The Port Forwarding thread: Minimizing multiplayer connection issues

I sit with my son in the same room, PCs are connected via router (Fritzbox) and LAN cables. Nevertheless we've got issues with instancing.

From experience when playing with my squadron it's important, that someone with very stable and high bandwidth DSL is opening / starting the instance. So others can drop on him with a very high rate of success. Nevertheless nowadays above 12 players is just very low chance of success, with Odyssey even four from same country fail quite often. Around 2018 we were able to instance with more than 20 people even. So the issue from my point is clearly on FDevs side.

You might try static port forwarding on 1 PC to UDP port 5100 and the other to UDP 5101 and make sure the game on each PC has that set up to match.
 

Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
I sit with my son in the same room, PCs are connected via router (Fritzbox) and LAN cables. Nevertheless we've got issues with instancing.

From experience when playing with my squadron it's important, that someone with very stable and high bandwidth DSL is opening / starting the instance. So others can drop on him with a very high rate of success. Nevertheless nowadays above 12 players is just very low chance of success, with Odyssey even four from same country fail quite often. Around 2018 we were able to instance with more than 20 people even. So the issue from my point is clearly on FDevs side.
Port forwarding, if properly implemented (in as many wing members as possible), should alleviate a lot of those issues.

In the case of your son and you try and implement port forwarding for both machines (follow the first post of this thread) in different ports as suggested by @c00ky1970 above.
 
Last edited:
Horizons worked for me and friends mostly fine. Obviously wing nav lock, not getting the same instance on occasion would be a thing. As would be reforming wings with the leaving wing bug.

With Odyssey anything involving planets we dysync literally while watching each other in cz, will still have bandwidth on the meter but we fail to be in each others instances. Coming into planets others are already on can cause crashes and colored ship codes. Friends not showing up on lists. Not getting each others messages.

I don't think its anyones routers. If you are having these problems right now in Odyssey I feel its the state of the game right now.

I manage at least a few hours every other day. Unlike many people I suspect never even play who both blindly defend and crap on the game.
Yeh this is our experience too. EDH instancing has been largely reliable without any faffing with routers. EDO has been entirely unreliable.
 
Yeh this is our experience too. EDH instancing has been largely reliable without any faffing with routers. EDO has been entirely unreliable.

I feel this issue is being under represented and I was disappointed it had no mention in the dev update today.
 
I recently implemented port-forwarding. I am on a double-NAT setup and just forwarded the relevant port on all the routers. I appears that my connection success-rate has gotten quite a lot better (looking at the NETWORK options in-game after having played for a while). UPnP is disabled; this too is verified when looking at NETWORK options in-game.
I have only forwarded UDP as instructions suggest, not TDP or both.

Is there a reasonably-short, understandable explanation for why this stuff doesn't work when connecting thru more than one router?

No need to belabor and prolong the agony of why I'm connected thru multiple routers. It just unnecessarily prolongs the post and doesn't help my situation which is the way it is. Thanks.
 

Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
I recently implemented port-forwarding. I am on a double-NAT setup and just forwarded the relevant port on all the routers. I appears that my connection success-rate has gotten quite a lot better (looking at the NETWORK options in-game after having played for a while). UPnP is disabled; this too is verified when looking at NETWORK options in-game.
I have only forwarded UDP as instructions suggest, not TDP or both.

Is there a reasonably-short, understandable explanation for why this stuff doesn't work when connecting thru more than one router?

No need to belabor and prolong the agony of why I'm connected thru multiple routers. It just unnecessarily prolongs the post and doesn't help my situation which is the way it is. Thanks.

Not sure I understand exactly what your situation is. Do you mean that your system has a main router and then a wifi extender?
 
No, sorry if I wasn't clear. I don't use a Wifi connection on my gaming PC; I use a wired ethernet connection.

The gateway (box provided by ISP) includes a router running NAT. I have routers for my local networks and definitely use their NAT features (my ISP isn't exactly up-to-date with hardware so I don't trust their router for security).
This means that I essentially connect thru two routers, both running NAT. I haven't been able to turn off the NAT in the gateway's config interface.
 

Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
No, sorry if I wasn't clear. I don't use a Wifi connection on my gaming PC; I use a wired ethernet connection.

The gateway (box provided by ISP) includes a router running NAT. I have routers for my local networks and definitely use their NAT features (my ISP isn't exactly up-to-date with hardware so I don't trust their router for security).
This means that I essentially connect thru two routers, both running NAT. I haven't been able to turn off the NAT in the gateway's config interface.

That is a tricky set up indeed. I presume you already had a look at this?: https://portforward.com/help/doublerouterportforwarding.htm
 
Just to be clear, it's insane that we have to do this.

That said, I've built the most clear path that can be built for network traffic and it's still Orange Sidewinder up one side and down the other. So manage your expectations.
 
That is a tricky set up indeed. I presume you already had a look at this?: https://portforward.com/help/doublerouterportforwarding.htm
Yes, I did, thank you for that suggestion.

Even before I stumbled across that reference, that is how I ended up attempting to make it work. I assigned static IPs for the router and for my computer. This allowed me to daisy-chain the port-forwarding from one LAN to the other LAN and to the (actual) WAN (the internet).
Basically this means that I port-forwarded my computer thru the router it is connected to (to the "WAN" IP of that router). Then I forwarded the same port number (5100) thru the second router (using its LAN address range and the static IP address of the aforementioned router (that my PC is connected to).

