BT Home Hub Users

[[TW]Wilsonam]

We've been picking up on a small number of people having issues trying to play KF while using one version or another of the BT Home Hub in the UK. With a little (alright, rather a lot of) digging, we've discovered that BT does appear to have some issues with the Home Hub and multi-player/online gaming (their forums mention everything from L4D to WoW). It seems to be very intermittent and only affects "some" users. They also tend to point people at some internals for the hub to do with port forwarding. See this link:

[url]http://bt.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/bt.cfg/php/enduser/cci/bt_adp.php?p_sid=SCP1p5Bj&cat_lvl1=346&cat_lvl2=502&cat_lvl3=1857&p_cv=3.1857&p_cats=346,502,1857&p_faqid=8790[/URL]

Obviously there is no easy way for us to test this out... We aren't even sure if it is relevant, but it does seem to clear the problems for some people. For details of port forwarding for KF, see this thread on these forums: [url]http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/showthread.php?t=30727[/URL]

If someone would like to try it out and report back, that may help. Please follow the BT instructions carefully and do NOT screw up your Hub!

In general, if you have had issues with a BT Home Hub, we need YOU to contact BT Support, as we can't because we aren't customers.

 

[Twiggy]

I've done port forwarding. I will post my results momentarily.

Edit: unsuccessful

 

[liquid_squid]

Can anyone tell me if I have done this right, because I have followed the instuctions as best as possible and can play the game, but I still get the crazy server freezing on every server after 10-20 seconds and have to reconnect.

 

[Zetsumei]

i dont see port 7707 in your list afaik that is the default killingfloor game port and the port you actually play at.

those ports are serverports, clients use some ports differently if someone got some nice logging software we could know exactly which ones.

For the masterserver try opening up 27000 to 27500 as well.

 

[liquid_squid]

Oh rite I see, there is a missing one, ille try adding it and the suggested ports and see if that makes a difference. Ille post back to after testing it out.


Edit: I have tried this but still the problem remains

 

[slifin]

I get this same problem but I am not with BT nor do I have a BT router
I use o2 with o2 box which I believe is based on a speedtouch router and o2 leases its bandwidth from a company known as be broadband, I also have these ports forwarded:
7707
7708
20560
7717
28852
8075

 

[Tony1044]

Happens for me. O2 is my ISP and I've tried both the O2 (Thomson) router and a Netgear.

Also happens when I'm in my apartment in Belgium on (I think) Proximus through a Linksys router...

I didn't play this for a while because it became such an issue and I can report that today I've tried to connect to over a dozen games and every single one's done the same rendering the entire thing unplayable!

L4D, Counterstrike, Unreal 2004 all work fine - it's only this game that's unplayable.

Any suggestions?

 

[hagz]

make sure you have restarted your router i had this issue and id did not change when i added the forwarding. however i restarted the router and it worked fine.

i have attached my settings.

 

[[TW]Wilsonam]

make sure you have restarted your router i had this issue and id did not change when i added the forwarding. however i restarted the router and it worked fine.

i have attached my settings.

Thanks - can someone else try this out and verify it? I've actually been trying to get one of these damn things shipped over to our office to try and crack the problem...

 

[Zetsumei]

did you try what hagz said?

 

[Benjamin]

clients use some ports differently if someone got some nice logging software we could know exactly which ones.

Most likely the client's listen port will be picked randomly from the dynamic range (49152 - 65535). I'd suggest anyone having problems should try forwarding this range of UDP ports and see if it makes a difference. Of course, bear in mind that other machines on the network will have issues if they try to receive data on ports in this range.

Forwarding the ports mentioned on that thread shouldn't make any difference when running the client as those are only the ports that the server receives data on.

[edit] I've just given my network traffic a quick check with WireShark while running KF and it appears the client does indeed use a random port from the dynamic range.

[edit 2] Interesting to hear that rebooting the router helps. I wonder if rebooting alone solves the problem?

 

[SgtBostock]

Hi, Ive got this egzact problem.
To solve this i join a game and wait for it to time out, After it has timed out you type in console ( ` , beneathe the ESC key ) "Reconnect" But, somtimes you need to press ESC and then F10 then re-type "Reconnect" in to console before it reconnects.
It worked 110% for me so give it a try.

 

[ormshaw1982]

Hi again

Hi again

We've been picking up on a small number of people having issues trying to play KF while using one version or another of the BT Home Hub in the UK. With a little (alright, rather a lot of) digging, we've discovered that BT does appear to have some issues with the Home Hub and multi-player/online gaming (their forums mention everything from L4D to WoW). It seems to be very intermittent and only affects "some" users. They also tend to point people at some internals for the hub to do with port forwarding. See this link:

http://bt.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/bt.c...&p_cv=3.1857&p_cats=346,502,1857&p_faqid=8790

Obviously there is no easy way for us to test this out... We aren't even sure if it is relevant, but it does seem to clear the problems for some people. For details of port forwarding for KF, see this thread on these forums: http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/showthread.php?t=30727

If someone would like to try it out and report back, that may help. Please follow the BT instructions carefully and do NOT screw up your Hub!

