[SOLVED] Can connect to the internet on my wifi but no video games

[Alex_482]

I can browse the internet, stream video,s and download updates but when attempting to play an online video game, the connection times out, despite being able to log in for the most part.

I also had an issue earlier last night when I was attempting to play video games with my friends, but my PL suddenly shot to about 90% or higher whereas my internet again was fine. After a few minutes the problem went away and we played some Apex.

Now this is the same problem, but perhaps even worse. I can confirm that my phone is also unable to connect to any of the same video game servers on my wifi, so I'm fairly certain that the issue is the router, but since I do not own the router (I live in a shared house) I want to be very sure before I broach the issue with the others. I read elsewhere that the issue could be with the NAT, but I'm completely clueless as to what that is.

 

[Lutfij]

Make and model of your wireless router? See if the router is pending any firmware updates.

 

[Alex_482]

Make and model of your wireless router? See if the router is pending any firmware updates.

UniFiOS. I can't investigate much further than that since I don't own the router and the landlady gets nervous when I poke around it.

I also investigated port forwarding for all the games I play and found that they all came up blocked on this website. 80 seems to be the only open port.

Port Checker - Check Open Ports Online

Port Checker is a simple tool to check for open ports and test port forwarding setup on your router. Verify and diagnose connection errors on your computer.

portchecker.co

I'm beginning to think that the router is blocking everything but 80.

 

[bill001g]

This is where you need to not believe people who think they know everything because they can click buttons in a game.

Apex legends like most games that use central servers do not need any kind of port forwarding.

The port scanner also is not doing what you think it is. It is saying the router is accepting port 80 as a server. All your machines are running as clients to web servers on the internet they do not use port 80 as a incoming port.

It also is highly unlikely you are using port 80 anyway almost all web traffic now uses HTTPS which uses port 443.

Although they could have firewall rules setup in the router to only allow web browser it is unlikely. Could be firewall rules in your pc just as easily. It is not uncommon for microsoft to think you are running on a public network and restrict pretty much all traffic other than web.

If you still think it is the apartment router try a vpn, many have the ability to run on port 443 if it does not work on the default ports.

 

[Alex_482]

I don't think it is just my PC , I tried connecting to a video game that was cross-platform between my PC and my phone (in this case it was Genshin Impact) and I got the exact same connection error between both platforms. Discord had a similar issue where I could receive text messages and hear other people in voice chat, but I could not transmit my voice. Not a networking guy, but I assume discord sends and receives voices in a different manner than it does for text messages.

Actually, I got the port forwarding idea from a couple of different Toms Hardware replies to the same question. I seem to recall your username being quite frequent. Thank you for your help.

 

[bill001g]

Port forwarding is mostly used on games where there is no central server. It is when the server function is in someones house like a minecraft server. There are also some console games that do not use central servers and one of the end devices acts as a server.

The games you mention run off servers in data centers.

The second thing which is very uncommon would be if there was some kind of firewall in the path. In that case you must allow the other ports to pass through.

There really is not reason to block games ports with a firewall. Games use almost no bandwidth you would think they would block netflix before a game.

Still you are going to get nowhere unless you can see what is configured in the router. I would try a vpn service. Most the larger ones support use of port 443 which has to be allowed through any firewall.

 

[Alex_482]

so this VPN service would let me "tunnel" my game or voice data through 443? Not that beggars can be choosers but might there be some performance issues doing thata?

 

[bill001g]

Hard to say how much it would add to the latency. There is some extra cpu used to encrypt the data and then your data has to go to the vpn data center before being sent on to the game company. It all depends on the distance from your house to the vpn center and then from the vpn center to the game company.....it is not a direct path in many cases. This is impossible to predict but it should not add a huge amount as long as you are careful to not do silly stuff like use a vpn data center in say new york when the game server is in california.

There are actually vpn services that claim it can make the connection faster, exitlag is one. It is highly unlikely for many people, they do have their own private network to some of the more popular game company host sites but I can't see how this gets past the overhead of your traffic first having to go to the vpn company and then go to the game company. There are cases where your ISP has a poor connection to the game company but a good connection to exitlag nearest data center. Most times this is in asia where many ISP do not have direct access to some of the undersea fibers.

I am not recommending exitlag just a example as part of the explanation. In your case I am not it will work. I have never looked into what ports it uses. If there is something that is blocking everything but web traffic then the vpn must appear as web traffic also...ie use port 443.
Many vpn services have free trial. Avoid all the free ones, they perform poorly and in some case do garbage like force advertising into your browser.

Have you investigated getting your own internet connection. A vpn service is not going to be real expensive likely $10-$15/month but it is still a messy way to try to get past your problem. Note some game companies do not allow vpn, it is fairly rare but some free to play games want to avoid the hackers.

 

[Alex_482]

I have a friendly enough relationship with my landlady so I feel confident that I could solve my issue eventually, so I don't think getting my own internet is necessary. However, she is even more technologically illiterate than I, so I wanted to be sure of what my issue was before she passed the issue up to her tech guy. In the interim and for future service outages, I think a VPN should work, so thank you for that.

So I should look for a paid VPN that can tunnel my traffic through port 443? Do you have recommendations? First one that comes to mind is Nord, just from all their youtube advertisements I see.

 

[bill001g]

Nord is one of the most popular and for whatever reason netflix doesn't block it even though they block other vpn. I think nord has a money back if it doesn't work. I use PIA just because it worked better on my old ISP and I kept it. In my case PIA is only adding 5ms but I live near one of their data centers.

 

[Alex_482]

Hi, I wanted to bump this thread again because this issue came up again and I tried the VPN solution, only to find I think the VPN is being blocked as well.

Some other things I found was blocked was any kind of voice chat data. Be it Zoom, Discord, or Whatsapp, I was able to connect to the services, but voice chat was completely blocked. I confirmed with the landlady that she is not blocking anything on purpose. I also confirmed the issue is across multiple devices. What could be the issue, then?