Gaming Consoles and IPv4

Mon Sep 28 12:44:49 UTC 2020

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?
> 