Logging In - What REALLY Happens

[Kurt]

Hey all

Getting more and more annoyed with the amount of time it takes to log in when launching BF2 from a external programs like Gamespy, etc I thought I'd dig out my trusty packet sniffer and see what happens. So, this is it...

Seconds 0 to 7

Sends "battlefield2" packet to Gamespy 8 times. No idea why it does this as all the packets are the same and the response it simply 7 zero bytes every time.

Seconds 08 to 20

Scans all the servers in your server history. I would assume it would scan your favs if you have any.

Seconds 21 to 22

Logs in to Gamespy (sending your userid and password as plain text, not encrypted - nice. Watch out for packet sniffers at LAN parties)

Seconds 23 to 26

Retrieves your player stats from bfhq

Second 27

Connects to server

So, it takes 27 seconds before you actually connect to the server and it only takes a second or so to log in, the rest is just pointless rubbish. Why scan your favs and history and retrieve your stats when you're connecting directly to a server???

I was wondering why clearing your stats and history makes joining servers much faster and that explains it. Bizarre.

Anyone, hope you find my experiments interesting.

K

[HF_Martini6]

Re: Logging In - What REALLY Happens

interesting? it's more scary to me

Seconds 21 to 22

Logs in to Gamespy (sending your userid and password as plain text, not encrypted - nice. Watch out for packet sniffers at LAN parties)

holy ****.... thx a lot for the info, i'm gonna think twice if i'll play BF2 on a LAN again

[Desertfox]

Re: Logging In - What REALLY Happens

Thats why I never trust those "OPEN YOUR BF2 WITH THIS PROGRAM!"

[ptegan]

Re: Logging In - What REALLY Happens

So, it takes 27 seconds before you actually connect to the server and it only takes a second or so to log in...

Well for you yeah. For me it only takes about 6 seconds as I clean out my favourites when needed. Every server in your favourites list that's in RED will add an extra 5 seconds to your login time.

[Kurt]

Re: Logging In - What REALLY Happens

holy ****.... thx a lot for the info, i'm gonna think twice if i'll play BF2 on a LAN again

That's only the half of it. It also sends (in plain text) all the info you used to register your account on Gamespy if you entered that info. Full name, country, date of birth and email address.

Thats why I never trust those "OPEN YOUR BF2 WITH THIS PROGRAM!"

Cyberduck, to be honest they will be unlikely to try to steal your password. These programs, if you choose to use them, need your user id and password to join servers, they wouldn't work otherwise. I wrote the Battlefield Browser Lite and the (soon to be released) Battlefield Browser so I know how these things work. In both my programs you need to enter your user id and password before they'll work as these parameters have to be passed to bf2.exe when you auto-connect to servers. It's just a case of using your judgement.

You enter your credit card details on some web sites right? But doubtless you'd hesitate if the web site looked a bit dodgy, well treat these (and my) programs the same way. The one advantage about programs is that anyone can run a packet sniffer against any of them to see if the program sends your info anyone but Gamespy. I reckon if these progs were password-stealers then they'd get found out about pretty well straight away.

Well for you yeah. For me it only takes about 6 seconds as I clean out my favourites when needed. Every server in your favourites list that's in RED will add an extra 5 seconds to your login time.

Yeah, I'd heard that you should clean out your favs and history but I didn't understand why, hence this experiment. It's annoying really as scanning servers *should* take next to no time. The Battlefield Browser scans around 15 a second with a single thread but BF2 itself, when launching, seems to scan around 5 a second. Annoying. It's gonna be even worse when they new challenge-response is re-implemented as it'll add two packets to every conversation and double the time it takes.

[[MyIS]Spetsnaz]

Re: Logging In - What REALLY Happens

It has always been my opinion that the global account system was incorrectly implemented in Battlefield 2. Anyone here remember how quick it was to get into a game in BF1942 or BFVietnam?

The sheer amount of bandwidth being transferred probably explains why DICE has been so anxious to release these booster packs and addons to the game. It may also explain why, over 1 year from release date, we're still downloading huge patches that fix extremely serious issues (like the annoying server crash bug, red name tag bug, hit detection issues, etc). Imagine the 'net bill'? :laugh:

Needless to say I love BF2 and play it for atleast an hour a day, so there's just something that keeps me coming back.

My question is, why not skip the whole global stats system and allow the community to set up their own stat gathering servers? It would new opportunities for community involvement, save DICE/EA a bunch of money and probably be more unique and diverse than the system is now.

It would be cool to see "server groups" of some sorts that would be established by a bunch of supporting clans/organizations. They would all pitch in for a great stats server and only authorized servers would run it -- servers that they all provide. Heck, it would even help increase community numbers imho. Everyone loves to hop on the same server all of the time, especially with their buds in there.

Oh wells, I'm a n00b so I'm probably overlooking something

[frazzman]

Re: Logging In - What REALLY Happens

My question is, why not skip the whole global stats system and allow the community to set up their own stat gathering servers? It would new opportunities for community involvement, save DICE/EA a bunch of money and probably be more unique and diverse than the system is now.

Isnt the PoE mod supposed to be setting up their own stats server independant of the likes of ABR?

[Kurt]

Re: Logging In - What REALLY Happens

It has always been my opinion that the global account system was incorrectly implemented in Battlefield 2.

I agree, it's been terribly thought out. Remember when BF2 first came out and you couldn't use any other browsers to join servers? Rubbish. You can't change your name, the "tag" part was not there from day one, the accounts are tied to a Gamespy account, etc, etc. I think the infrastructure behind it is good, it seems stable and reliable and the BFHQ screen looks nice, plus it (grudgingly) allows third party sites to query it so that side of it's nice, it's just the way it plugs into BF2 that doesn't work well.

