Can someone explain this for me...

[MischieF]

First off, I want to say I love Tripwire for the work they have been putting in on this game. You guys have been doing a great job patching etc so far.
And I am super looking forward to ak47 and katana

However - recently I had lot of problems with KF.
Mainly connectivity issues, you know, people running in straight line forever after 30 secs... usual thing
There's now alot of people reporting problems, its scattered all over the tech support forum...

The answer generally seems to be: We updated the code, and now theres a problem with your router. BT and Thomson particulary has known issues.

Ok.... I happen to have a Thomson router, and tonight it would continually crash and restart itself for a good while whenever I tried to edit firewall rules or try set up DMZ, but that's kinda beside the point.
The point is that I think it's quite a pain in the *** like most multimodems.

But here's the thing though...

I have been playing KF since release, and it has always worked fine, well apart from ironing out some bugs early on.
Anyway, playing online or hosting or whatever I can't remember it NOT working as long firewalls were configured etc, until recently...

Now the code is changed, my router doesn't like it anymore, and I am told to email Thomson (which I did earlier)

Meantime I have to set my computer as DMZ to get get around the network translation problem, that works, so ok there is some problem with my router then since most people apparently don't have this issue.

But that still leaves me with a few questions...

- Why, exactly did the code need to be fixed, when it seemed to work better for alot of people as it was?

- If it worked fine until the code was altered - why is it that the fault is with the router and not the code?

- What about the people that report problems with other brands of routers than BT and Thomson? (ok this kinda opens a broad range of possibilities, I know)

- Alot of you reply that UT and Red Orchestra (never played these) had the same issues, and that other source games also have issues with these routers. While this might be true, again: How does this explain that I have been playing the game for months, and these problems only occur after recent patches?

 

[Xienen]

We *had* to alter the code to fix some previous issues and add support for new enhancements. The unfortunate fact is that the issue already existed in the router, we just hadn't quite exposed it in some versions of the Thomson routers. With our additions, we've apparently pushed them over the edge, and now we must work with Thomson and BT to figure out what's going on there.

The players that are having issues with other routers are experiencing different issues or the same issue due to configuration settings.

So, did I read correctly that if your machine is in the DMZ, things are working?

 

[Bio666]

I dont know much, but normally, things can be fixed if you disable the firewall, or install some soft-firewall to get which port kf use, then open it (google "port forwarding")
It's a very general guide, that works with almost every online game.

 

[MischieF]

Hi Xienen

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

Yea, for now, I set my computer up in DMZ when I want to play KF and it lets me play it online. Until I started messing with my router and the port forwarding again to try fix things, I could also be behind NAT and host games without problem, or connect to friends games, just not play internet games.

I also got reply from Thomson, they say that the problem *might* be with the web interface on the router and that adding the port forwarding and setting up through command line instead might fix it.

This I suppose could explain the irregularities I am experiencing and I will try that next.
(That there's some problems with the web interface, I have no doubts about, theres a chance my router crash every time I try alter settings like port forwarding or DMZ and I'll have to reset it to defaults to make it stop)

Anyway I'll try their suggestion in a bit

 

[MischieF]

It seems nothing short of setting my computer in DMZ helps.

Thomson replied fast and have been nice so far, but their suggestion of setting the port maps in command line interface didn't change anything.

This router has issues with CoD W@W as well, unless I bypass network translation.

The workaround where you bring up console and write "reconnect" twice works however, when I do this I stay connected afterwards, and while inconvenient, it is safer than DMZ.

 

[Xienen]

Well, I'm glad you can at least play, but I'm sorry that it's such a pain for you. A relatively safe alternative to using your hardware firewall is to use a software firewall that allows you to be selective as to which applications are able to communicate with the outside world(allowing you to block the Windows functionality that is usually left exposed by the Windows Firewall). Just a thought, to make things a little easier for you.

Thank you for being reasonable and understanding. We wish there was some fix that we could implement for these routers, but we're honestly not sure where the issue lies.

 

[MischieF]

Thanks Xienen.

DMZ + softw. firewall was the first thing I tried too, but as I have SIP and taking over the ip will cause this to fail, that won't work.

For others that experience this problem and DON'T use SIP (ip phone), this would be a solution - If you can get it to work. I had ...mixed results.
(check if theres a way to do it through CLI)

I'm awaiting a replacement (ZyXEL P2602HWT) hope that fares better.

If you have known issues with these please let me know.

As for my patience, I think Thomson support will be grateful to be rid of me