FIXED Cannot connect to regional competitive servers

[Xilies]

I've been play CS GO perfectly for 470 hours and have had no problem connecting to American servers. Just recently, I have had no luck connecting to said servers and instead I am placed into European servers with a ping of ~150. I lowered my max acceptable ping to 100 but the client only tells me to raise it because it can't find any servers.

Here are some ideas I've tried to fix this:
- I just got a new router, so I tried turning off all firewalls and everything that would hinder a connection.
- Reinstalled CS GO
- Verified integrity of cache
- Made sure I was opted out of all CS GO beta's
- Made sure steam download region was my region.
- Changed the steam In-Game server browser max ping/minute from 5000 to 250.
- Looked on a countless amount of forums (official and non official) to see if anyone has had the same problem.
- I can connect perfectly to Deathmatch/Arms Race/Casual american valve dedicated servers with a ~20 ping. The issue is only there when searching for competitive.
- I can also connect to Dota 2 servers with reasonable pings.
- I have port forwarded 27015 on my router.
- I have had someone else in my house boot up CS GO on both their Steam account and mine. They were on Wi-Fi and tried both the windows and mac client of the game. In all situtations, they were able to find a competitive server while searching with a max acceptable ping of 100.

Basically, I have boiled it down to a few conclusions:
- It is my connection on my pc to the valve competitive CS GO servers.
- It is not my steam account.
- It started when I recieved a new router.

[KinZuu]

After reading through this and doing countless re-installs, I think it's a hardware issue with either; 1: Our computers or 2: Our routers. What kind of router do you use?

[Xilies]

http://www.netgear.com/home/products/networking/wifi-routers/R7000.aspx
My pc is this:
GFX - GTX 570
Processor - i5-2500k
8 gigs ram
SSD
Win7 service pack 2

[slimy <3]

I have two accounts. On my main account, I can easily find matchs without trouble. On the same computer, but on this account, I have this problem. The problem is specific to my alternate account.

[Xilies]

Interesting. I tried my second account and could not connect.

[fr1kin]

Hi, I also use to have this problem, but my solution was to change routers. The router that was causing the problem was a Netgear R6300, then I switched connections to the default Verizon router and I could find US servers again. Somebody else contacted me a while ago who had the same problem, and it turns out he/she had a Netgear router as well. My guess is that it is something specific about Netgear routers causing it, because you are the third person to have this problem and have a Netgear router.

I did not always have this problem with the Netgear router. When I started playing a while back I did have this problem, but months later I had "fixed" it by setting my max ping/minute to something lower. Later, I uninstalled Steam/CSGO and installed it under another disk drive. Suddenly even when setting max pings/minute I could not find any US servers. It also seemed that the problem was even more severe because when I set my max acceptable ping to 100 I would only find servers in Europe or Asia.

Here is a list of issues I noticed:
- Community server browser on both CS Source and CS GO reported high pings/latencies on US servers, but in the server info it usually reported the correct latency (Screenshot: http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/633041651309929668/308D7C726D9F2C1FB9331CCD31D4DBAC6DD58E0D/).
- Searching for casual games always found US games.
- I did not test if my brothers computer could find competitive games, but he did have the same issues I did with the community server browser.
- Changing Max Pings/Minute to something lower worked; however, when I reinstalled steam and CSGO to another drive it no longer worked.
- The Netgear router may have been the issue.
- Using the Verizon router DID solve the problem and I cease to have this problem today.

I am not sure if the Netgear router is the problem, but from what I read on another steam forum post the modem could be the problem. I can't really confirm this because the Verizon router has a built in modem, so I don't use the old modem anymore.

I hope to hear back from you (OP) and other users, because I want to get this problem solved for myself and others.

Please, if you have a similar problem, post in this thread so that we can narrow the problem down.

[Xilies]

Thank you, fr1kin, for the comment. I'll keep this thread up to date if it ends up working again but for now I'm just going to wait a while and see if Valve does anything. I doubt they will since not many people are having this issue.

[Kairo]

Ah, I am also using a Netgear R6300. However, previosuly I was using a Linksys WRT54GL and was also experiencing this problem.

[slimy <3]

I am also using netgear router

[slimy <3]

I have fixed my problem, all i did was bypass my router. I am not specifically the person who did it, so i'm not sure what exactly changed, but all i know is that my computer is no longer hooked to the router and is instead directly connected to the modem.

[The Juggernaut]

Funny, I, with this problem, have the R7000 netgear router. Also played issue free many hours of matchmaking before having this problem this month. Can play all other modes fine in low ping servers, just not matchmaking, always in EU or RU. Forwarded all known CS:GO ports, no luck.

[Xilies]

Well I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one having problems.

[Xilies]

I tried putting my ethernet connection directly to the router instead of putting it through the switch which leads to the routher. Problem still persists.

[Xilies]

SOLUTION: I fixed the problem. Basically, you have to make sure that your nat type is open. Not secured, not strict, but open.
Remember back in the Halo days whenever you couldn't play with some friends because their nat type was strict? Well this is the same case for the Netgear R7000 "gaming" router - by default, the nat type is secured.
I found this out by being on call with customer support for an hour and a half before I just started switching things on and off.
So... unless they release some firmware update for this... Those that have the Netgear R7000 router need to:
- open your browser
- go to routerlogin.net or 192.168.1.1 and type in your router credentials
- click the advanced tab
- click setup on the left
- click WAN Setup
- Down where it says "NAT Filtering", go to the very right and you should see a bubble that had secured filled in.
- Fill the meatball with beef that says "open" like an Italian with my noodle.
Ya'll should be good then but if that doesn't work then go ahead and make sure that under LAN setup you have your PC under the "Address Reservatioon".

[Kairo]

I have just attempted Princess Trollestia's solution... and I'm extremely pleased to say that it works!

Thanks so much, truly, I can now enjoy some competitive! <3

[i have tiny wing-wang]

Thank you dudes so much. I was almost at the point of going through and checking each feature one at a time. Works perfectly.