An unexpected disconnection has occurred (Steam says no connection)

Hi

I've had this issue for the last week, I can be doing anything from mapping to decorating hideouts to standing in hideouts or browsing the shop. I get an error saying "An unexpected disconnection has occurred).

This has happened while other apps are using the internet, e.g. youtube or twitch, facebook etc. There is no pattern to it, it can anywhere from 10 seconds to 3 minutes.

Things I've tried, and have not yielded any change:

- switch from wireless connection to lan cable
- restart router, pc
- flush dns
- reset dns, auto, manual (8.8.8.8), back to auto
- check network for ip conflicts (none)
- close all background apps
- pause anti virus, pause firewall, create firewall exception, change firewall to windows defender, create exception etc
- clear steam cache
- clear cache
- scan pc for virus/malware (paid threat detection - nothing)
- check network settings to private
- change power management settings to max performance (pc can't switch off network adapter to save power)
- change renderer to vulcan
- check all drivers, geforce 4090 all up to date
- all updates done (they're auto)
- disable steam overlay, disable nvidia overlay
- change network setting in poe - lockstep, predictive, auto - no change
- run PoE 2 - works fine, no disconnection
- change steam server
- change poe server to match steam server location
- tried a server in US and EU (native is South Africa)
- ran pingtool while mapping - no packet loss, but disconnection bug still happened despite internet being live
- clear download cache
- clear steam cache
- burnt sage, incense
- chanted several mantras

Please - help! I just got a mageblood for my armour stacker!!!
Pandaman_ZA

Please post an MTR log that was created during one of the disconnections;

https://www.poecommunity.help/information/server-connection

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| WinMTR statistics |
| Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
| 192.168.0.1 - 1 | 523 | 519 | 0 | 0 | 17 | 0 |
| No response from host - 100 | 109 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 10.11.65.193 - 100 | 110 | 1 | 19 | 19 | 19 | 19 |
| 10.195.18.1 - 1 | 520 | 515 | 9 | 24 | 137 | 36 |
| i3d.ixp.joburg - 1 | 523 | 519 | 9 | 24 | 137 | 19 |
| 172.30.223.132 - 1 | 523 | 519 | 8 | 23 | 137 | 26 |
| 172.30.225.131 - 1 | 523 | 519 | 9 | 23 | 137 | 29 |
| . - 1 | 520 | 515 | 0 | 22 | 54 | 20 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|
WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider

*note - verified all the game files through steam prior to this, had 4 disconnects on dunes map then ran this test