Gaming Consoles and IPv4

Mon Sep 28 12:51:38 UTC 2020

Matt, that ship sailed long before you or I thought about building networks. You can't change it at this point. Just embrace it. 

----- 
Mike Hammett 
Intelligent Computing Solutions 

Midwest Internet Exchange 

The Brothers WISP 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Matt Hoppes" <mattlists at rivervalleyinternet.net> 
To: "Justin Wilson (Lists)" <lists at mtin.net>, "Mike Hammett" <nanog at ics-il.net> 
Cc: "North American Network Operators' Group" <nanog at nanog.org> 
Sent: Monday, September 28, 2020 7:44:49 AM 
Subject: Re: Gaming Consoles and IPv4 

Because it's not universally supported, poorly thought through, and no 
backwards compatibility. 

Is there a better option? NO, not at this time. But it certainly could 
have been better thought through how it was implemented. 

On 9/28/20 8:37 AM, Justin Wilson (Lists) wrote: 
> It is coming back to that, but you still have so much going on that you 
> need the open ports. I don’t gt why people fight IPV6 so much. 
> 
> 
> Justin Wilson 
> j2sw at mtin.net <mailto:j2sw at mtin.net> 
> 
> — 
> https://j2sw.com - All things jsw (AS209109) 
> https://blog.j2sw.com - Podcast and Blog 
> 
>> On Sep 28, 2020, at 8:34 AM, Mike Hammett <nanog at ics-il.net 
>> <mailto:nanog at ics-il.net>> wrote: 
>> 
>> Why stray away from how PC games were 20 years ago where there was a 
>> dedicated server and clients just spoke to servers? 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> ----- 
>> Mike Hammett 
>> Intelligent Computing Solutions <http://www.ics-il.com/> 
>> <https://www.facebook.com/ICSIL><https://plus.google.com/+IntelligentComputingSolutionsDeKalb><https://www.linkedin.com/company/intelligent-computing-solutions><https://twitter.com/ICSIL> 
>> Midwest Internet Exchange <http://www.midwest-ix.com/> 
>> <https://www.facebook.com/mdwestix><https://www.linkedin.com/company/midwest-internet-exchange><https://twitter.com/mdwestix> 
>> The Brothers WISP <http://www.thebrotherswisp.com/> 
>> <https://www.facebook.com/thebrotherswisp><https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXSdfxQv7SpoRQYNyLwntZg> 
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
>> *From:*"Justin Wilson (Lists)" <lists at mtin.net <mailto:lists at mtin.net>> 
>> *To:*"North American Network Operators' Group" <nanog at nanog.org 
>> <mailto:nanog at nanog.org>> 
>> *Sent:*Monday, September 28, 2020 7:22:28 AM 
>> *Subject:*Re: Gaming Consoles and IPv4 
>> 
>> There are many things going on with gaming that makes natted IPv4 an 
>> issue when it comes to consoles and gaming in general. When you 
>> break it down it makes sense. 
>> 
>> -You have voice chat 
>> -You are receiving data from servers about other people in the game 
>> -You are sending data to servers about yourself 
>> -If you are using certain features where you are “the host” then you 
>> are serving content from your gaming console. This is not much 
>> different than a customer running a web server. You can’t have more 
>> than one customer running a port 80 web-server behind nat. 
>> -Streaming to services like Twitch or YouTube 
>> 
>> All of these take up standard, agreed upon ports. It’s really only 
>> prevalent on gaming consoles because they are doing many functions. 
>> Look at it another way. You have a customer doing the following. 
>> 
>> -Making a VOIP call 
>> -Streaming a movie 
>> -Running a web server 
>> -Running bittorrent on a single port 
>> -Having a camera folks need to access from the outside world 
>> 
>> This is why platforms like Xbox developed things like Teredo. 
>> 
>> Justin Wilson 
>> j2sw at mtin.net <mailto:j2sw at mtin.net> 
>> 
>> — 
>> https://j2sw.com <https://j2sw.com/>- All things jsw (AS209109) 
>> https://blog.j2sw.com <https://blog.j2sw.com/>- Podcast and Blog 
>> 
>> On Sep 27, 2020, at 9:33 PM, Daniel Sterling 
