The Port Forwarding thread: Minimizing multiplayer connection issues

[Helmut Grokenberger]

Of course - I'm correct. I'm not making guesses, I've studied this stuff.

So "trust me bro"? Not going to happen. I've worked in academics for most of my work life; having studied something means zilch for credibility or authority on a subject. Also: I assume Frontier have no clue and don't know what they are talking about? Take a look-see:

PORT FORWARDING

If your router does not support UPnP (Universal Plug 'n' Play) or if the feature does not work correctly, you may encounter issues playing Elite Dangerous. A solution to this is to manually allow Elite Dangerous access through your router.

Port Forwarding is an officially supported and suggested method of solving networking issues. It works, and if everyone implements it, you can get huge instances together without any teaming and friends list dances.

Also, just do a quick web search of "p2p port forwarding" to get a picture of how common the usage or port forwarding to stabilize peer-to-peer networking is. And not just in gaming. Advising people to turn it off is borderline harmful (unless, as stated before, people are sitting behind a CGNAT. Then it does not matter because it does nothing to begin with).

 

[styles784]

So "trust me bro"? Not going to happen. I've worked in academics for most of my work life; having studied something means zilch for credibility or authority on a subject. Also: I assume Frontier have no clue and don't know what they are talking about? Take a looksee:

I've explained the details far too much for mere trust to be a factor - there are plenty of terms you could google in order to verify what I've said. The fact that you haven't indicates a bias you're not willing to challenge

Port Forwarding is an officially supported and suggested method of solving networking issues. It works, and if everyone implements it, you can get huge instances together without any teaming and friends list dances.

Frontier has been known to give in to a very vocal player base on several occasions - so when they start insisting, quite persistently, that port forwarding would solve things, Frontier capitulated and added it. It's an easy thing to add, and it does avoid some issues, which initially alleviates some of the complaining. But, as I mentioned in my previous reply, if everyone implementing it includes all of the people who have frequent network issues, then that's a lot of people with misconfigured network hardware that could end up being prioritized as a session host based on the fact that they had to implement a workaround for subpar network performance (exactly the clients that should not be hosting, ever, wouldn't you say?)

I've seen plenty of Finance Friday sessions that were absolutely plagued with purple pythons and other colorful snakes, rubberbanding, instancing issues, etc - we're so used to it that the various workarounds to anchor people into the instance are second nature, common practice, to the point that most of us are very well-practiced in dropping team and sending new team invites mid-combat, without batting an eye. And what is the most common, in fact only, piece of advice? Port forwarding. Even though it clearly isn't solving the problems/

Also, just do a quick web search of "p2p port forwarding" to get a picture of how common the usage or port forwarding to stabilize peer-to-peer networking is. And not just in gaming. Advising people to turn it off is borderline harmful.

I'm aware of how common the myth is - common usage doesn't make it correct.

Advising everyone to turn it on has been harmful, because of the number of people who end up hosting sessions on their still misconfigured network hardware.
When I started playing, my internet service at the time was essentially wireless DSL - PPPoE over a wireless line of sight radio to a tower a mile from my house. I was lucky to get 2.5 mb down, 1 mb up, on a good day. The only time I used port forwarding back then was when I was hosting a couple dedicated servers, but those had nothing to do with Elite. And I frequently flew a full team around in my ship without losing anyone, back then.

And even though I have fiber now, I still have the same powerline adapters that I had to use back then due to weak wifi at my end of the house - they're my bottleneck now, limiting me to about 20 mbs up and down while adding a bit of latency to my ping, but I still don't need port forwarding. I do have to mitigate some buffer bloat on the powerline connection to prevent lag spikes, which are the only source of difficulty in my connection at this point (when I had ethernet running up the stairs to my computer for a month, my connection never dropped once - it just wasn't a viable permanent solution, but I'll be running proper ethernet when the opportunity presents).

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

Finance Fridays are probably the worst example for instancing, because everyone and their mother can turn up. Instancing is only as good as the weakest game client. Instances where everyone does port forwarding are usually rock solid.

Bu you do you .

 

[styles784]

Finance Fridays are probably the worst example for instancing, because everyone and their mother can turn up. Instancing is only as good as the weakest game client. Instances where everyone does port forwarding are usually rock solid.

Bu you do you .

Interesting - when presented with evidence that contradicts your claims, you move the goalposts...

The reason I mention that the only advice shared amongst the FF participants is port forwarding, is because they suggested it all the time, and everyone implemented it if they could. And even in instances where they all had it enabled, the conditions were the same.

And in smaller instances where someone had port forwarding enabled, we'd see the same issues - then that person would log off, and the instance would stabilize. Imagine that?

