....at 2 out of 5, I wouldnt bother playing...
Exactly. When I used ZoneAlarm with OP I experienced 4/5 or 5/5 - nearly quit playing. Until it occurred to me to uninstall ZoneAlarm.
And as of yet....no one has been able to point to any real world situation by naming the ANY player with said firewalls or providing even the most basic of evidence other than "yeah I had problems connecting"....
I have outlined my personal case a number of times. Back on the Triangle I think it was. I was behind a linksys router properly configured and running Win2K. Running Zonelarm I dropped from nearly every mission. I uninstalled zoanalarm and my problems disappeared.
We are discussing software firewalls. (it is assumed that if your router has a firewall that you will disable it).
I have been fighting this battle for years, and gaining little ground.
I know for a fact that thay are bad for missions, don't believe me? Too bad. Prove it to yourself.
If you are unwilling to perform the necessary experiments to prove it to yourself, then I am sorry, there is nothing I can, or am willing to do (for you).
I grow weary, I'm about ready to give in and say fine - lets all run software firewalls all the time and suffer unstable missions. I can't imagine why we'd want to do that but it seems to be what people want.
I am done with this discussion. I've said my piece. No software firewalls on MySQL test servers period. If you insist on running a software firewall on The Forge or Universe At War, do not submit bug reports of any kind and please stay clear of me on the map.
One we have the server on MySQL stabilised under load I intend to look at seriously fortifying the firewall detector if possible. That is all I can do to force the issue. I'm done pissing into the wind.