In general, if you have had issues with a BT Home Hub, we need YOU to contact BT Support, as we can't because we aren't customers.

I have had the same issue as mentioned before regarding bt internet/bt home hub2.0 router. I tried the reconnect technique, bring up console enter 'reconnect' twice, rejoins the server then works perfectly fine...

Strange thing is if I join at the end/beginning of a wave, where u automatically start in the game as opposed to 'spectator' mode. It works fine no need to reconnect twice?!!? Something must be happening during spectate mode when I first join?! For now i'll just have to stick to reconnecting twice or joining a server while the trader shop is open hopefully a fix or patch can sort this minor annoyance...


I have tried the port forwarding as mentioned above on my Bt home hub 2.0, and resetting the router after changes were made, still no joy =(

 

[Morello]

I dug out my Home Hub v1 this morning and did a little testing. First of all I let the Hassle Hub update to its latest firmware. Then I tried playing some KF. My observations are:

There is a pause when you click on multiplayer that I do not get usually.
Cannot connect to news server - continues to spam down the page every second.
After clicking on internet games I can view and ping all the servers as normal.

Initially, upon connecting to a server I could play as normal for about 10 seconds, and then I'd get the same issue as everyone else. Reconnecting (usually had to type it twice) meant I could play as normal. After a map change on a server that I had reconnected to, all seemed fine.

Pressing F6 to get the network stats up, I could see that when I had problems, the line ending in Bunches had In 0 Out 42 or 43, which seems to suggest that my game is still transmitting data but not receiving it any more from the server. On the packets line above, it says 3 or 4 In, 42 or 43 out, which for the incoming packets is much lower than if the game was working.

The router would also crash or lock up randomly when connecting to games, requiring me to cycle the power.

I thought it might be an issue with the firewall detecting the UDP traffic as a flood attack, so after attempting to turn off the firewall in the router's web admin page, and having no change, I flashed an earlier firmware to the router that still had telnet access (as BT disabled it in the more recent firmware), and forced the firewall completely off through that. Still the same.

I looked through the wireshark logs that I had, and I can't see any real differences between when it fails and when it succeeds. I'll pass on any info that Tripwire wants to see if there's a solution, and I might try flashing it into a Thomson 7G (which is what it essentially is) and see if the same problems persist. But for now, keep reconnecting twice.

 

[Morello]

I have discovered the cause of this error. It is 100% the router's fault, based initially on my own investigations of my original v1 Home Hub, and then confirming it via our good friend Google.

The cause:

For those who don't care about the technicalities, it is because the router is deciding to disconnect your game 1 minute after getting a server list.

For those who want to know the technicalities, there is a rule preset, and hidden, on the router on UDP ports 27010-27011 which has a timeout of 1 minute. When Killing Floor connects to the Steam master server, usually on one of these two ports, this rule is triggered. However, after the initial connection, there is no data passed from the master server, and Killing Floor communicates directly with each server. Exactly one minute after clicking on Internet Games in KF, or clicking refresh, and receiving the initial data from Steam, this rule expires, because no more data has been passed, and it considers the connection closed. This has the effect of messing up the connection to the server, because it now wants to change the port that it is using to transmit or receive data on, and obviously the server wants to keep using this port. Hence you become to all intents and purposes, out of sync with the server.

What can you do about it?

If you have telnet access to your router, and are suitably confident and able, you can connect to it and delete the rule, which will correct the problem. Unfortunately the new Home Hubs, to the best of my knowledge, have this feature missing or locked, and it was disabled on the earlier ones through updates. On the Hub that I was able to access, I had to downgrade the firmware, stop it from automatically updating, and create myself superuser access.

If you don't mind a workaround, and waiting, you can click onto internet games, or refresh, get the list of games, and wait a minute before joining the game. The rule will have expired by then, and you shouldn't experience this problem again, until you go back to the browser and get a new list.

You can of course continue to use the typing reconnect in console (twice) method if this doesn't annoy you too much.

If you have the option of putting your computer into the DMZ you can do this, but you need to be aware that this will open your computer up to the big bad internet, so you need to make sure that you have security on your computer, and that you take your computer out of the DMZ after playing.

Or you can ask BT / Thomson to address this issue, as they should.

Alternatively you could try the following:
* Log into your SpeedTouch/HomeHub, usually at http://192.168.1.254
* On the main page select your computers name from under Home Network
* From "Pick A Task.." at the bottom of the page select: "Assign a game or application to a local network device"
* From the available applications select "Half-Life 2" ensure your computer is the selected Device then click Apply

I have no idea whether this will work with KF.

Incidentally I also converted the router to use port-restricted NAT rather than symmetrical NAT, which allows games such as Company of Heroes and Supreme Commander to work correctly (in theory).

