Online Gaming Problems

[Steeley_96]

Any news yet Saturday? Just curious to see if you've uncovered anything.

[Saturday]

No, sorry, I did connect up my O2 Box and played around and couldn't find an obvious problem. I'll continue to look around to see if I can see a similar issue described and if I do I'll post back here.

[Steeley_96]

Thanks for having a look anyway. I'm wondering if it's maybe just the older EA games the Box has problems with (EA servers are dying on certain games now).

[Undecided adrian]

You do know that EA pulls online support for it games after a while, didn't you?

Have a look on the EA site it may be that they have removed the game from it's servers and you can't play it online anymore/

[Steeley_96]

Originally Posted by Undecided adrian

You do know that EA pulls online support for it games after a while, didn't you?

Have a look on the EA site it may be that they have removed the game from it's servers and you can't play it online anymore/

Yes it can be played online. The thing is I can play it online when I use my Belkin router. If I use the O2 box though I cannot connect to online play.

[Tony1044]

Hi guys,

I've had similar issues with my router - albeit mine is the business one.

A couple of times I've had to do a factory reset as it stopped forwarding _some_ of the ports in use but not all of them. For example, SMTP on port 25 worked as did HTTP and HTTPS but my BitTorrent and VoIP stopped and all without my making any changes/power cuts etc.

I ended up having to reset to factory defaults and rebuild the rules.

If it does it again I'll go back to my old Sky router reflashed.

One thing I've noticed about this router is it reboots intermittantly - sometimes I am unlucky enough to be doing something at the time and other times I only know because the uptime will be anything from a few hours to a few days and I _know_ that no one here has done anything to it.

So far the only thing I'm not sure of with O2 from a quality perspective is the routers they use. Mine just seems a bit problematic.

I would try a factory reset, after making a note of any settings you want to put back in.

[Saturday]

Originally Posted by Tony1044

One thing I've noticed about this router is it reboots intermittantly

I've heard that before with the Thomson routers. Not sure what the cause is. Overheating maybe?

[Tony1044]

Originally Posted by Saturday

I've heard that before with the Thomson routers. Not sure what the cause is. Overheating maybe?

I'm not sure - it has plenty of air around it, and is in a cool part of the room and certainly doesn't feel hot, or even warm.

I really wanted it to work well as I'm kind of taken by the idea of it being a business router but frankly if it keeps being so unreliable, it's getting consigned to the shelf and my Netgear is going in instead.

It has some odd foibles - such as not being able to edit a firewall rule if it's in use. You have to unassign it first, make the changes and then reassign it.

[Steeley_96]

Hi there. As a further update I have found a solution (at least if you are a Vista user).

Click on control panel then wirelss and network. On the icon that is flat and has your router name on it right click and properties.

Add a rule, call it gens 1, type in IP (get it from cmd, ipconfig, IP4 no) and input 10000 in both ports and click TCP.

Repeat the above except call it gens2 and place a tick in UDP click apply, and load your game.

I used this for Generals ZH (hence the gens1 & 2 names). It may work for other EA games such BAttle for Middle Earth etc.


Tony, as for the router re-setting maybe you need to phone O2 and ask them increase attenuation. I had to do that so that it went up from 6db to 12db. Since then line has been rock solid.


Regards all

[Locohoco]

Well I'm back after a few months, sorry

I gave up on Battle for Middle Earth and haven't had any problems until now, when I try to play Empire Total War multiplayer. I can see the game list, but I can't connect at all. I get a 'Failed to connect to host' error everytime. I can't find a list of ports to forward anywhere on the net, so haven't been able to try that. But if its anything like my original problem it won't work anyway.

I tried Steeley's idea above, but this seemed to have no effect. Is this due to the ports being different for this game maybe?

I'm using the O2 Box II and windows firewall. Empire Total War does it multiplayer through Steam I believe, and I have no problems playing any of my other Steam games online - Half Life, Counterstrike etc.

Any ideas would be welcome, or failing that, a recommendation for a new router that will work easily with no hassle.

Thanks!