My question is, why not skip the whole global stats system and allow the community to set up their own stat gathering servers? It would new opportunities for community involvement, save DICE/EA a bunch of money and probably be more unique and diverse than the system is now.

It already exists, it's called ABR.

http://www.battlefieldranking.net/

I think they're having a few probs at the moment but they guys have put in a TON of work to get this all up and running so even if it's not looking great at the moment, check back now and again, I'm sure they'll be sorted sooner or later.

Isnt the PoE mod supposed to be setting up their own stats server independant of the likes of ABR?

Yeah, I've just read that on the ABR site. Now that's a real shame. ABR and mods is a perfect fit as mods can't run on ranked servers, the ABR guys have worked hard to get it working and supported then POE decide to roll their own. Of course I don't know why, there may be stuff going on behind the scenes that we don't know about but it seems a real shame to me.

[GrossKopf]

Re: Logging In - What REALLY Happens

Can someone share with me how you clean out your favorites? Other than going into BF2 and manually removing them I mean?

[Revoluti0n]

Re: Logging In - What REALLY Happens

Nicely done Kurt.
I had some idea that something weird was going on, but never imagined that it happened at this level.

Oh wells, I'm a n00b so I'm probably overlooking something

Oh...Yeah...RIght...Sure you are Spetsnz:thatsbad:

[[MyIS]Spetsnaz]

Re: Logging In - What REALLY Happens

It already exists, it's called ABR.

That's not really what I meant.

From what I recall, ABR works by "tricking" the BF2 server to send the stats elsewhere. When the round ends, the server would send the stats to a specific internet address, for example: bf2stats.gamespy.com -- it could be an IP, anything really.

What systems like ABR, PR's stats, BattleRacer stats, etc do is "trick" the server machine to think that bf2stats.gamespy.com is really stats.my-stat-site.com.

On the players end, whatever mod they download does pretty much the same thing. It tricks the computer to retrieve the stats from what it thinks is stats.gamespy.com but what really is mystats.my-site.com (or whatever).

AFAIK, this wasn't initially intended by BF2 developers.

What I was referring to was a more accessible system for servers to gather stats. Community members could get together and create stat servers that follow a specification released by DICE/EA. They could then have a dropdown box in their in-game stats area where they can select which stats group to get their stats from. They could then merge their stats into one big chunk.

The above is just an example and could be a bad one, but I think that global stats are sort of useless. The few that even care about their global stats can't really tell much anyway from those stats.

By giving the community more power over stats gathering, they are giving us the power to personalize the game so people could go to their favorite servers every day for a reason.

Anyway, it's such a huge discussion with so many corners to cover. I'm not much of a stat guy anyway, I'm fine with the way things were in DC (but thats just me)

[imported_TheDragon]

Re: Logging In - What REALLY Happens

Can someone share with me how you clean out your favorites? Other than going into BF2 and manually removing them I mean?

go to this directory :
C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\Battlefield 2\Profiles
and open the folder you use as main account (eg for ,me => 0005)

C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\Battlefield 2\Profiles\0005

then use notepad or wordpad to open file called general.con

here are the lines to remove (I never removed them 'all' kept one of each)
(the xxx's I put in for my privacy

GeneralSettings.addFavouriteServer "7x.xx.xx.xx" 29900 "xxxx "xxxxxx"
GeneralSettings.addFavouriteServer "7x.x6.x4.x" 29900 "xxxxxxxxx"
GeneralSettings.addFavouriteServer "6x.3x.x.x" 29900 "xxxxx xxxxx"
GeneralSettings.addServerHistory "6x.x.4x.2x" 29900 "xxx x x" 62
GeneralSettings.addServerHistory "72.x.x.x" 29900 "24/7 Karkand & Sharqi - Ranked" 79

[VC_Resurrected]

Re: Logging In - What REALLY Happens

a question from an unlearned bf2 grunt; does it send that info to gamespy even if you just use the in-game browser? i've never had an account with gamespy and would be rather racked off if they were being told about me, mainly because i think GS are a bunch of bastards.

[Kurt]

Re: Logging In - What REALLY Happens

That's not really what I meant.

From what I recall, ABR works by "tricking" the BF2 server to send the stats elsewhere. When the round ends, the server would send the stats to a specific internet address, for example: bf2stats.gamespy.com -- it could be an IP, anything really.

What systems like ABR, PR's stats, BattleRacer stats, etc do is "trick" the server machine to think that bf2stats.gamespy.com is really stats.my-stat-site.com.

Hey fella

Sorry, I didn't understand what you were saying. Yes, you're quite right as to how the other stat systems work, by adding host table entries to post stats and retrieve stats from non-ea servers. Actually, thinking about it, I'm not sure that's the way it works after all. I reckon the host table fudge on the server end is to report in when the server starts, nothing more. They'll probably have written Python modules to upload the stats as only ranked servers would upload stats and their servers would not be ranked. Anyway, I digress.

It would be nice if there were some sort of official, unofficial stats plug-in or whatever but it looks like it's not going to happen. The way the ABR guys do it seems to be the best (and only) way of doing in unfortunately.

a question from an unlearned bf2 grunt; does it send that info to gamespy even if you just use the in-game browser? i've never had an account with gamespy and would be rather racked off if they were being told about me, mainly because i think GS are a bunch of bastards.

When you create a BF2 account it creates a Gamespy account. Why do you think all the good names were taken before BF2 was even out? Because people with Gamespy accounts registered years ago to play some other game have them.

[TP.BigBoss]

Re: Logging In - What REALLY Happens

meh its getting your information nowt to be over worried about.