If you are having connection/port problems read this...

[ericneo2]

For each port there are two types Incoming & outgoing

If you port forward it means that port will ALWAYS be forwarded to the static port you set 24/7 and will ALWAYS be open 24/7 until you delete the forwarding map. Additionally if your router uses DHCP you might not get the static internal IP address that you've forwarded the data to, in which case you end up forwarding all the data into a black hole.

outgoing : When you allow data/port forwarding outgoing rights it means you are allowing the data that originates from you out and back on the same TCP connection. People trying to connect to you will be blocked but you can connect to them.

Incoming : When you host you want your PC and Router to allow incoming data/connections from other people so you have to allow incoming connections on the port that the program is listening for in order for people to be able to connect to you.


How is this used?
In order for someone to connect to you while you are hosting the following must be able to occur.
1) You must be hosting and your PC must be allowing both incoming and outgoing connections for the ports that the game needs. You can port forward every know port to man on your router but if your PC is not allowing incoming connections on that port it will drop all traffic on that port that didn't originate from you into a big black hole.
2) Your router must be allowing incoming and outgoing connections for the ports in use. Usually if your PC firewall allows a port it sends update packets to your router and it's NAT will automatically open and close the port as it goes in and out of use.
3) When someone tries to join you they must make an incoming connection to your router and then an incoming connection to your PC.


So what can you do?
The hard way (Not recommended) : Manually set your advanced firewall incoming and outgoing connections and portforward your router ports.

The easy way : Get a free software firewall like zone alarm or Comodo that allows you to just check the tick boxes to allow incoming and outgoing connections.

Depending on your router and how strict it's security is it will either automatically open the ports based on packets from your pc or it may still need additional portforwarding but then atleast your PC will accept the incoming data instead of dropping it.

[DrSeltsam84]

sounds so easy, but i have no idea what to do...
i tried so much but i still have connection problems.
i can connect to so less games, and no one can connect to me.
switched off all firewalls and i think i opended the 25002 port

but im not sure :(

[ericneo2]

If you shutdown the firewall it won't forward open port packets to your router. Like I said the easiest thing to do is to download zonealarm.
1) Click view firewall details
2) Click app control
3) Find the app and click allow for all 4 connection types.

But this all depends if you haven't forwarded all traffic into a black hole by doing portforwarding on your router.

[DrSeltsam84]

ok, ill try that and tell you my progress :)
ty

[DrSeltsam84]

First of all, thanks for your help!
I deinstalled my antivirus, installed zonealarm, reset router config, deaktivated win firewall
in zonealarm firewall i allowed dungeonland all 4 types of connection and set trustmend on III Super (steam has same settings automaticly). On my router NAT is enabled.
after a reboot i tried.
from 6 games i could connect to 2
zonealarm firewall protokoll is empty, nothing blocked

havent time to test hosting. ill report soon :)

[DrSeltsam84]

so people still cant connect to me and i can connect to few.
i think its not my computer (logs empty), my router settings must be wrong.
if i switch nat off, nothing workes. so i set it on.

should i write something in PORT MAPPING?
LAN-IP, Protokolltype, LAN-Port, Public-Port

i have an other maybe relevant menupoint: NAT SPECIAL APPS
Trigger-Port, Trigger-Type, Public-Port, Public-Type

[ericneo2]

The reason nothing works when you switch off NAT is because it translates home ip addresse blocks 10.0.0.0, 172.16.0.0,192.0.0.0 into your ISP given address. You don't have to worry about any special NAT functions but I'll explain it for you.

What "Trigger-Port, Trigger-Type, Public-Port, Public-Type" allows you to do is hardcode NAT for example if you run a webhosting server from home and always want people to be able to connect to it. The router recieves the data on a Trigger-Port, the data is sent via UDP ot TCP type protocol, the router then opens a port and attaches it to the IP address to make a socket ie external 130.0.0.1:80(Public-Port) or 10.0.0.1:80(LAN-Port) for internal, both will give you internet on port 80 but when the router sends the data it might give it another port and link it back to port 80. It does this if you say have 2 or more computers using the router for internet because the router cannot tell to which PC port 80 should go to if there is more than 1 PC requesting data on it. So it would use NAT to assign port 80 to the first PC and 8080 to the second PC for internet.

You have to also remember that the game is buggy and itself is have connection issue and if the other players that you're trying to connect to need to have their firewall setup to allow you to connect to them. Unfortunately there is nothing you can do about that in most cases but If you're playing with friends you'll be able to open this for them and it will solve most of your connection issues.

One option that worked in torchlight 2 was to change your port to an empty port in the game's config files so that the router cannot get confused when someone tries to join the host using a port that's already in use.

The other option is to ask the devs to have the game allow itself through the firewall and to assign multiple ports for multiplayer and to automatically forward this to the routers. Most games these days do this so it is odd that this game and torchlight 2 didn't.

[DrSeltsam84]

ok thank you for that explanation.
ill try that game on wednesday with friends, i hope we can play it together!
and ill write the devs your suggestion.

thanks for helping :)