Downloadable Contents, Connection Issue

I´ve had some back and forths with EA customer support as well;

Using this tool; ftp://ftp.ea.com/pub/origin/patches/uo/uotrace.exe I was able to traceroute towards the servers that handle Origin activity. 

By going to advanced and tracerouting to easo.ea.com I came to the most startling conclusion; From my place to the Origin servers that handle DLC, there are 16 hops. 2 of those block packets, making communication impossible. One of them is an IP in Redwood, an EA office - that one is a firewall that blocks any packet not coming from an EA application, the other was a LOCAL IP. 

Now this would suggest I have something in the lines of hardware connected on my network that blocks the communications between my machine and EA through Dead Space, however, what's most peculiar is that this IP keeps appearing on the list. Even after reinstalling my machine completely, eliminating any software faults, and even if I connect directly on my modem, even after I switched modems (I contacted my ISP about this, they offered to swap routers to elminate any possible involvement from their end). So with no physical devices on the network aside from my modem and my PC, there is this local ghost-IP dat blocks any packets intended to travel from here to EA.

The invidual hops which Uotrace identified are each pingable individually and accept packets from my machine - it's packets intended to go all the way that get blocked. For the less technically inclined - every computer can connect to any computer on the internet if this is the receiving machine's intent (to receive incoming connections). However, if we just haphazardly connect to any computer we intend to connect to, we might run into issues such as lag due to long distances.

To counter this, information goes from machine to machine in short bursts over shorter distances. Tracerouting is a practice that lets someone map those bursts to see where your information goes to before it ends up at it's destination. Each machine in that route is called a hop. If you play co-op, for instance, you might have 20ms worth of lag. If you were to ping the server handling co-op directly from where I live, Holland, that would get a delay of 150ms (and that's a ping command from Windows, being 32 bytes small, the amount of data for co-op is by comparison vastly larger). This is the reason we communicate through these bursts over short distances - it eases network congestion, allowing better connections. 

Now - I can see all the hops I have to make, every machine my information has to pass through before it reaches EA. It gets stopped at two points, an EA firewall and a local IP. The local IP could either be a blockade of some sort, set up on ISP-level or a basic rejection of foreign packets coming from traceroutes. The latter would imply my data would pass through normally if done from the game. Option two would be the firewall in Redwood - it should allow data intended for/originating from Origin or EA games to pass, but doesn't - either my game sends corrupt data, a checksum or validation failed or my account is blocked in some way. 

Perhaps everyone facing this problem should run the uotrace and post the results. Here's mine, and it's garbled, but line by line, it makes sense. The first address is my router, the second is this local ghost IP. 100% packet loss means this address doesn't communicate with me or allows data to pass through it, the third last host is the EA firewall;

Host Name IP Address Hop Ping Time Ping Avg % Loss Pkts r/s Ping best/worst
* Unknown Host * 192.168.178.1 1 0ms 0ms 0% 6 / 6 0ms / 0ms
* Unknown Host * 10.223.0.1 2 6ms 100% 0 / 5
tb-rc0001-cr102-irb-202.core.as91213.51.150.193 3 6ms 6ms 0% 5 / 5 6ms / 7ms
asd-tr0409-cr101-ae5-0.core.as914213.51.158.154 4 9ms 11ms 0% 5 / 5 8ms / 23ms
ae5.ams20.ip4.tinet.net 77.67.64.65 5 10ms 11ms 0% 5 / 5 9ms / 21ms
xe-3-0-0.er1.ams1.nl.above.net 64.125.14.77 6 9ms 14ms 0% 5 / 5 8ms / 37ms
ge-3-2-0.mpr1.ams1.nl.above.net 64.125.26.82 7 10ms 10ms 0% 5 / 5 9ms / 13ms
xe-5-3-0.cr2.lga5.us.above.net 64.125.25.57 8 84ms 84ms 0% 5 / 5 83ms / 85ms
xe-2-2-0.cr2.dca2.us.above.net 64.125.26.105 9 93ms 95ms 0% 5 / 5 90ms / 114ms
xe-7-2-0.cr1.dca2.us.above.net 64.125.26.41 10 98ms 105ms 0% 5 / 5 98ms / 129ms
xe-0-0-1.er1.iad10.us.above.net 64.125.31.206 11 99ms 102ms 0% 5 / 5 97ms / 114ms
64.125.199.186.t00673-01.above.ne64.125.199.186 12 132ms 139ms 0% 5 / 5 132ms / 149ms
* Unknown Host * 159.153.93.2 13 97ms 100% 0 / 5
* Unknown Host * 159.153.225.30 14 99ms 98ms 0% 5 / 5 98ms / 99ms
meav5-pub.pt.iad.ea.com 159.153.226.105 15 98ms 97ms 0% 5 / 5 97ms / 98ms

To get your own list - open the tool I linked in the beginning - click no when prompted to download a server list and in the tool, click on options > advanced. Fill out easo.ea.com in the dropdown-box and click the fourth button from the left, marked Traceroute. When the hosts are listed, click Poll, the button on the right from TraceRoute. Let it run for about 5 to 25 packets, then click the button again to stop polling. Edit > Copy and you have your results. 

Let's figure this out. What's going on and why can't we access the DLC-stores?