>> <sterling.daniel at gmail.com <mailto:sterling.daniel at gmail.com>> wrote: 
>> 
>> Matt Hoppes raises an interesting question, 
>> 
>> At the risk of this being off-topic, in the latest call of duty 
>> games I've played, their UDP-NAT-breaking algorithm seems to work 
>> rather well and should function fine even behind CGNAT. Ironically 
>> turning on upnp makes this *worse*, because when their algorithm 
>> probes to see what ports to use, upnp sends all traffic from the 
>> "magical xbox port" to one box instead of letting NAT control the 
>> ports. This does cause problems when multiple xboxes are behind 
>> one NAT doing upnp. If upnp is on and both xboxes are fully 
>> powered off and then turned on one at a time, things do work. But 
>> when upnp is off everything works w/o having to do that. 
>> 
>> There are many other games and many CPE NAT boxes that may do 
>> horrible things, but CGNAT by itself shouldn't cause problems for 
>> any recent device / gaming system. 
>> 
>> It is true that I've yet to see any FPS game use ipv6. I assume 
>> that's cuz they can't count on users having v6, so they have to 
>> support v4, and it wouldn't be worth their while to have their 
>> gaming host support dual-stack. just a guess there 
>> 
>> -- Dan 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Sun, Sep 27, 2020 at 7:29 PM Mike Hammett <nanog at ics-il.net 
>> <mailto:nanog at ics-il.net>> wrote: 
>> 
>> Actually, uPNP is the only way to get two devices to work 
>> behind one public IP, at least with XBox 360s. I haven't kept 
>> up in that realm. 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> ----- 
>> Mike Hammett 
>> Intelligent Computing Solutions <http://www.ics-il.com/> 
>> <https://www.facebook.com/ICSIL><https://plus.google.com/+IntelligentComputingSolutionsDeKalb><https://www.linkedin.com/company/intelligent-computing-solutions><https://twitter.com/ICSIL> 
>> Midwest Internet Exchange <http://www.midwest-ix.com/> 
>> <https://www.facebook.com/mdwestix><https://www.linkedin.com/company/midwest-internet-exchange><https://twitter.com/mdwestix> 
>> The Brothers WISP <http://www.thebrotherswisp.com/> 
>> <https://www.facebook.com/thebrotherswisp><https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXSdfxQv7SpoRQYNyLwntZg> 
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
>> *From:*"Matt Hoppes" <mattlists at rivervalleyinternet.net 
>> <mailto:mattlists at rivervalleyinternet.net>> 
>> *To:*"Darin Steffl" <darin.steffl at mnwifi.com 
>> <mailto:darin.steffl at mnwifi.com>> 
>> *Cc:*"North American Network Operators' Group" 
>> <nanog at nanog.org <mailto:nanog at nanog.org>> 
>> *Sent:*Sunday, September 27, 2020 1:22:51 PM 
>> *Subject:*Re: Gaming Consoles and IPv4 
>> 
>> I understand that. But there’s a host of reasons why that 
>> night not work - two devices trying to use UPNP behind the 
>> same PAT device, an apartment complex or hotel WiFi system, etc. 
>> 
>> On Sep 27, 2020, at 2:17 PM, Darin Steffl 
>> <darin.steffl at mnwifi.com <mailto:darin.steffl at mnwifi.com>> 
>> wrote: 
>> 
>> 
>> This isn't rocket science. 
>> 
>> Give each customer their own ipv4 IP address and turn on 
>> upnp, then they will have open NAT to play their game and 
>> host. 
>> 
>> On Sun, Sep 27, 2020, 12:50 PM Matt Hoppes 
>> <mattlists at rivervalleyinternet.net 
>> <mailto:mattlists at rivervalleyinternet.net>> wrote: 
>> 
>> I know the solution is always “IPv6”, but I’m curious 
>> if anyone here knows why gaming consoles are so stupid 
>> when it comes to IPv4? 
>> 
>> We have VoIP and video systems that work fine through 
>> multiple layers of PAT and NAT. Why do we still have 
>> gaming consoles, in 2020, that can’t find their way 
>> through a PAT system with STUN or other methods? 
>> 
>> It seems like this should be a simple solution, why 
>> are we still opening ports or having systems that 
>> don’t work? 
> 

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