Multiplayer Help needed

Ever since I upgraded from 4.0 to 4.5 I haven't been able to join any multiplayer sessions. I have the current patch. The error I get is that the port fail and that its usually from the router not being set up properly. The sad thing about that is that I don't have a router. I'm connected directly to the dsl modem. Anyone have any ideas on that?

AltecLansing said:

Ever since I upgraded from 4.0 to 4.5 I haven't been able to join any multiplayer sessions. I have the current patch. The error I get is that the port fail and that its usually from the router not being set up properly. The sad thing about that is that I don't have a router. I'm connected directly to the dsl modem. Anyone have any ideas on that?

Click to expand...

your dsl modem might have a firewall on it... if you have an ATT Uverse modem that may be the problem......

I have the 660 series modem from embarq. It shows all ports are open.

AltecLansing said:

I'm connected directly to the dsl modem. Anyone have any ideas on that?

Click to expand...

Same here but its a different modem

You must enable ports in the XP or Vista firewall( or the firewall that MAY be in your modem)
There are two ports ranges that must be enabled for RF's MP'er to work correctly they are:
61234 through 61250
And
61300 through 61316
ALL 34 ports !
using the UDP protocal

Please show us a screenshot of your modem's port configuration page. Your modem probably uses NAT, which in effect, makes it a router.

jeffpn said:

Please show us a screenshot of your modem's port configuration page. Your modem probably uses NAT, which in effect, makes it a router.

Click to expand...

I can't remember how to take a screen shot in windows. Tell me how again and I'll post the pic.

Prtscrn or something like it, copies your screen. Then go to Paint and paste. Google for more info.

Thanks. I googled it as you were posting. I'm hoping that I'm adding the pics right.

I tried it again this morning. Upnp was enabled and allowed to pass through the firewall. I turned off norton 360.

I called great planes and they told me that I didn't have my router configured properly. I told them I don't have a router, but a dsl modem. If you look in the port pic, you will see the at the top of the list that it says all ports. That means all ports are open. I even added the other ports. That didn't work. By the way, great planes said that its something the programmers will have to deal with and that I needed to go to knife edge for support. Interesting circle. Knife edge says you get support from great planes. Great planes said that they can't help me and to come to knife edge for support.

I play call of duty. I have no problems whatsoever in getting on any cod server. I used to play starwars online game. I never had a problem getting on there. I used to play world of warcraft. I never had a problem with getting on any of their games. So, any help that will actually get me on multiplayer would be greatly appreciated. Perhaps, one of the programmers can give some input?

Looking at the preview before posting, I'm guess that the pics will be available as links or downloads

Probably an obvious point but, there is no IP address specified for the port ranges.

Assign a static IP to your computer and then assign that IP to the ranges.

Hope that helps!

js3862 said:

Probably an obvious point but, there is no IP address specified for the port ranges.

Assign a static IP to your computer and then assign that IP to the ranges.

Hope that helps!

Click to expand...

the 0.0.0.0 is supposed to be for all ip address doled out by the dsl modem, which can only be one, but I did go in and assign the the number 2 and number 3 spots to the ip address doled out by the dsl modem. If you have a dsl modem, you can get this number by going to a dos prompt and typing in ipconfig. The first number listed is the ip address of your machine. But when the modem has a number of 0.0.0.0 its supposed to all those ports to forward through all ips that it gives out which is only one since its not a router and doesn't have multiple computers connected to it.

No that is not correct.

The 0.0.0.0 must be replaced by the IP address of the PC you want the modem to forward the packets TO.

opjose said:

No that is not correct.

The 0.0.0.0 must be replaced by the IP address of the PC you want the modem to forward the packets TO.

Click to expand...

Since there is a nat and built in firewall, if the modem required a specific ip address to forward the ports, then I wouldnt' have been able to get on the internet at all. Everything that access the internet uses a port including your web browser. The top of the list specifically shows all ports with ip address of 0.0.0.0. If it needed an specific ip address, then I wouldnt' have been able to play cod, wow, star wars online, or visit various forums.

Altec, your modem is effectively a router. Do yourself a favor and listen to js3862 and especially opjose.