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

Well, not my experience. All my instancing issues vanished when I set up PF.

Nobody said it is a miracle cure for all networking issues. It is, as said before, powerless with CGNat. It doesn't help with an otherwise crappy high latency connection. It helps very reliably when people cannot instance in the first place, or lose instancing from jump to jump. Rubberbanding isn't an issue that players cannot connect (which is what PF primarily aims to solve), it's an issue with the quality of the connection.

 

[Northpin]

Incorrect - peer to peer communication always involves the clients soliciting communication first. There are no servers in the peer to peer part

Port forwarding is for permanent, dedicated servers, period. Peers temporarily acting as a session host aren't dedicated servers - they don't accept unsolicited incoming connections, ever.

In P2P each participant can be a client or a server - and this is from a generic point of view, beyond ED
If you have torrents installed, when someone downloads something from you, you are the server and they are the client. When you download something from someone else, you are the client and they are the server.
Also valid for file sharing on Windows local network between random hosts connected to the same LAN.

Clearly, even after demonstrating in-depth knowledge of several networking concepts

You dont seem to grasp many concepts - you dont seem to know how NAT works in our particular case.
And you also seem to have a very confuse idea about Servers, Clients and P2P, ports etc
It's very obvious from your posts.

Now, i'm not patronizing you and no one in this thread did it, it's ok not to know things, but the important part is to learn.
You are making some really bad claims in your posts regarding port forwarding and those claims may confuse less technical inclined users.

Just re-read the opening post in this topic - it's quite clear and concise and it also mentions your setup and the problems that may arise from it (that is being behind a NAT that you have no control over - also known as CG-NAT when it involves a Carrier/ISP)
And you could also read the XB link i posted because they've dealt with such issues since a lot of the games on the XB Network are P2P (my wild guess is you either read that article but you didnt understand much from it or you discarded it as wrong / non-applicable because it's against your beliefs). Just remember that ED still runs on XBox under the same basic concepts of P2P gaming.

 

[Ozric]

Dear lord, can you just knock it off? Please stop arguing about semantics and derailing a thread that has been stickied for two years for a reason.

Get back on topic, or you will lose the ability to post in this thread.

 

[styles784]

Well, not my experience. All my instancing issues vanished when I set up PF.

Nobody said it is a miracle cure for all networking issues. It is, as said before, powerless with CGNat. It doesn't help with an otherwise crappy high latency connection. It helps very reliably when people cannot instance in the first place, or lose instancing from jump to jump. Rubberbanding isn't an issue that players cannot connect (which is what PF primarily aims to solve), it's an issue with the quality of the connection.

Your issues vanished, but you have no way of knowing how many other people had issues that were actually caused by connecting to you on your still unstable connection. And rubberbanding can be caused by the sort of intermittent connection that the game is misusing port forwarding to work around, because the connection drops momentarily then tries to catch up. Your use of port forwarding very well could be contributing to connection issues for others, that they can't solve except by not playing with you.

In P2P each participant can be a client or a server - and this is from a generic point of view, beyond ED
If you have torrents installed, when someone downloads something from you, you are the server and they are the client. When you download something from someone else, you are the client and they are the server.
Also valid for file sharing on Windows local network between random hosts connected to the same LAN.

A server is responsible for managing and maintaining the connection, while the client just makes requests and accepts responses. Ina p2p environment, both peers take some of the responsibility, equally from the networking perspective (even if the specific program puts more of the impetus on one client over the others). It's still not a dedicated server situation, which is what port forwarding is used for. The temporary server status of a client in p2p is not the same, and does not rely on nor need one specific port to be open to the world at all times. It's a shortcut, kinda like leaving your front door unlocked because it's easier than getting off the couch to let visitors in - convenient, sure, but unwise.

You dont seem to grasp many concepts - you dont seem to know how NAT works in our particular case.
And you also seem to have a very confuse idea about Servers, Clients and P2P, ports etc
It's very obvious from your posts.

Just because I'm telling you that you're wrong, doesn't mean that I'm the one who doesn't understand. You're operating under the assumption that you're right, which is the very point that is in question. I realize that I'm not very good at explaining the vast breadth of concepts you would need to understand in order to realize where you're mistaken, but ones perception doesn't shape reality.
What's very obvious is that you won't ever consider that you're the one with a fundamental misunderstanding, which means you're not likely to try to learn, so you'll probably always cling to your current, flawed understanding. I've done all I can do - lead a horse to water, and all that.

Dear lord, can you just knock it off? Please stop arguing about semantics and derailing a thread that has been stickied for two years for a reason.

Get back on topic, or you will lose the ability to post in this thread.

