Connection via VPN not possible
- Thread starter Gorgoth
- Start date
Last time I used NordVPN I think it worked ok, but I can check again if you like.
I started having VPN issues after the last major update last year (update 17). I use AVG VPN.
I have to disable the VPN in order to play my Steam and Epic ED accounts. The game loads into the main menu but can't connect to the servers until the VPN is disabled, and then I can load into the cockpit.
Here is the crazy bit though. My F/Dev account works fine with the VPN active. (Yes, I have 3 accounts. Sad, I know).
Maybe update 18 will fix the issue?
I have to disable the VPN in order to play my Steam and Epic ED accounts. The game loads into the main menu but can't connect to the servers until the VPN is disabled, and then I can load into the cockpit.
Here is the crazy bit though. My F/Dev account works fine with the VPN active. (Yes, I have 3 accounts. Sad, I know).
Maybe update 18 will fix the issue?
VPNs for gaming are such nonsense. They introduce more possible problems than they have solutions for. Even AVG is honest that VPN for gaming is of no use.
www.avg.com
Should I use a VPN for gaming?
VPNs and gaming — do you really need one? We examine all the supposed benefits of gaming with a VPN here in our expert guide to VPNs for gaming.
www.avg.com
I just tried it with NordVPN and it appears to work fine.
I use it on occasion in Elite so help with instancing with players from other regions.VPNs for gaming are such nonsense. They introduce more possible problems than they have solutions for. Even AVG is honest that VPN for gaming is of no use.
Should I use a VPN for gaming?
VPNs and gaming — do you really need one? We examine all the supposed benefits of gaming with a VPN here in our expert guide to VPNs for gaming.
No, if my IP address is in the same region as the other players I want to instance with I get a higher priority on the match making server to connect with them rather than players in another region.
If you are based in Europe you are more like to meet other Europeans if there is a choice.
Correct. Using a VPN always increases latency. Lowest possible latency is always preferred for the least amount of issues.VPNs for gaming are such nonsense. They introduce more possible problems than they have solutions for. Even AVG is honest that VPN for gaming is of no use.
Should I use a VPN for gaming?
VPNs and gaming — do you really need one? We examine all the supposed benefits of gaming with a VPN here in our expert guide to VPNs for gaming.
It does increase latency, but in my case not by enough to cause rubber banding during PvP. Depends on the quality of the vpn and ISP of course.
As a network engineer, I strongly disagree:
I am in Australia. Elite Dangerous connects me to Amazon Web Services IPs in America and Ireland.
Without a VPN, I route to those places directly, on "best efforts" public links. That means I am sharing my bandwidth with people watching Netflix, Torrents, and backing up their entire hard drive into the cloud. The net is neutral, it doesn't know or care that gaming is time sensitive and the other traffic is not.
If I VPN into the Amazon Sydney hub, then I have a very short hop over the public internet - About 4 jumps - My PC to my house, my house to my local Connectivity Virtual Circuit, the CVC to my ISP, and them my ISP to the Amazon datacentre. Amazon now has its own private links to its datacentres in America and Ireland which it manages availability and bandwidth for - these will rarely be congested. As I also game outside of business hours and Amazon is primarily used for business, this usually means the links are quiet when I want to use them.
I see large drops in in latency and less packet loss for ED by using my Amazon VPN over using public internet links.
Now, if you were living in the same country as the servers were located in, I would say the gains would be limited, or as you suggested in fact an increase in latency. But if you're outside those countries, what you say is not necessarily true.
@Pernicious , IPV6 don't solvs all that?
Most US ISP's do not yet offer ipv6 for home accounts. Or at least not real ipv6. They do 6 to 4 tunnelling, or other wierd "stuff" to sort of get it to work. It's a mess, and likely will remain so for at least the next 5 years.
I guess they will change soon... one IPV4 number is way more expensive than thousands of ipv6.
Things here got way smoother after IPV6.
Things here got way smoother after IPV6.
No. IPv6 is carried on the same routers as IPv4. It solves a lot of problems, but congestion isn't one of them.
I'm in Australia and play every single week with people all over the world. Never had an instancing issue.
(I have port forwarding set up on my router and in game.)
One thing - there was a bug a while back where the comms panel up top would be silently working away in the background while you were navigating station menus. As a result, I discovered 3-4 of my regular in-game friends had been added to my block list without my knowledge. Blocked = no instancing, so maybe check your block list in socials to see if anyone ended up on it.
There are situations where ISPs affect traffic - whether deliberately or accidentally - and you can use VPN to defeat that. For example a few years ago Virgin UK did horrific things to UDP traffic, and whilst yes getting through a VPN tunnel does add latency, it defeated Virgin's traffic shaping because the game-like UDP traffic was hidden inside the work-from-home-alike VPN traffic, so overall, the mildly nerfed VPN experience was functionally better than the horrifically nerfed native experience.
(Virgin also outright lied about this traffic shaping, and they were eventually fined for it!)
All that said, 99% of commercial public VPN offerings are dismal because their primary market is defeating region-locked content and they're simply not focused on gaming performance, so I agree it's best to avoid unless you have identified a specific bad thing your ISP is doing.