It's actually not that challenging; one has to just be mindful of which numbers belong to what device/LAN. As I mentioned in my 1st post, this appears to have reduced the number of unsuccessful connections as reported in Network Options in-game. What's interesting is that the game still reports a Port-Restricted setup. I'm not sure if that matters but I expect that it means that things aren't completely fault-less either.

Before I attempted this, my connection failure numbers were at least 50% (or higher), so things are better.

That reference is pretty good but some of the language is a bit confusing. I expect that for some it's fine while for others (like me), it just doesn't quite make things clear. That's definitely one of the challenges associated with writing this type of assistive documentation. I give them credit for trying!
 
Last edited:
Ok - i now have no idea what to do
Can you elaborate on what got you stuck? I think it's pretty clear that many folks here really do try to help. Give us a shot...

Don't let my more-complex situation put you off. I think this is do-able for most folks with some assistance.

The other piece of advice I would give generally is to keep the two tasks separate - don't confuse them by making them one. The two tasks to accomplish are:
1) Assign a static IP address to your computer(s).
2) Forward the port(s) that Elite Dangerous needs

Disclaimer: If you're using a VPN, then I am the fish out of water I'm afraid.
 
Last edited:
Can you elaborate on what got you stuck? I think it's pretty clear that many folks here really do try to help. Give us a shot...

Don't let my more-complex situation put you off. I think this is do-able for most folks with some assistance.

The other piece of advice I would give generally is to keep the two tasks separate - don't confuse them by making them one. The two tasks to accomplish are:
1) Assign a static IP address to your computer(s).
2) Forward the port(s) that Elite Dangerous needs

Disclaimer: If you're using a VPN, then I am the fish out of water I'm afraid.
But some of the posts say you dont need a static IP
 
Yes, I did, thank you for that suggestion.

Even before I stumbled across that reference, that is how I ended up attempting to make it work. I assigned static IPs for the router and for my computer. This allowed me to daisy-chain the port-forwarding from one LAN to the other LAN and to the (actual) WAN (the internet).
Basically this means that I port-forwarded my computer thru the router it is connected to (to the "WAN" IP of that router). Then I forwarded the same port number (5100) thru the second router (using its LAN address range and the static IP address of the aforementioned router (that my PC is connected to).

It's actually not that challenging; one has to just be mindful of which numbers belong to what device/LAN. As I mentioned in my 1st post, this appears to have reduced the number of unsuccessful connections as reported in Network Options in-game. What's interesting is that the game still reports a Port-Restricted setup. I'm not sure if that matters but I expect that it means that things aren't completely fault-less either.

Before I attempted this, my connection failure numbers were at least 50% (or higher), so things are better.

That reference is pretty good but some of the language is a bit confusing. I expect that for some it's fine while for others (like me), it just doesn't quite make things clear. That's definitely one of the challenges associated with writing this type of assistive documentation. I give them credit for trying!
Yes - this - all the Upnp, static local static IP - whats up with windows huh - surely FDEV needs to sort this out
 
But some of the posts say you dont need a static IP
I would suggest you might ignore the suggestions that say you don't need a static IP. While it's often true that your router will assign the same IP address when your computer requests one, it is not assured.

The only way to be sure that your computer is assigned the same IP address by the router is to reserve it in the router (this can be essentially done in the Windows OS as well). This process assures that you'll always be issued the same IP address thru any restart of your computer.

Also be assured that if your computer's IP addr changes, your port-forwarding will no longer function. That makes for a frustrating experience.
 
I would suggest you might ignore the suggestions that say you don't need a static IP. While it's often true that your router will assign the same IP address when your computer requests one, it is not assured.

The only way to be sure that your computer is assigned the same IP address by the router is to reserve it in the router (this can be essentially done in the Windows OS as well). This process assures that you'll always be issued the same IP address thru any restart of your computer.

Also be assured that if your computer's IP addr changes, your port-forwarding will no longer function. That makes for a frustrating experience.
So i set this in the router and the computer ? Why would my computer IP change? I‘m trying to condense the information into something easy to digest
 
So i set this in the router and the computer ? Why would my computer IP change? I‘m trying to condense the information into something easy to digest
Routers issue addresses to devices on their local network. When your computer turns on and network access is needed, the first thing it does is ask the router to give it an IP address. The router issues that address and the computer is on the network.

Why would it change?
Any time you turn off your computer (or disconnect it from the network), the IP address is no longer in-use. The router knows this and is free to assign it to a device that requests network access.

Where do you set it?
Effectively you can set in in either the computer's operating system or the router. As I stated in the last post, if you reserve* the IP address in the router, you'll not have to do anything on the computer.

* What's this reservation?
All routers have the ability to be told: "you may only assign this IP address to this one device." That prevents the router from giving your IP addr to any other device that may connect to the local network while your computer isn't using it - a handy feature for several reasons. It's generally easy to do this in the router config interface.
 
Routers issue addresses to devices on their local network. When your computer turns on and network access is needed, the first thing it does is ask the router to give it an IP address. The router issues that address and the computer is on the network.

Why would it change?
Any time you turn off your computer (or disconnect it from the network), the IP address is no longer in-use. The router knows this and is free to assign it to a device that requests network access.

Where do you set it?
Effectively you can set in in either the computer's operating system or the router. As I stated in the last post, if you reserve* the IP address in the router, you'll not have to do anything on the computer.

* What's this reservation?
All routers have the ability to be told: "you may only assign this IP address to this one device." That prevents the router from giving your IP addr to any other device that may connect to the local network while your computer isn't using it - a handy feature for several reasons. It's generally easy to do this in the router config interface.
Thanks
 
Back
Top Bottom