The fact that a thread of technically incorrect and potentially detrimental advice has been stickied for so long is precisely why it is important to get the corrected information out there. I realize that it's your post, but this isn't about ego - it's about wanting to actually help the community as a whole. Getting credit for "helping" when the problem still exists is meaningless; much better to see actual improvement so we can all log off of the forums and get back to playing the game.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

how about we leave it at "you are right, and the rest of the world is wrong" and move on?

 

[styles784]

how about we leave it at "you are right, and the rest of the world is wrong" and move on?

Bold of you to assume that "the rest of the world" agrees with you, but okay

 

[Ozric]

I realize that it's your post, but this isn't about ego

No it isn't my post.

 

[styles784]

No it isn't my post.

Oh, I misread your label, lol. Fair enough.

I have nothing to gain from convincing people to try a better approach, other than a better multiplayer experience for all of us

 

[Esteban]

Most of my discons are adjudication server errors, such as blue cobra. I just did the test shown below before posting this message. Results (esp. D/L) are on the low side (presumably because of heavy use by family at the time), but should still be more than sufficient for ED to operate without issue.

I have no content-filtering settings enabled in my router. I can comb through the settings again, but it would surprise me to find anything there.

 

[styles784]

Most of my discons are adjudication server errors, such as blue cobra. I just did the test shown below before posting this message. Results (esp. D/L) are on the low side (presumably because of heavy use by family at the time), but should still be more than sufficient for ED to operate without issue.

I have no content-filtering settings enabled in my router. I can comb through the settings again, but it would surprise me to find anything there.

Hmmm... sometimes buffer bloat can cause latency spikes under load - see what results you get from this test: https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat
I'd be surprised if that was the problem in this case, based on your speedtest results, but it's quick to run and rule out

 

[Esteban]

Interesting reference, thank you.
The test showed better U/L & D/L speeds than the one I showed above but not the latency figure I was hoping for. I think I'll go play with my router's QoS features to see if I can get the Queue Mgmt to do a better job. Or maybe I should just unplug my PC from the priority ethernet port! (probably not)

D/L: 877Mbps U/L: 953Mbps. Unloaded latency: 6ms. Loaded latency: 56ms.

Looking past the colorful-box summary-data, I see that the delta U/L latency* seems just fine at 10ms. It's the delta D/L latency* that should be better (hopefully!) than 50ms


* my term describing their use of the 'difference between the unloaded and loaded latencies.'

 

[CMDR Darth Vater]

I still have the issues with losing connection in Multicrew. Both EDO on the two computers in my network using IPv6 with 5100 respectively 5101. The ports (UDP and TCP) for the two PCs are opened on the router. In the same star system it works good. But jumping to another system leads to a connection error. Only the ship jumps, the crew mate sees the endless tunnel and then the infamous black screen.

It seems that the frontier server isn't able to support.

 

[Ettanin]

I still have the issues with losing connection in Multicrew. Both EDO on the two computers in my network using IPv6 with 5100 respectively 5101. The ports (UDP and TCP) for the two PCs are opened on the router. In the same star system it works good. But jumping to another system leads to a connection error. Only the ship jumps, the crew mate sees the endless tunnel and then the infamous black screen.

It seems that the frontier server isn't able to support.

Being in the same LAN it should matchmake through LAN anyway. Do you happen to have a Dual Stack Lite type of connection? In this case the hairpinning detection will fail because FDev's matchmaker prefers IPv4 (which will hit against the CGNAT/AFTR gateway and fail to connect) and can't properly detect both peers being in the same LAN.

This is on them. If IPv6 is available, IPv6 should be used instead.

Besides that, you don't need to forward ports for IPv6. IPv6 was made in mind with with making NATing obsolete. Depending on your router, however, you might need to either "allow", "unlock" or whatever it's called there the required ports.

 

[CMDR Darth Vater]

In my network my router provides IPv4 and IPv6 addresses to the clients.

Does that mean, I better should use IPv4 when I do multicrew with my son?

 

[Ettanin]

In my network my router provides IPv4 and IPv6 addresses to the clients.

Does that mean, I better should use IPv4 when I do multicrew with my son?

If you have a public dynamic or static IPv4 address on the WAN side, yes.

 

[Jackz]

Hello. I correctly opened the ports 5100-5200 UDP on my router. The test with https://portforward.com/store/pfconfig.cgi it's positive, but if i try with https://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/open-ports/ it's negative. In game i still get "port_restricted". I followed the guide, i correctly put my static machine IP on the router AND on windows, still "port_restricted". I also tried without windows firewall and/or with DMZ on the router, still "port_restricted". One time i randomly got "full cone" but i don't know why, it's driving me crazy.