I did use an ip address for the ports listed for real flight. It either uses more ports, or I have the wrong port numbers, or there's another setting I haven't tried.

here's a pic of the most recent settings. I did have a crash on the modem while messing with the settings and had to reset it to factory defaults to get back on the net. These settings did not allow me to connect to mp. It gave me the same error and upnp is on. I'm not sure what else I should turn on or off. I did turn off the firewall in the modem. I also turned off my norton 360 fire wall and scanner.

AltecLansing said:

Since there is a nat and built in firewall, if the modem required a specific ip address to forward the ports, then I wouldnt' have been able to get on the internet at all. Everything that access the internet uses a port including your web browser. The top of the list specifically shows all ports with ip address of 0.0.0.0. If it needed an specific ip address, then I wouldnt' have been able to play cod, wow, star wars online, or visit various forums.

Click to expand...

Yeah... kinda... but not. You're looking at two different configuration scenarios and lumping them together. The first being NAT overload or "Network Address Translation" which allows multiple computers to connect and interact using a single IP. The other configuration is known as PAT or "Port Address Translation" which allows you to do cool things like specify particular ports be redirected to an internal computer, computers or to a specific alternate port. The two are very closely related in the things that they do but they do provide very distinctly different functions.

NAT allows multiple computers to all connect and use the same IP by maintaining a running log of internal IP addresses, ports and destinations associated with each requesting internal IP. When a request goes out to a specific destination and on a specific port the router then knows to listen for a return message on that port and redirect it to the proper internal client. Depending on the router equipment you have NAT can be configured in a one-to-many (overload), one-to-one (dedicated), or many-to-one (multi-homed) scenario or a mixture of the three.

PAT allows ports to be redirected to a specific computer or computers. PAT is typically used in scenarios where you want to make a specific service available to the Internet but you don't want to expose the entire machine. Examples of how PAT is used would be hosting an FTP server on your computer and allowing people from the Internet to access it or hosting a game server on your computer. Other examples would be using PAT to open up ports for multi-cast traffic for things like video streaming or conferencing. For those situations where your are dealing with traffic bound for the entire local network or a group you could potentially use the 0.0.0.0 address only because that affectively refers to your entire subnet. It will be different with each device but that traffic would most likely then be converted into traffic bound for 255.255.255.255 which is the broadcast address for your subnet. This may work fine, depending on your application, if your only needing inbound, non-interactive, connectionless traffic like, for example, video.

However, this doesn't work with things that need to interact with the information they're receiving because broadcast traffic is not routable and does not provide the same IP information in the packet header that a unicast packet does. So, when the local gateway broadcasts the information the packet takes on the IP address of the router. When RF receives the information about the host it is trying to connect to that information would then contain connection data for the internal interface of your router and that will fail 100% of the time as your router has no idea about what your asking for.

I hope that didn't further murky the waters.


Disclaimer: I'm working totally from memory on this so if anyone finds a "bug in my code" please feel free to point it out.

AltecLansing said:

here's a pic of the most recent settings. I did have a crash on the modem while messing with the settings and had to reset it to factory defaults to get back on the net. These settings did not allow me to connect to mp. It gave me the same error and upnp is on. I'm not sure what else I should turn on or off. I did turn off the firewall in the modem. I also turned off my norton 360 fire wall and scanner.

Click to expand...

Ok, do this:

Turn OFF:
UPNP


Turn ON:
The firewall in your router
The firewall on your computer

Change:
Take your computer's ip out of the #1 position in the NAT list unless there is specific instructions in the manual to do that. To me, without downloading another router manual, it looks like that opens your computer up to any inbound traffic. Not good!

Leave Alone:
Your port ranges look good in the screen shot you just sent.

To Do:
Try running the pfportchecker tool from here and with the hardware (Xyzel) firewall ON and your Norton firewall and (verify) Windows firewall off, see if you get a connection.

If you do get connections then focus on the software firewall configurations. Run the netsh commands that I have listed in previous posts to make sure the exceptions are properly configured in your windows firewall (even if you don't use it) and then mimic those exceptions that are in the Xyzel and Windows firewalls in your Norton firewall.

If you don't get any connections from the Xyzel, let us know after you look in the manual and see if you need to create any firewall rules on the Xyzel for inbound traffic on the RF port ranges. Some routers require that you must authorize the traffic even though you are already telling it to PAT the traffic.


Hope that helps!

Great job and explanation.

Ditto...

Should be a sticky...

Regards
Michael

... And especially js3862!...