"Failed to connect to instance" when traveling through waypoints or portals

This has been happening for the past couple of days, ever since the latest patch. I've had it happen on both Texas and California gateways, and it doesn't happen 100% of the time I pass through portals or waypoints. For instance, yesterday, while trying to pass through Zana's portals, I got dropped to the login screen with "Failed to connect to instance" every time, even when I tried the Texas gateway. Today, I got through the portal and was able to complete her mission, but got dropped when trying to go through Tara's portal for the daily mission.

Sunnyvale is having massive loss issues tonight.

WinMTR report

"

|be-33651-cr01.sunnyvale.ca.ibone.comcast.net - 53 | 38 | 18 | 0 | 11 | 18 | 10 |

This just means it's dropping the ping packets because the machine is congested and prioritizing real traffic, after that hop the trace looks fine.

Perhaps with a longer trace, you will capture the problem.

Ok. I forgot this was running, so it's a muuuuch longer trace than I anticipated:

http://pastebin.com/gZiE86bZ

Still having the same problem this morning. Logged in, hopped over to the waypoint, and got dropped to login screen as I tried to go through.

The MTR has to be going while you're having the connection problem. I suspect you just need to run the WinMTR until the game drops you.

How far away is the wifi router?

I'm on a wired connection, not wifi, but it's about 30 feet away.

The game doesn't drop, exactly. I can log in and travel through waypoints, but there'll be one area where I get booted back to the login screen. So yesterday, what happened is this:

1) play for a while as normal
2) go to hideout
3) get Zana's daily mission
4) go through the portal to Zana
5) get Zana's mission
6) enter one of the 6 portals
7) get booted to login screen
8) login to the same gateway
9) go to Hideout
10) go to Zana
11) see one of her map portals has closed and try again
12) repeat 8-11
13) try the Texas gateway
14) repeat 9-11 until I'm out of portals and give up

After a while, I logged in again and tried a different master and all was fine.

So... I dunno.

This just happened again, when trying to connect to a new map (I'd already played through two). this time, I ran the WinMTR while getting the error.

WinMTR results

So... I'm stumped. It happens regularly, but not consistently. When it starts, though, I'm stuck trying to do anything for quite some time.

Are there other things I can do to try to troubleshoot?

| Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
| 96.120.89.249 - 0 | 327 | 327 | 8 | 11 | 24 | 14 |

Whoa, if this isn't wifi, then you have a problem on the local network connection, either the cables are a problem or the router is just bad. The Best ping to your router should be <1 ms, and Worst should say 2 at most (for a wired connection). I would try to (tentatively) replace the router and the ethernet cord to see where the problem is. If the cord is bad, it's a cheap fix, but if the router needs replacing, it might have something to do with weird new-connection drops.

A bad router might explain why you're losing one portal at a time to "Failed to connect to instance"... and so might a computer problem. Does it take more than 10 seconds to load a map sometimes? Could this be like your computer is locking up for a moment while it tries to load a complex level, preventing the heartbeat or other network code from running? How does your CPU usage look when you're getting disconnected? You can see the CPU graph from the Ctrl+Alt+Del task manager probably. I would drag your computer to another network to test if the problem persists (have a LAN party with your local friends).