Playing Online Mode? Hardly see other human Players? This may help...I see humans now

Cmdr Snuffler

Cmdr Snuffler
Problem and Game History
If you're not aware ED uses P2P networking and uPnP on your router.
I used to have a netgear router plugged into a Virgin Media modem on a business line.
During the alpha stages I used to see loads of human players and it was one big PvP kill fest...much fun was had by all.
Beta networking was a bit flakey so I had to manually hard code the port I wanted ED to use.
Then in Public Beta 1 networking was ok again and I saw many more people.
When Public Beta 2 and Gamma came round I hardly saw anyone...I assumed that was because the bubble had expanded and people were spread out...at the same time I upgraded my broadband to 50mb, which came with a Virgin Media Super Hub 2...which I was forced to use since VM Business won't allow the thing to run in modem only mode, this meant ditching my netgear router. uPnP enabled and IPsec passthrough enabled.
Saw the odd player every few days, so assumed things were working.
Since release I have seen 5-6 humans in 2 weeks while travelling the galaxy!
It wasn't until I tried to join a few mass gathering of players that I realised something was up.
They had 8-9 ppl in their instances...I had 0...always 0...0...0...bloody 0.
-
Fix and Resolution
This morning I decided to go back and hardcode the port through the router and manually edit the ED AppConfig.xml file to only use this port like I did back in Beta.
YES!!! Get in!!! Human players!!! I saw 3 times more human players this morning in 20 minutes than I have done in 2 weeks!
Loads of players!
Here's what to do:
  1. Pick a port. I used 5919.
  2. Google "IP", the top item will show you your public WAN IP, needed for config file.
  3. Go to your router firewall settings and forward this port to your PC.
  4. On your computer browse to: C:\Users\YourUsername\AppData\Local\Frontier_Developments\Products\FORC-FDEV-D-1000
  5. Open the file: AppConfig.xml
  6. Find the <Network> section of this xml and modify it to look like the following, where "ip" is your wan IP address, and save the file.

Code: 
	<Network
	  Port="5919"
      upnpenabled="0"
	  LogFile="netLog"
	  DatestampLog="1"
	  >
          <Self name="my computer" ip="213.107.174.82" port="5919" />

	</Network>
Now restart Elite and you should start to see many players.
I don't know if this is a Virgin Media Super Hub 2 issue or a Virgin Media issue or an Elite: Dangerous issue.
-
Suggestion To Frontier
This is such a critical flaw in the way ED works. There is zip that tells me anything is wrong.
Please make these network settings editable via the options page. So the options page should have the following:
  • Graphics
  • Audio
  • Controls
  • Networking
----
EDIT: Thanks to Fyrd Judge for the original Mike Brookes link, here it is:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=11361
 
Last edited:

kickbackerss

K
Wokawidget said:
Problem and Game History
If you're not aware ED uses P2P networking and uPnP on your router.
I used to have a netgear router plugged into a Virgin Media modem on a business line.
During the alpha stages I used to see loads of human players and it was one big PvP kill fest...much fun was had by all.
Beta networking was a bit flakey so I had to manually hard code the port I wanted ED to use.
Then in Public Beta 1 networking was ok again and I saw many more people.
When Public Beta 2 and Gamma came round I hardly saw anyone...I assumed that was because the bubble had expanded and people were spread out...at the same time I upgraded my broadband to 50mb, which came with a Virgin Media Super Hub 2...which I was forced to use since VM Business won't allow the thing to run in modem only mode, this meant ditching my netgear router. uPnP enabled and IPsec passthrough enabled.
Saw the odd player every few days, so assumed things were working.
Since release I have seen 5-6 humans in 2 weeks while travelling the galaxy!
It wasn't until I tried to join a few mass gathering of players that I realised something was up.
They had 8-9 ppl in their instances...I had 0...always 0...0...0...bloody 0.
-
Fix and Resolution
This morning I decided to go back and hardcode the port through the router and manually edit the ED AppConfig.xml file to only use this port like I did back in Beta.
YES!!! Get in!!! Human players!!! I saw 3 times more human players this morning in 20 minutes than I have done in 2 weeks!
Loads of players!
Here's what to do:
  1. Pick a port. I used 5919.
  2. Google "IP", the top item will show you your public WAN IP, needed for config file.
  3. Go to your router firewall settings and forward this port to your PC.
  4. On your computer browse to: C:\Users\YourUsername\AppData\Local\Frontier_Developments\Products\FORC-FDEV-D-1000
  5. Open the file: AppConfig.xml
  6. Find the <Network> section of this xml and modify it to look like the following, where "ip" is your wan IP address, and save the file.

Code: 
    <Network
      Port="5919"
      upnpenabled="0"
      LogFile="netLog"
      DatestampLog="1"
      >
          <Self name="my computer" ip="[URL="tel:213.107.174.82"]213.107.174.82[/URL]" port="5919" />

    </Network>
Now restart Elite and you should start to see many players.
I don't know if this is a Virgin Media Super Hub 2 issue or a Virgin Media issue or an Elite: Dangerous issue.
-
Suggestion To Frontier
This is such a critical flaw in the way ED works. There is zip that tells me anything is wrong.
Please make these network settings editable via the options page. So the options page should have the following:
  • Graphics
  • Audio
  • Controls
  • Networking
Click to expand...

isnt this hacking? Like bypassing the filter that puts you in a griefer server or things like that
 

dungeonseeker

dungeonseeker
Hacking, not even close. He isn't forcing anything at Fdevs server end, all he is doing is forcing his game client to connent via a specific port and forcing his router to make sure all traffic on that port is sent to his PC.

If Fdev wanna swap him to a different server there's nothing stopping them.
 

