PS4 -Dressing Room error playing EASHL

@bures solid idea. I am not local to anyone who has the game running smoothly. Hopefully someone in the thread can give this a go.

@buresI was just thinking about testing you idea myself, but good that you said it aloud already 😉 Haven't yet had a chance to test it...

@NHLiveSupport any chance you guys have some updates?

Thanks! 

@NHLiveSupport First off thank you for being responsive on this thread, many times when issues come up EA contact can prove to be challenging. Second, you guys really did a solid job with the game this year. All the PS4 players I have talked to love the game (besides the menus 😉 )

I know I'm in this thread on behalf of 5-6 buddies who love the game and are frustrated they aren't able to play it smoothly. All the PS4 players I have come in contact with are weighed down by this dressing room error we have been discussing. If there is anything else we can do to help discover a solution please let us know. 

I haven't got the first clue about how intricate this error code might actually be, but I do know that MANY loyal NHL fans are having a tough time paying $70+ for a great game that they are largely unable to play. At the very least an update every couple of days may give enough hope to PS4 users and allow you to hang on to some of your player base.

Thank you as always!    

What ISP does everyone have? I have Spectrum.

I can only play club consistently with the test connection method. I have to restart app/test connection (whichever) tell my friends to meet me already readied up in lobby and we have to search ASAP for a club game (which finds players very fast) and I will get in about 98% reliability. If any friend plays around with loadouts, or doesn't ready up immediately I might as well re-test the connection because I won't get in.

This doesn't work for Drop in because the lobbies take forever....if they ever find a game. 

Today I got a new cable modem from my operator but unfortunately it didn’t help a bit ☹️

I can still only play one game....

So now I have tested opening  ports, using wired and Wireless connection with my modem and tried two models with no luck. Only using my mobile hotspot works. 

@EA_Roger

@NHLiveSupport

I don't have this issue normally but I was able to reproduce it in Finland.

I made a router from a Linux machine between PS4 and WAN and I was tracking connections that EASHL is making. EASHL created TCP connections to 159.153.21.158 port 443 (https) and some of these connections were idling. They had traffic again when starting a match successfully. While these connections were idling, I dropped these connections with iptables and I was able to see the error when starting a new match.

Steps I did:

1. Start CHEL
2. Track TCP connections that are idling (having no data transfer for some time)
3. Drop/Reject those idling connections with iptables (using --reject-with tcp-reset flag)
4. Starting a match from dressing room (I was in EASHL Drop in), the error is displayed: "DRESSING ROOM ERROR Dressing Room found an unexpected error. Please try again."

If you are interested in more detailed instructions, contact me. So most probably those who experience this issue, have an internet connection where idle TCP connections are dropped by a timeout. Changing a router or using DMZ does not help if the timeout is defined by internet provider.

Fix Suggestion for EA

Handle HTTPS connection errors better in NHL19. When making a query using an existing connection and it fails (due to timed out and dropped connection), make a new connection and retry the query.

This would make sense because  a few posts ago someone was saying he had to play the game within 5 minutes, I sure as heck can't sit in lobbies more then 2 minutes myself or I will error.

@poqwe

I'm using DNA also but I'm using 4G mobile broadband connection. Are you using DNA cable connection? My friend is using it and he is having this issue.

If you have telnet or something like that available, you can try make a simple connection test:

telnet 159.153.21.158 443

and see if that gets timed out in a few minutes.

@EA_Roger

@NHLiveSupport

@iqqmuT

Yes, Cable connection..

...and I was able to see the same 5min behaviour from my laptop PC by opening he telnet connection and running WireShark.

After 5min it's closed or somehow unreachable (I really don't know much about using WireShark 🙂 )

So it is some related to ISP but EA could anyway do something in the next patch to make NHL 19 handle the possible dropping of long time idle connection as it seems to be a wide spread problem and not just me or just a single operator in Finland.

Im not great with computers n stuff but is there anyway i can see if thats my issue?

@iqqmuT I'm assuming this is complicated but on my PC would I be able to mimic traffic as if it were coming from my PS4 on the connections that need to stay open so they don't time out?

Also for those tired of watching a full test your connection run through, quickly unchecking/rechecking the Connect To Internet box in the network menu does the same thing

@colt45711  I don't know any easier way to test it but using some tools like telnet. 😕 It would nice to have a simple online tool to test idle timeout issue.

@Jpmarchick  Unfortunately you can't have any else workaround for this timeout issue but to try to use some other internet connection.

I wrote an online tester for the timeout issue, can you guys tell what is your result?

Hope the tester works correctly! 🤓

Update: online tester did not work

@poqweThanks for testing the tool! I don't have a faulty connection, so I'm not sure if it works correctly. I sent you a private message so we can discuss more about it.

Update: The online tester did not work.

@EA_Roger@NHLiveSupport

I opened https://159.153.21.158 (in my case NHL 19 was using that server) with my browser and I noticed that it generates Keep-Alive HTTP header in the response:

Keep-Alive: timeout=120, max=731

@EA_Roger@NHLiveSupport

I went to my friend's home where this issue occurs. I tested that all idle TCP connections got cut within 10 minutes. I used Linux router with WireShark to capture all network while the Dressing Room error occurred. If you are interested in the network capture files (pcap-ng), send me a private message and I will share them!

Anyway, it definitely looks like the problem has to do with idle TCP connections that are cut. Related to this error, especially the https connection to 159.153.21.158 seems to be vital (at least in my area). If it fails, Dressing Room error is displayed.

While I was testing, I saw a new error, I have no idea if this is related to the same issue or not. I have a network capture logs from this also. (Sorry about Finnish 🙂

Suggestion #1

I noticed that NHL19/PS4 does not send TCP Keep-Alive packets, they would keep the connection alive. I was thinking if Xbox is sending those packets, maybe that's why it doesn't have the issue.

Suggestion #2

Better error handling when HTTPS connection is dropped. Reconnect if needed.

We don't have an update on this as of yet on our side of things and we are continuing our investigation. Once again, I know you don't see the actual progress on your end but all of the data you've provided so far has helped us progress a lot. I'll check if our devs & QA still need further information from you at this time & s soon as I'm able to give you specifics I will update you.

The workarounds provided here seem to help certain players, which is why I'm encouraging you to try them on your end. We aren't dismissing the issue at all, or claiming it's up to you to find the solution, we just want you to try these workarounds in case they help you.

Thanks,

Roger.