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No or bad challenge for your address

Postby Biondo » Tue Feb 05, 2013 9:32 pm

This is starting to be boring.

What does it means this error message? "No or bad challenge for your address" (see: http://lameclan.altervista.org/blog/faq ... s-and-now/).
No, seriously, who was the genius that, under a creative electrocution, chose to explain a connection problem in those terms?

No clue, no hint, no suggestion about what's going on, and about possible solutions.

It's two days (but it's not the first time this happens to me) that I'm not able to connect to a couple of servers (Baller Bude and Circus Novus).
"Wonderful", you could say. The problem is that I'm not the only one. And we don't like to loose players. Do we?

What the hell does it mean "No or bad challenge for your address"?

In past times, I was used to type "\reconnect" in SG console, and it worked. I was able to connect again (don't know where this workaround is documented, though. I suppose nowhere). The fact is that it doesn't work any more.

I wrote to server admins (I admit I've written to one of them only 5 minutes ago), but players should not be expected to write to server admins to solve a connection problem that doesn't depend on their behaviour.

A better error message is necessary.
[Sorry, I'm angry, but don't take me too seriously. Just try to solve the problem if you can. Thank you].

Your electrocuted Biondo. With love :)
Last edited by Biondo on Tue Feb 05, 2013 11:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: No or bad challenge for your address

Postby Biondo » Tue Feb 05, 2013 10:47 pm

As a side effect, Paladin is the most crowded server tonight :)
Never seen something like that before.
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Re: No or bad challenge for your address

Postby sunrise » Tue Feb 05, 2013 11:28 pm

1.check your firewall
2.check your router

But since only @spi's servers are affected, i would guess doc did some experiments.
Anyway you can google a bit there are tons people who have the same problem in other q3 based games.

Quote from: cheb on July 03, 2010, 12:51:46 pm
"No or bad challenge for your address" -- I receive this message far too often for my tastes.
Mostly when I try to enter the 4Fishes CTF server.

I'd like to know what the hell is that "challenge" and why is it bad Sad

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A challenge is a special packet sent by the server to the client to establish a crypted data channel between clients and server.

The binaries used for OA085 ( both client and server ) contain a fix for an exploit that allows a valid challenge to be reused. The fix prevents this situation by assuring that every challenge is different for every client that tries to connect to a server and so making it unique for every client.

The problem that you had could be probably caused when you try to connect to a server using the oa081 binary ( which doesn't have this fix) with the new oa085 client and/or viceversa.

Another thing that could explain the invalidation of the challenge is that your UDP packets are not routed directly between your client and the server but they pass through a NAT/proxy/net node that operates IP address and or port substitution.

Something like this :

- your client sends a request
- it passes through a NAT/proxy/net node that operates IP address and/or port substitution ( not forwarding packets )
- the server generates the challenge with the address and the port of the NAT/proxy/net node as above
- the server sends back the challenge but the response doesn't pass through the same proxy/nat/net node
- the challenge is invalid for your client.

http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=3823.0

I have no clue what he's talking about, but maybe there is something wrong with the server binaries.
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Re: No or bad challenge for your address

Postby Biondo » Tue Feb 05, 2013 11:42 pm

Thanks Sunrise.

Circus Novus is not an @spi's server. I'm not the only player affected. I don't have a firewall. I don't have a router.

But that is not the main problem. The main problem is that the error message should give a clue about what's happening and about possible solutions you can take to circumvent it. Thanks again, but I'm not trying to "save" myself. I'm fine watching a film, or reading news online, or working on something, at night.

"No or bad challenge for your address", this is the message. No or bad ... Wow, and this is the most understandable part of the message.

Probably it should be rewritten in something different:

"Dear Biondo,

We are sure you didn't make anything nasty, But there's something wrong with your connection, so you can't connect today. But, there's still a chance. You can try to:

1-- Your provider, blah blah blah
2-- Your firewall, blah, blah
3-- Your router, blah
4-- Your,

If nothing works, please, contact us at wonderful@address.gmail.fun

Sorry for the inconvenience.