Tigga

T
While this may help, there's still some weird things going on with the networking in this game. Some days things are so quiet I take a hop to the "starter" systems to see if I can find anybody. Sometimes I see one or two. If I log off, come back the next day, suddenly everything is full. Playing at sensible European hours both times, but for some reason the sectors are empty one day, packed the next.
 

musojon74

M
Trouble with this plan is that most consumer broadband doesn't come with a fixed ip. One is assigned from a pool of ips the service provider uses. This is changed quite frequently.
 

Cmdr Snuffler

Cmdr Snuffler
kickbackerss said:
isnt this hacking? Like bypassing the filter that puts you in a griefer server or things like that
Click to expand...


Nope. Frontier have enabled these settings in the config file for this reason.
It's just not common knowledge anymore, it was a well known fix back in beta.
They even suggested doing this back in Beta. I was just under the impression it was no longer needed...but I was wrong.
In my case it seems that it is needed.

musojon74 said:
Trouble with this plan is that most consumer broadband doesn't come with a fixed ip. One is assigned from a pool of ips the service provider uses. This is changed quite frequently.
Click to expand...
Mines a fixed IP...but yes, static IPs can change...but not that often.
This is why there should be a Network settings option and a "auto get WAN IP" tick box. It's not hard to calculate your WAN IP at runtime using code.
 

SteveMallam

S
musojon74 said:
Trouble with this plan is that most consumer broadband doesn't come with a fixed ip. One is assigned from a pool of ips the service provider uses. This is changed quite frequently.
Click to expand...

Yep - if you have a dynamic IP address you'll need to change regularly.
The thing that concerns me is that I don't actually know whether mine is working properly or not (and I do network security is part of my job!)

Other P2P applications (such as uTorrent, which I use for Linux distros, Humble Bundle and the like) include an indicator to tell you whether your ports are forwarded properly. I have UPnP configured so I *assume* ED is working as intended but it's rare that I see other players and (with the exception of the battle for Eranin during Beta) the MOST I've ever seen is one or two...

Adding a Port Forwarding warning would also be very helpful
 

Tigga

T
Further to my earlier comment I've spent the last 30-60 minutes idling in systems with 2000+ players passing through in the past 24 hours (via traffic report). I have seen 0 players. Now obviously the players aren't evenly spread amongst the 24 hours, and some will be playing solo/private group, but nobody in these systems at all is just not believable. Either there's some further filtering going on to separate out players, moving me into a private instance for some reason, or something else is broken. I was playing at a similar time yesterday in the same systems and was seeing people jumping in on a regular basis.

I have the ports forwarded correctly (I piggybacked on a config for another game which needs them), so there's no problem there. My router supports UPnP as well, though I prefer to have it disabled for security reasons, but enabling that and disabling the fix in the OP doens't help either.

Basically, there's still something freaky going on. Could it be that I'm in a group with a player with a badly configured connection? How about my friends list? Have I been bumped into a "griefer" server? I did get a PvP kill yesterday after somebody fired on me first after I interdicted them. I was doing a spot of light piracy yesterday as well, so may have been reported by people who don't understand how the game works. Would this mean I'm separated out from other players?
 

Brandon31

B
Yes playing since release I can honestly say I have not seen even one other player, I may as well play solo, and I am not messing with my router setting just to get a game to work either. I really wish ED had gone for a proper MMO type architecture and we all pay a tenner a month like all the other successful mmo's seem too.
 
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Cmdr Snuffler

Cmdr Snuffler
Brandon31 said:
I may as well play solo, and I am not messing with my router setting just to get a game to work either.
Click to expand...
Why not? I've had to forward ports over the years for a number of games.
It's not uncommon.
2 sec job. No reason not to test and see if it fixes your issue.
It's not "messing" with your router...port forwarding is a very, very, common thing to do for a number of reasons and for many different kinds of software.

Rog said:
So, safe to say the networking aspect of the game is still buggy as hell?

Or is everything still awesome?
Click to expand...
So it seems.
Apart from the few bugs here and there everything is awesome :D
 
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Reactions: Rog

Im_Lost

I
The game tries to use Upnp by default, but not all routers have it enabled (because its less secure than manual port forwarding).
 

Toebs

T
Rog said:
So, safe to say the networking aspect of the game is still buggy as hell?

Or is everything still awesome?
Click to expand...

Buggy means implementation errors, software which doesn't do that which it should.

The issue here is that the software is silently failing, i.e. the peer to peer networking being blocked but there being no indication to the user that there is a problem.

The software is not buggy, because it has been written deliberately (although perhaps without proper understanding of the consequences) to behave in this way.
 

Tigga

T
Toebs said:
Buggy means implementation errors, software which doesn't do that which it should.

The issue here is that the software is silently failing, i.e. the peer to peer networking being blocked but there being no indication to the user that there is a problem.

The software is not buggy, because it has been written deliberately (although perhaps without proper understanding of the consequences) to behave in this way.
Click to expand...
Except it does appear to be buggy. My router supports UPnP. I've tried with it enabled, and disabled with port-forwarding as per the OP. In both cases, I can tour the popular systems and on some days see people jumping in every 30 seconds, and others not see a soul. This implies that there are implementation issues as well as some special requirements.

In other words, everything appears fine, but there's nobody about.
 
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Reactions: Rog

Toebs

T
Tigga said:
Except it does appear to be buggy. My router supports UPnP. I've tried with it enabled, and disabled with port-forwarding as per the OP. In both cases, I can tour the popular systems and on some days see people jumping in every 30 seconds, and others not see a soul. This implies that there are implementation issues as well as some special requirements.
Click to expand...

Ah.

(1234)
 
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