Question Timing out when specifically pinging 1 IP address, cannot play games with a friend.

[Tannerbobanner111]

Hi, so I have recently come upon a very obscure issue, my friend and I have tried playing multiple steam games together including Portal 2, Borderlands 2, Terraria, and more. Him and I have both tried hosting servers however our pings when connecting to each other are so bad that we time out within seconds of connecting. If I host, he cannot join and vice versa.

Here are troubleshooting steps I have already dealt with:
-Going through router settings
-Forwarding ports
-Speedtest (We each have over 30mb / s down and above 5 up)
-Services like hamachi
-Locally hosting outside of steam

From what I have concluded, I cannot have any direct WAN connections to specifically my friends network and it is very annoying, we can both play on public minecraft and csgo servers together. But anything direct does not work. This is not specific to game hosting it seems to me like we just cannot connect to each other in general, there needs to be a middle host for our two networks to communicate.

Any help is appreciated

 

[digitalgriffin]

Can you set up a ping server on one of your computers and forward the port to that computer? Then do a ping with a trace route. This will tell you where its getting hung up.

Also do you have static wan ip from your isp?

 

[Tannerbobanner111]

Can you set up a ping server on one of your computers and forward the port to that computer? Then do a ping with a trace route. This will tell you where its getting hung up.

Also do you have static wan ip from your isp?

Thank you for the input, would you be able to run me by on how I could do such a thing? And I believe my ip is not static I could however change that.

Edit: I contacted my ISP, and they don't see it as a networking issue. Lol

 

[digitalgriffin]

Thank you for the input, would you be able to run me by on how I could do such a thing? And I believe my ip is not static I could however change that.

Edit: I contacted my ISP, and they don't see it as a networking issue. Lol

For the machine acting as the server, you'll want a static WAN ip. Or at the very least get a current Wan IP. You'll want to ping that IP. You'll want to use a custom port # like 49153.

So for example if your WAN IP is 123.45.67.89, you'll want to "tracert 123.45.67.89:49153" ON the server router, you'll want to TEMPORARILY setup a port forward of 49153 to your local machine IP:33434. For example on the router port forward list take: Incoming port 49153 and map it to 192.168.1.23:33434. (This would be the LAN IP of the server in question)

 

[Tannerbobanner111]

For the machine acting as the server, you'll want a static WAN ip. Or at the very least get a current Wan IP. You'll want to ping that IP. You'll want to use a custom port # like 49153.

So for example if your WAN IP is 123.45.67.89, you'll want to "tracert 123.45.67.89:49153" ON the server router, you'll want to TEMPORARILY setup a port forward of 49153 to your local machine IP:33434. For example on the router port forward list take: Incoming port 49153 and map it to 192.168.1.23:33434. (This would be the LAN IP of the server in question)

Do you have discord?

 

[bill001g]

For the machine acting as the server, you'll want a static WAN ip. Or at the very least get a current Wan IP. You'll want to ping that IP. You'll want to use a custom port # like 49153.

So for example if your WAN IP is 123.45.67.89, you'll want to "tracert 123.45.67.89:49153" ON the server router, you'll want to TEMPORARILY setup a port forward of 49153 to your local machine IP:33434. For example on the router port forward list take: Incoming port 49153 and map it to 192.168.1.23:33434. (This would be the LAN IP of the server in question)

Would be nice if microsoft did not think they needed to reinvent the wheel. Unless they changed something windows does not support the concept of port numbers. They use ICMP unlike many other implementations even though many of those have also move to ICMP also. I know when I played with years ago most implementation did not use a single port they would send blocks of packets to 33434,33435,33436. Maybe this has changed, I know I had to do it from cisco commercial routers if I wanted to use UDP based ping.

 

[digitalgriffin]

Would be nice if microsoft did not think they needed to reinvent the wheel. Unless they changed something windows does not support the concept of port numbers. They use ICMP unlike many other implementations even though many of those have also move to ICMP also. I know when I played with years ago most implementation did not use a single port they would send blocks of packets to 33434,33435,33436. Maybe this has changed, I know I had to do it from cisco commercial routers if I wanted to use UDP based ping.