SIGNATURE."
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Re: No or bad challenge for your address

Postby TheDoctor » Wed Feb 06, 2013 12:13 am

sunrise wrote:I would guess doc did some experiments.

You'd be wrong: BB is unchanged since January 13th, 10:30:42 CET.

@Biondo: Personally, I don't have any connection problems - with default and with the standard configuration. This means, the server is operating fine. The problem is either located on your end or on the way between the server and your LAN. May I still assume, you didn't change anything on your network, especially regarding your router?

You were last seen 04.Feb 2013, 18:30 CET. There are no log entries for players named Biondo after that.
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Re: No or bad challenge for your address

Postby Biondo » Wed Feb 06, 2013 12:18 am

That's OK, Doctor.

And Mope?
And how many others? Baller was almost desert tonight, while Paladin was a hell.

What does it mean "No or bad challenge ..."?
Why \reconnect doesn't work any more?

Thanks for your time.
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Re: No or bad challenge for your address

Postby Biondo » Wed Feb 06, 2013 12:34 am

A last word before I go to sleep, because I see my words could sound irritating.

I know that nobody is guilty here. But whoever is able to understand where the problem lies, whoever is able to change that nonsensical message "No or bad challenge ..." to something more useful, maybe could do something good for the game.

I know that all of you have limited time and resources. Thank you again for your time, really. And sorry for my above-the-lines tone.
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Re: No or bad challenge for your address

Postby Biondo » Wed Feb 06, 2013 12:37 am

TheDoctor wrote:May I still assume, you didn't change anything on your network, especially regarding your router?


No, I haven't changed anything on my network. And I don't have a router, but a simple switch.
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Re: No or bad challenge for your address

Postby TheDoctor » Wed Feb 06, 2013 1:10 am

Biondo wrote:What does it mean "No or bad challenge ..."?

It does mean, the bots on BB, especially AwesomePossum, don't consider you a challenge anymore ;-).

More seriously, I will now attempt to explain what the challenge mechanism is: SG uses the Q3 engine which in return does not use connection based communication via the TCP, but utilizes connection-less communication via UDP.

If you communicate via TCP, source and destination do a handshake first, then establish a reliable communication channel. Reliable means here, data packets are transmitted in the correct order and are automatically resent, if they aren't correctly received.

In contrast, the UDP does not support connections. Each data packet is distributed independently of all others and may or may not be received (no guarantee). Since Quake3 uses UDP, it utilizes some additional means to simulate a reliable connection via UDP. One of these mechanisms is the challenge-response mechanism. It's Quake3's way of doing a handshake and creating some means of reidentifying the player's client. The challenge is basically a number (a question) that the server sends to the client and it expects an appropriate answer (also a number) in return. Appropriate means here, the response has to be calculated according to some predefined formula, for instance "response=challenge+IP".

The error message you quoted means, that either no response reached the server or the response was invalid. In both cases, the server won't talk any further with the client.

If you haven't changed anything on your computer or the router, maybe your provider did change something. It could be a straightforward thing such as blocking UDP communications, or at least blocking UDP communications on port 27960. It also could be something more subtle. I remember your ping increasing recently on BB during certain hours. If it increases beyond a certain value, it could trigger additional problems regarding your router.

Your computer probably is not directly connected to the internet, but communications are done via a router. The router get's assigned an IP address ("your" IP address, which actually is "his" IP address) and in return enables you to connect more than one computer to the internet. This is done by NAT (network address translation). This means, whenever your computer A wants to communicate to a server B, your router sends the packet on behalf of "his" IP address. It then creates a translation entry B->A which will be used to assign any response from the server B to your computer A.

This mechanism works great for TCP connections, since the router does understand TCP. It does not work so well for UDP communications, because your router cannot know that all the UDP packets your computer sends, are related. Remember that each packet is treated individually. If your computer sends a packet via UDP, your router creates a temporary translation entry and waits *some* milliseconds for a response. After that, it does not know where to sends these packets and they will be discarded.

