Cannot join games with my registered account - "Callsign is registered, must use Global Authentication" error kicks me

[Para_Shooter]

Admins, I've looked through some similar threads, all are fairly old. When I attempt to join games with my registered Para_Shooter account and use the same password I've always used, I always get kicked with "This callsign is registered. You must use global authentication before playing or use a different callsign."

In past threads, is seems that an admin was able to check the server logs and see that the error was (normally or frequently) an incorrect password. But I have double, triple, and quadruple checked that I'm entering the same password I used to log into bzflag.org to post this on this forum. I've deleted the whole password and reentered it from nothing.

Something odd is keeping me from playing as my registered persona on this laptop, and my hope is that an admin can look at the logs for today as of the past half hour or so (say, 2:30PM PDT to 3PM PDT), and see why I am getting kicked as if I am not successfully passing whatever global authentication rules are in effect.

If it comes back as "wrong password", I will stand in front of a tank firing squad of all colors of tanks, I am that confident that something else is afoot here. Whether it can be solved or not is another issue, but I'm hoping we can start with a review of the logs for Para_Shooter login attempts as step one in troubleshooting this irksome issue.

As matters stand, I made up a username, did not register it, no password, and I can play in most or all maps. I just cannot talk or reply. I can try an whole other registered account with a password, if that will help. I'm just at my wits end and missing my BZ time.

Best Regards,

Para_Shooter

[blast]

I'll message you so we can troubleshoot.

[Para_Shooter]

Thanks for the insights, Blast. To close this out, here's what turns out to be the issue.

Corporate laptop with Zscaler installed for security purposes. Weirdly, though, only the BZ server search and access has the Zscaler IP address associated with the network packets. Once game play is initiated, no Zscaler, just regular ISP (Starlink in this case, but could be any ISP) IP address is seen for the gaming packets.

If all packets don't have the same IP address, this is seen as an authentication error and the registered user is kicked as if something was being spoofed (which once would have been true). Some code revisions are in process to change this behavior in the modern era, but not at an especially high priority. So, at some point, the corporate laptop may allow me to play as a registered user, but... alas, not today.

Thanks again, Blast, you got it right away, and I appreciate the quick response.

[blast]

The server list and authentication is handled over a normal web connection, so maybe Zscaler is configured to only tunnel normal web traffic (and maybe some other popular protocols, such as IMAP for email clients).