally, I am not sure how to proceed. It has also come to my attention that this problem is not entirely an isolated case. If you type "EA-Help Zayo" in the Google search, you will find countless entries from this forum with the same problem. It gives me little hope that in all these forum entries I did not find one person whose problem was finally solved.
