Error 118 and a possible fix

[Τhe Rolling Cheese Wheel]

Lately I've been fighting the random error 118 along with a few other people. Just a few days ago, someone from reddit found a solution to the 118 plague.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/2423sl/network_configuration_error_in_steam_sites/

The fix seems logical, and so far this has worked for me. Hopefully this will work for someone else who is experiencing the random error 118 that happens even when steam networks appear to function for the vast majority.

ALSO Make sure to reboot your computer after the fix to ensure the fix is 100% activated!

NOTE: Don't try this on windows 8 or xp!

[Satoru]

At least on my Win7 box at home it's already set the start port very high at 49152. So that might be why some people see it but others dont'?

In any case if anyone has this issuse you can go to a command prompt or to go STart->Run and type in this

netsh int ipv4 set dynamicport tcp start=49152 num=16384

I can poke around a few vanilla windows boxes I might have lying around. Given that the issue isn't really wide spread, it might be
1) Windows default is now this high, maybe only Vista/XP impacted by default?
2) Steam during its installation sets this paramemter -which may fail on some systems
3) windows default is high, but is reset by a 3rd party program? (maybe some silly 'Computer Optimizer' program)
4) windows default on some systems is low, but to hit port 4352 by an incremental method means the users is opening a LOT of ports (torrents, toolbars that open ports, 'media accellerators'). which would explain why the issue is not wide spread

[Τhe Rolling Cheese Wheel]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Satoru:

At least on my Win7 box it's already set the start port very high at 49152. So that might be why some people see it but others dont'?

According to the guy on reddit, yuh.

[Ta Ga Da]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Satoru:

1) Windows default is now this high, maybe only Vista/XP impacted by default?

I have the range 1025-65535 with Windows 7. Probably some installation changed this range (My suspicion is the development tools that I have, like SQL Server)

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Satoru:

4) windows default on some systems is low, but to hit port 4352 by an incremental method means the users is opening a LOT of ports (torrents, toolbars that open ports, 'media accellerators'). which would explain why the issue is not wide spread

The problem is with a big range of 512 ports. About 0.8% of my computer connections over time will use ports in this range, so steam will be offline from time to time.

Anyway, Steam has to fix it. There isn't any other site on the network with this problem.

[Τhe Rolling Cheese Wheel]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย GworTer||Expido:

I have the range 1025-65535 with Windows 7. Probably some installation changed this range (My suspicion is the development tools that I have, like SQL Server)

I got that range as default as well on my windows 7 ultimate 64bit machine. I have absolutely no idea what changed it though :\.

Either way, fix seems to be solid this time around, not a placebo effect due to uninstalling AV and/or flashing router with custom firmware

I imagine this is not on steam's top priority list because so few people are even getting this error, so just apply the fix. The fix doesn't seem to be detrimental to the computer or network in anyway.

[jmccaskey]

@The Rolling Cheese Wheel, thanks for pointing out the reddit thread on this which is very detailed and helpful. It looks like there is indeed an issue on our end with some networking hardware leading to this and we're working to get it fixed. Hopefully we'll have a resolution soon, and in the meantime the fix suggested in that thread should work for users, however having to change your network stacks dynamic port range to be smaller is obviously not the desired ultimate solution.

[Τhe Rolling Cheese Wheel]

Thanks

[ixmzar]

a

[+VLFBERHT+]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย jmccaskey:

@The Rolling Cheese Wheel, thanks for pointing out the reddit thread on this which is very detailed and helpful. It looks like there is indeed an issue on our end with some networking hardware leading to this and we're working to get it fixed. Hopefully we'll have a resolution soon, and in the meantime the fix suggested in that thread should work for users, however having to change your network stacks dynamic port range to be smaller is obviously not the desired ultimate solution.

To whom it may concern.

This was happening to me everyday.

THings i tried:

This first one seemed to help (for whatever reason) for several days. I opened command prompt (run as admin) and entered, ipconfig /flushdns ,this all by itself restored all the steam functions immediately. BUT, ultimately it began to happen again after a few days.

So, began checking other settings (obviously) like firewall exceptions, virus logs, event viewer. Then i remembered i had been trying to troubleshoot latency issues for an online game. So i check my network adapters Advanced settings. The only 2 settings that i had altered to 'disabled' were, Flow Control and Interrupt Moderation. Set them both back to enabled and have not had a problem since.

Hope this helps someone and/or someone can make sense of what those settings may affect and use that info to create a patch

(by the way the event viewer "failed to poke - fix" in the last update is now: "Failed to add firewall exception for C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steam.exe" when i first log on ... LoL... Everything works though, so there's that)

Good Luck

[ZenchiZennou]

I've had this problem for about 5 weeks, but today I haven't encountered the errors yet. This leads me to believe that it's been fixed permanently. If so, thank you very much jmccaskey and the others involved in fixing the problem!