Hopefully this will shed some light on why this issue is occurring, and why this is something that should be addressed by the manufacturers of these affected routers, rather than Tripwire - although knowing them, they will try to address it themselves.

 

[Labyrinth]

The only solution for the thomson routers at the min is to just use bridging mode which pretty much disables the NAT, firewall, etc which allows the router to open wide up to anything and everything

Thomson wont do anything because they stated "Its up to the ISPs to deal with firmware issues we just make the eqiupment" I have already asked BE to look into just stick in DMZ on these routers, a feature that was never put in for some silly reason

 

[Benjamin]

Interesting information Morello, well done for finding it! I've been having trouble finding any detailed information about these routers on Google. However, I don't fully understand your explanation...

Are you sure the ports you mentioned (27010-27011) are correct? I couldn't check it out for myself as my only KF-capable machine is being repaired the moment (oh dear), but this thread here mentions different port numbers. Anyway, that's not really important.

Perhaps if I can explain how I currently think things work, you can correct me:

* Client starts communicating with master server, using local port <X>.
* Router sets up routing entry to forward incoming packets from the master server to the client's port <X>. Now the client can receive data from the master server.

According to what you're saying, the entry has a timeout of 1 minute - does this happen regardless of activity relating to the entry? So, after this the client won't be able to receive any more data from the master server. That's simple enough.

However, I'm not sure how this relates to problems with game servers, considering the server's port is different (usually 7707), and I assume the router will set up another routing entry for this. Although, I don't know if the client will re-use the local port when communicating with the game server.

Maybe it's just too early in the morning for me or something.

[edit] By the way, I've contacted a lot of users with these problems - although I haven't received replies from so many of them yet - and 1 of them reported using BT Home Hub (1.5), while the other 5 report using a Thomson SpeedTouch. It's interesting to note that according to Wikipedia, BT Home Hub 1.0/1.5 and certain Thomson routers are built on the same hardware created by Inventel. I wonder if this is relevant at all? Seems a little strange that two different brands seem to have this bizarre rule.

 

[Morello]

Yes the ports are correct. These are the ports that Steam uses to query their master server list - so when you click internet game, it opens a UDP outbound connection on one of these two ports usually. The rule on the router is triggered by this traffic, binds the port, and then after a minute times out, because the connection to the master server has done its job, and no more data is being passed, and for some reason this affects the subsequent connection to the server that you've joined. Now this obviously should not happen, because as you say the game ports are different, but this is where the error is on the router's side, and that's why these routers do not work and why all others do.

I have to say that I didn't delve any deeper into it because this took me a day of hard work, and having found the cause and the solution, plus workarounds, I wasn't going to put any more effort into the thing.

The Home Hub 1.0 and 1.5 are re-branded Speedtouch 7G routers as far as I know, and as this is a configuration issue rather than a hardware issue, with routers that are essentially from one company, I don't think it is anything to do with Inventel.

After I discovered all this myself, I went into google and searched for things like port udp 27010 home hub, and found a load of information about it - including a page on the Steam knowledgebase about it! The link is here https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=1452-HCVB-6984 - look under Zen Routers.

For those of you who have been having this problem, I would be interested to see if adding the Half-Life application rule, or manually adding UDP ports 27010-27011 and forwarding them to your computer, works. People have said that it does, so it is worth a try if you are experiencing this problem.

 

[Benjamin]

The Home Hub 1.0 and 1.5 are re-branded Speedtouch 7G routers as far as I know, and as this is a configuration issue rather than a hardware issue, with routers that are essentially from one company, I don't think it is anything to do with Inventel.

Ah ok, that makes sense - I did think it was something like this, considering it's a firmware-related issue.

I'll take a look at trying to recreate the problem with a small application that copies the behaviour of the client. I'm hoping if this can be done it'll be easier to pester BT/Thomson.

I think the most confusing part here is the port issue - considering the rules are added for two completely servers, if the client is using a new listening port for replies from the game server, why are the rules interferring? If this was the case then more than just the game 'connection' would break, in fact any UDP traffic would - or does it? I have a feeling the answer is either: a) The client just reuses the socket (and thus the port it's listening on), or b) the socket is closed before the new socket is made, and the port is re-used by the application (considering there's no mechanism like TCP has to prevent this). However, this should not interfere with the original rule as the rule should be identified by local ip/port & remote ip/port. I guess it's just a case of figuring out exactly where the router behaves badly.

 

[Discoisntdead]

I'm using an ST 536 which I updated yesterday with the latest firmware. Uh... that was a bad move. Can't join any server anymore.
Cannot find an older firmware version anywhere on the net. I tried forwarding various ports as well as the other fixes Morello suggested above, none of them worked.
I tried setting the router to bridge mode and called my ISP about it but (hear, hear!) they told me they don't provide support for it. So I don't know what to set as the VPI / VCI to make the bleedin bridge mode work. Tried a couple random VPI / VCIs from the list but none of them worked.

Anything else I can do? Other than using my ancient POS Baudtec router which I've got stashed here somewhere?