Topic: Unreal Tournament 3 and Que's inability to host.

[Quemaqua]

This seems to be a longstanding problem for many UT3 players, and nobody has any good suggestions for help.  I've talked about it a bit with Scott, who has been very helpful, but I'm a fucking idiot when it comes to networking since... well, I've never done any.  I've never had more than one computer other than laptops which I never felt compelled to network.  So I'm totally new at this.  But I just got a router and a Playstation 3 which hooks to the internet wirelessly through it, and while I've gotten all that to work fine, what I *can't* get to work is hosting an Unreal Tournament 3 match.

Basically, it says I need to set up port forwarding or put my PC into the DMZ.  I don't want to do the latter, and have tried the former using the values found at portforward.com for my router, the LinkSys WRT54G.  That didn't work.  Starting anything in UT3 still gives me the port forwarding/DMZ message and idol can't see my server when he tries to connect.  I contacted Comcast support to try something, and they basically didn't have any answers despite being more helpful than I thought they'd be.  I upgraded the firmware of the router, tried again, no dice.

Scott gave me a suggestion about having the modem set to bridge mode, which I don't entirely understand having no network experience and not truly knowing what a bridge does.  He also said something about setting up port forwarding on my modem *and* router, but I can't figure out how to change any setting on my modem whatsoever.  I know how to get to my router's web interface, and that's about it.

So does anybody have any ideas?  Remember I'm braindead when it comes to this so don't assume I know what the fancy acronyms mean.  =)  But seriously, any help is appreciated.

[scottws]

I sent you another PM.  I think your modem is in bridge mode, so lets forget about that for a bit.  It shouldn't be posing the problems that it would be if it was also acting as a router.

I didn't realize this was on the PS3.  The values I gave you were for the PC version.  I'll have to look into what they are on the PS3.

[Quemaqua]

No no, this is PC, not PS3.  The PS3 is simply the reason I got and hooked up the router.  Sorry if I mistyped that.

[scottws]

Ok, well at this point I can think of two things:

1)  Let's set up a time to do a Remote Assistance session.  I could check out some things and make sure they're set right.

or

2)  Enable UPnP on the router and on the computer.  See if that helps any.  I think UPnP is a security hole, but I'll leave it up to you if you think it's worth the risk.

[Quemaqua]

Well, I don't even see how to set up UPnP.  Looked at a couple of quick guides and don't even have the option of turning it on in my router's settings that I can find.  Some people seem to think my router supports it, some think it doesn't.  I don't know what to think as I have the latest firmware and no tab for it.  I don't want to make you come over here and start looking at my setup, either.  Heaven knows you don't need any extra work, and that's really all this is when you get down to it.  I don't feel right asking you to do that.

[scottws]

Hmm... that's odd.  I was sure the WRT54G supported UPnP.  I remember messing around with it on my friends' v1.0 (wow that was a long time ago, I think they are on v7.0 now).

I just found more information that UT3 uses or may used the following UDP ports:

7777, 7778, 7787, 6500, 13000, 27900, 49152-65535

I guess you could try opening those.  Seems a bit excessive though.  I'll keep digging.

[scottws]

Wait, I think I found your answer.  UT3 checks to see if you are behind a NAT-ed router and doesn't bother seeing if you have the proper ports forwarded.  The page linked described a fix.

Or maybe try this thread:  http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?p=25304590

[Quemaqua]

Actually, thanks for posting that.  I'd seen it before and didn't want to go through with it because I felt like it should be fixed closer to the root since others seemed like they were eventually able to get it going.  I'm going to check that out now and report if it works (I tried another supposed fix where setting "stunserver=stunserver.org" in the config to just "stunserver=" helped a guy get it going, and while it didn't work for idol to join up with me, it did eliminate the error message I was getting... so maybe this is a step in the right direction).

EDIT - Nope, nothing.  I downloaded the stunserver EXE, threw it in a directory, started it up, changed my UT3 config to point stunserver to 192.168.1.136, changed my ports to forward all the aforelisted ports to the same IP, started the game, and idol still can't join.

EDIT x2 - Okay, now apparently there was a problem with the friend system on UT3, and it wasn't letting idol join because he was trying to follow me instead of trying from the server.  So now I don't even know if I needed all this extra shit.  Several others joined and the server was fine.  Go figure.  Gonna' try to remove the whole extra bit and see if just getting rid of stunserver.org fixes it, since that removed the error.

EDIT x3 - Yep.  Didn't even need all that extra stuff.  Just get rid of stunserver.org from the config and you're gold.  So motherfucking simple.  What a mess.  Thanks though, Scott, for all your help.  I learned quite a bit through all this either way.  Idol ended up providing the winning link, but it was pretty closely related to what you posted.  So thanks again... I appreciate you taking so much time out for me.

[scottws]

Yeah, in my hunt for this stuff it seems that there are all kinds of problems trying to host this game behind a NAT'ed router.

[Quemaqua]

Yeah, people have been complaining quite a lot about how badly Epic handled it.  What's beyond me is how they haven't fixed it yet.  The game's been out, these issues should be rectified by now... but as it stands, it doesn't even look like they *will* be rectified.

[Cobra951]

You should be able to DMZ the PS3's internal IP with that router.  I have basically the same router, with SpeedBoost tech that I'll never use (WRT54GS).  It should be no more painful than port forwarding.

The DMZ hosting feature allows one local user to be exposed to the Internet for use of a special-purpose service such as Internet gaming or videoconferencing. DMZ hosting forwards all the ports at the same time to one PC. The Port Forwarding feature is more secure because it only opens the ports you want to have opened, while DMZ hosting opens all the ports of one computer, exposing the computer so the Internet can see it.
 
Any PC whose port is being forwarded must have its DHCP client function disabled and should have a new static IP address assigned to it because its IP address may change when using the DHCP function.

Wherever you see "PC" or "computer", substitute "PS3".