QFT. A standard tracert will work (or at least it does on my windows 7/10 machines) but I may be configured differently.

This might help for a generic ICMP ping.

How to Allow Pings (ICMP Echo Requests) Through Your Windows Firewall

When Windows Firewall is enabled with default settings, you can’t use the ping command from another device to see if your PC is alive. Here’s how to change that.

www.howtogeek.com

 

[Tannerbobanner111]

QFT. A standard tracert will work (or at least it does on my windows 7/10 machines) but I may be configured differently.

This might help for a generic ICMP ping.

How to Allow Pings (ICMP Echo Requests) Through Your Windows Firewall

When Windows Firewall is enabled with default settings, you can’t use the ping command from another device to see if your PC is alive. Here’s how to change that.

www.howtogeek.com

Would be nice if microsoft did not think they needed to reinvent the wheel. Unless they changed something windows does not support the concept of port numbers. They use ICMP unlike many other implementations even though many of those have also move to ICMP also. I know when I played with years ago most implementation did not use a single port they would send blocks of packets to 33434,33435,33436. Maybe this has changed, I know I had to do it from cisco commercial routers if I wanted to use UDP based ping.

Yeah boys, nothing is still working on my end, I dont really know what to do from here

 

[bill001g]

You likely are going to have to actually spend some time learning how ip testing tools work if you really want to find out.

Your first step is on both ends to see if you have public ip or not. The IP do not have to be static but they must be public to host servers. Your router likely has the WAN ip you are assigned. Compare this to sites like whatsmyip to see if they are the same.

If they are different it is means there is another router in the path that you would need to put port forwarding rules. This is likely in the ISP network where you can not get access. If both machines do not have public ip addresses you have no hope to host games.

If you have a public IP then you need to start learning how commands work. Key here is to read how the tracert works and what the display output means. You want to trace to the public ip and see where the high latency is. It may or may not timeout on the final hop which is the remote router. Some routers have options that allow them to respond to ping and tracert.

So this is just the very first steps. If all this is ok then you get into the testing of port forwarding rules.

 

[Tannerbobanner111]

You likely are going to have to actually spend some time learning how ip testing tools work if you really want to find out.

Your first step is on both ends to see if you have public ip or not. The IP do not have to be static but they must be public to host servers. Your router likely has the WAN ip you are assigned. Compare this to sites like whatsmyip to see if they are the same.

If they are different it is means there is another router in the path that you would need to put port forwarding rules. This is likely in the ISP network where you can not get access. If both machines do not have public ip addresses you have no hope to host games.

If you have a public IP then you need to start learning how commands work. Key here is to read how the tracert works and what the display output means. You want to trace to the public ip and see where the high latency is. It may or may not timeout on the final hop which is the remote router. Some routers have options that allow them to respond to ping and tracert.

So this is just the very first steps. If all this is ok then you get into the testing of port forwarding rules.

I appreciate it, well I did just find out it is definantely the isp's problem. I connected to a vpn and joined my friends sessions and it worked flawlessly. So that determines that it is something on the isp's end so will the traceroute solution still work?

 

[bill001g]

If you can get a vpn up between your house and his house I am very surprised that is another level of complexity compared to hosting a game. VPN you are hosting a VPN server. Now if you are both going through some vpn server on the internet that is different. Kinda like running a game that uses central servers rather than ones hosted in people houses.

If it performs ok maybe just using the vpn is a good option.

You can try the tracert and stuff if you like. But if you actually have a vpn between your house and his the likely problem is the ISP is blocking something that the VPN can get past.

 

[Tannerbobanner111]

If you can get a vpn up between your house and his house I am very surprised that is another level of complexity compared to hosting a game. VPN you are hosting a VPN server. Now if you are both going through some vpn server on the internet that is different. Kinda like running a game that uses central servers rather than ones hosted in people houses.

If it performs ok maybe just using the vpn is a good option.

You can try the tracert and stuff if you like. But if you actually have a vpn between your house and his the likely problem is the ISP is blocking something that the VPN can get past.

It was an internet vpn service