[SOLVED] Multiple LAN devices playing together issues

jnxzi94

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Jul 13, 2021
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I discovered really annoying issue caused by having 2 or more LAN devices on the same network, connecting to the same game and playing together.
This caused 'internet lag' even though latency was stable, around 35-40 ms.
The delay and lag due to this was horrible (PC), and the other LAN device (PS4) was running fine without any lag.
The game we played is Warzone, but probably can happen on any game.

I'm going to install a bit better router today, which probably, hopefully fixes this issue because this is just ridiculous...

Anybody has solutions for this?
Opening ports or lowering firewall settings won't matter, neither does setting static IPs to LAN devices manually.
 
Solution
The so called solution to this is to not use IPv4 and go to IPv6.

There really is not solution for this. NAT is the solution for most people to solve the lack of IPv4 addresses. Most games have designed their own solutions to the NAT limitations....you can set the ports used in the game clients to other values.
It only really affects a small number of users and applications so there is not a lot of interest in the effort involved to get a real solution.

The so called IPv6 solution has been talked about since I started in networking over 20 years ago. It still seems to not work well. Many times the IPv6 network paths are not as good as IPv4. I suspect the ISP see the NAT and IPv4 solution good enough so they don't invest in...

jnxzi94

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Jul 13, 2021
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Nobody has answered. I have one simple question.
Would a VPN set up on PC fix this conflict between multiple LAN devices, which are playing the same game because this issue is related to NAT and ports.
 
Your question is too general to give a simple answer.

But you are likely correct it is something related to the NAT and ports. It all depends on the game and how much traffic must go to some central internet server. I mean there are games you can play that the traffic goes directly between the 2 machines on the lan and never goes to the internet. Some others you might need
some internet server for "licensing" game theft reasons but after the game starts the actual game traffic stays on the lan. The games that use central servers where all traffic must go to the server are the most problematic when it comes to 2 machines in the same house.

Years ago you had the same problem with say running 2 VPN clients behind the same NAT. You had say 2 people that work for the same company trying to access their work network using vpn from the same coffee shop. Only 1 would function correctly.

The solution for this depends greatly on the game. Some there is no fix others have some ability to change setting in the clients. Now I suspect you could run 1 machine on a VPN and the other directly. This really is a question better asked on the game forum......and hope you get a good answer some gamer are dumb as rocks and
just reply with cut and paste garbage they found that is not really valid. .
 
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jnxzi94

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Jul 13, 2021
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Your question is too general to give a simple answer.

But you are likely correct it is something related to the NAT and ports. It all depends on the game and how much traffic must go to some central internet server. I mean there are games you can play that the traffic goes directly between the 2 machines on the lan and never goes to the internet. Some others you might need
some internet server for "licensing" game theft reasons but after the game starts the actual game traffic stays on the lan. The games that use central servers where all traffic must go to the server are the most problematic when it comes to 2 machines in the same house.

Years ago you had the same problem with say running 2 VPN clients behind the same NAT. You had say 2 people that work for the same company trying to access their work network using vpn from the same coffee shop. Only 1 would function correctly.

The solution for this depends greatly on the game. Some there is no fix others have some ability to change setting in the clients. Now I suspect you could run 1 machine on a VPN and the other directly. This really is a question better asked on the game forum......and hope you get a good answer some gamer are dumb as rocks and
just reply with cut and paste garbage they found that is not really valid. .

I understand and there is no way to open ports for multiple devices.
That is just awful networking in a year 2022 if you can't have multiple devices playing games together, seriously.
I will try a premium VPN on PC and let the PS4 connect directly by the router, this shouldn't happen then.
 
The so called solution to this is to not use IPv4 and go to IPv6.

There really is not solution for this. NAT is the solution for most people to solve the lack of IPv4 addresses. Most games have designed their own solutions to the NAT limitations....you can set the ports used in the game clients to other values.
It only really affects a small number of users and applications so there is not a lot of interest in the effort involved to get a real solution.

The so called IPv6 solution has been talked about since I started in networking over 20 years ago. It still seems to not work well. Many times the IPv6 network paths are not as good as IPv4. I suspect the ISP see the NAT and IPv4 solution good enough so they don't invest in IPv6.

Now IPv6 sounds really good until you then look at all the misuse of tracking software. IPv6 most times has the unique mac address of the device so it lets them track all the way down to individual devices.
 
Solution

jnxzi94

Commendable
Jul 13, 2021
163
26
1,620
The so called solution to this is to not use IPv4 and go to IPv6.

There really is not solution for this. NAT is the solution for most people to solve the lack of IPv4 addresses. Most games have designed their own solutions to the NAT limitations....you can set the ports used in the game clients to other values.
It only really affects a small number of users and applications so there is not a lot of interest in the effort involved to get a real solution.

The so called IPv6 solution has been talked about since I started in networking over 20 years ago. It still seems to not work well. Many times the IPv6 network paths are not as good as IPv4. I suspect the ISP see the NAT and IPv4 solution good enough so they don't invest in IPv6.

Now IPv6 sounds really good until you then look at all the misuse of tracking software. IPv6 most times has the unique mac address of the device so it lets them track all the way down to individual devices.

I will try VPN anyways, it may work for this case, don't know, but inside the router it cannot be fixed.

How can I manipulate port values for Warzone?
And how could I force the use of IPv6, because I think many games use IPv4 instead anyways.
I have this option checked on my network adapter though.
 

jnxzi94

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Jul 13, 2021
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IPv6 first requires that your ISP actually supports IPv6 and then your router must support it also. And then the game servers must also support IPv6.

Warzone questions would be better asked on a forum where lots of people play that game.

Okay, but anyways VPN didn't fix this issue, it only made it worse.
We have to play so 1 device is connected to a router and 1 device is connected a 4G mobile network.
 
That sound more like you have a very small internet connection and are exceeding your upload bandwidth.

The VPN almost has to work. You are using different IP addresses and it appears as if your machine is located in the VPN companies data center. As far as the game is concerned the VPN connection is some kind of magic ethernet cable that can go across the country. It is actually hard to detect even if you intentionally tried.
 

jnxzi94

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Jul 13, 2021
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That sound more like you have a very small internet connection and are exceeding your upload bandwidth.

The VPN almost has to work. You are using different IP addresses and it appears as if your machine is located in the VPN companies data center. As far as the game is concerned the VPN connection is some kind of magic ethernet cable that can go across the country. It is actually hard to detect even if you intentionally tried.

I have a 100 mbps VDSL2 connection with unlimited data usage... so that's definitely enough for online gaming.
VPN really didn't work, it kept lagging and increased my latency even more, but after disconnecting PS4 from the network did the work. We had zero lag on both devices.
 
For games he upload rate is also important but if you have 100mbps down you likely have at least 10mbps up which is more than enough. It is the people that have things like 768k up that can not run 2 games.

This is extremely strange. When you run a vpn it is as if your machine was in a different house. Many time when the vpn is active you can not even print to local printers. This is a very important feature that lets people say access their work network in a coffee shop securely.
 

jnxzi94

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Jul 13, 2021
163
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1,620
For games he upload rate is also important but if you have 100mbps down you likely have at least 10mbps up which is more than enough. It is the people that have things like 768k up that can not run 2 games.

This is extremely strange. When you run a vpn it is as if your machine was in a different house. Many time when the vpn is active you can not even print to local printers. This is a very important feature that lets people say access their work network in a coffee shop securely.

My upload rate is good too, but I think it's an issue related to Warzone. VPN indeed didn't take away the lag caused by using 2 internet devices together, only 1 LAN device can be used when playing this game online.