In my household, I'm the only gamer. Therefore, I configured a static translation. I told my router, any UDP packet received via UDP 27960 is meant for my computer. In other words, I created a port forwarding for protocol UDP, port 27960. Maybe this will fix your problem.

Biondo wrote:And I don't have a router, but a simple switch.
Are you sure? You got a router, if all your computers at home share on internet connection via one public IP address.
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Re: No or bad challenge for your address

Postby TheDoctor » Wed Feb 06, 2013 1:22 am

Biondo wrote:change that nonsensical message to something more useful

What exactly do you want the message to be? "Communication with the server failed. Maybe your router is misconfigured?" Somehow, I doubt this would be any more useful.
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Re: No or bad challenge for your address

Postby Mope » Wed Feb 06, 2013 2:24 am

Dear Doc. I have experienced the same problem of connection as Biondo. We have different providers (different countries), both have no router, even different operating system. The problem has occurred in the same period of time, a couple of days ago.

BB is not the only server affected. For now I can connect only on Good Bad & Ugly, all other servers reply with the same error. Paladin was OK yesterday but today it's closed for my connection as well.

I tried to reinstall the client completely, even erasing all the the files on AppData\Roaming\Smokin' Guns\smokinguns.I've tried to turn off firewall. Nothing helps ((
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Re: No or bad challenge for your address

Postby jippi-ja-yeah » Wed Feb 06, 2013 3:26 am

I got the same error yesterday for one time. :twisted:
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Re: No or bad challenge for your address

Postby TheDoctor » Wed Feb 06, 2013 9:58 am

On Linux, try a
Code: Select all
ping 212.65.9.25
tracepath bb.smokin-guns.org


On Windows, try to get the command prompt (run
cmd
) and then
Code: Select all
ping -t 212.65.9.25
tracert bb.smokin-guns.org

Press Strg+C to interrupt the ping and to show statistics. Write the results here.

Note, the first IP address is a node between you and BB, since BB itself won't respond to ping requests.
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Re: No or bad challenge for your address

Postby Biondo » Wed Feb 06, 2013 11:24 am

TheDoctor, thanks for the long and quite informative reply. SG has still a wonderful team of experts!

Now the word "challenge" makes sense.

If you haven't changed anything on your computer or the router, maybe your provider did change something.

I haven't changed anything in my network since years. It's possible that my provider changed something, but it wouldn't explain why other players had the same problem, more or less in the same period of time.

I remember your ping increasing recently on BB during certain hours. If it increases beyond a certain value, it could trigger additional problems regarding your router.

This was true few weeks ago, but lately I have good ping in Baller (70-80, which is very good for my standards). At the same time, yesterday in Paladin, I had a ping of 250 (as all other 10 or more players present at the moment), and no connection problem at all.

Your computer probably is not directly connected to the internet, but communications are done via a router.

My computer is directly connected to an ADSL modem (that acts as pure modem, no routing) through a switch, and my computer acts as a router to other PCs in my LAN.
This wouldn't probably change anything compared to an external router, but consider that Mope doesn't have any kind of router at all, and experienced the problem one day before me (and in a worst way: he is able to connect to no server).

What exactly do you want the message to be? "Communication with the server failed. Maybe your router is misconfigured?" Somehow, I doubt this would be any more useful.

I was hoping that a simple answer could be given to "No or bad challenge" problem. It doesn't seem so. In any case, maybe a message of the kind of "Communication with the server failed. Try typing "\reconnect" in console, or try again at a later time. If the problem persists contact serveradmin@blahblah.com" would be more useful. Or, if not an admin's email, an URL pointing to a specific SG forum post, or FAQ.

I can't try ping and tracert now, since I'm not at my PC. I will do it later.

Thanks.
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Re: No or bad challenge for your address

Postby Biondo » Wed Feb 06, 2013 11:39 am

Could these lines in condump log mean something to understand the problem?

Code: Select all
Resolving update.smokin-guns.net
Sys_StringToSockaddr: Error resolving update.smokin-guns.net: No address
associated with hostname
Couldn't resolve address
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