Re: Gaming Consoles and IPv4

[Mike Hammett <nanog () ics-il net>]

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 () rivervalleyinternet net> 
To: "Justin Wilson (Lists)" <lists () mtin net>, "Mike Hammett" <nanog () ics-il net> 
Cc: "North American Network Operators' Group" <nanog () 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 () mtin net <mailto:j2sw () 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 () ics-il net 
> > <mailto:nanog () 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 () mtin net <mailto:lists () mtin net>> 
> > *To:*"North American Network Operators' Group" <nanog () nanog org 
> > <mailto:nanog () 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 () mtin net <mailto:j2sw () 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 () gmail com <mailto:sterling.daniel () 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 () ics-il net 
> > <mailto:nanog () 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 () rivervalleyinternet net 
> > <mailto:mattlists () rivervalleyinternet net>> 
> > *To:*"Darin Steffl" <darin.steffl () mnwifi com 
> > <mailto:darin.steffl () mnwifi com>> 
> > *Cc:*"North American Network Operators' Group" 
> > <nanog () nanog org <mailto:nanog () 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 () mnwifi com <mailto:darin.steffl () 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 () rivervalleyinternet net 
> > <mailto:mattlists () 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?