Major gaming connection issue

Hiya ladies,

I've had a huge issue connecting to my friends in video games. (Battlefield 3, Mass Effect 3, Age of Empires 2, Age of Empires Online, Company of Heroes, Blur, NFS: Most Wanted). Those are the ones I have tried were I could never establish a connection to my friends, either when I am hosting or they are. Although they have connected to each other before 95% of the time.

It seems that any game that requires me or someone to host something it just locks up somehow and I could just never connect. I have tried everything, turning off my Windows Firewall, turning off Security Essentials, forwarding about 30 ports for BF3, putting the router into DMZ, turning off my routers firewall and even messing around with other settings that I figured out later had no relevance (UPnP). Even tried being in Hamachi at the same time. All of this together too does not help. I hope someone on here knows what is up with my PC/Router/ISP which blocks me from the fun I really desire!

I usually play with people in USA, mainly 2 people one of which is located in New Jersey and another in LA. The only way we have been able to so far play was when the guy in LA uses his neighbours internet, I have no idea why, but that was the only instance it has worked, and even with that at times it would not let me connect. We were recently trying out Blur and another friend who lives in Virginia was going to play with us, the same thing happened, I could not connect to him nor could he establish a connection with me. Kind of gotten sick of this over the years/months and I hope you guys can help out. Although it might just be the crappy router that I need to change.

Some info that might help:

My Location: London, UK.
My ISP: BT
My Router: BT HomeHub 2.0
OS: Windows 7 64-bit

Info of my friend from NJ:

Router: Linksys e2000 (or something close)
ISP: Optimum Online
OS: Windows 7 64-bit

If anyone could help, it would be very much appreciated. Need any system information or other information please do ask!

Regards,
Arthur

 

What's your network adapter, and do you have the latest drivers for it? Are there firmware updates available for your router and/or modem? (As always, firmware updating is at your own risk, and you'll want to try other things first, just in case. Bricking modem = bad )

Are you on cable or wireless connection, and if wireless, what encryption method are you using? Do any other programs ever have connection issues, like torrents or browser, or other games? Can you stream video and music okay?

Hardware specs for your system would be nice as well. If you don't know how to get them, just say so and we'll figure it out from there.

 

So I've been looking into my router firmware. On the BT website listed below they say the firmware update should occur automatically. They also listed 2 versions of firmware to be the latest 8.1.H.J (Type A) and 4.7.5.1.83 (Type B) but I checked and my firmware and mine was 8.1.H.U. I have no idea how to update it and quite frankly I do not like messing with firmware (last time I tried updating firmware it broke my Razer Mamba which I never fixed).

http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/12365/~/how-do-i-update-the-firmware-on-my-home-hub-2.0%3F

I don't use wireless on my desktop PC. As far as I remember other programs didn't seem to have any connection issues, it's just connecting to people in games. uTorrent has always worked fine from my end, had a few browser DNS issues but that was something cocking up at the ISP's exchange centre. Streaming music/video? Don't exactly know what you mean by that, I download my music of YouTube and mm yeah.

PC is custom built by me and a friend, although I have upgraded a lot of parts over the years since it was built (2009).

Rampage II Extreme MB
Intel i7 2.66GHz
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570
12GB of Corsair DDR3 RAM
Internal: 1TB WD, 2TB Samsung. External 3TB Hiatchi USB 3.0
USB 3.0 PCI card
1020W Enermax Revolution85+ PSU, 91% Efficiency

I could go into detail to find the exact specifics of my components if you need that like "1TB Western Digital WD1002FBYS RE3, SATA 3Gb/s, 7200 rpm, 32MB Cache, 4.20 ms". Could also give you the PC specs I pulled off the Steam Survey but those are a tad outdated.

This is everything from CMD (IP Config), honestly don't know if I should have all this out publicly or if it doesn't mean anything important:

Windows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : Arthur-PC
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : home

Ethernet adapter Hamachi:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Hamachi Network Interface
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . :
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IPv6 Address. . . . . . . . . . . :
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . :
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . :
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . :
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : 03 April 2012 18:39:18
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : 11 April 2012 11:23:05
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 5.0.0.1
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 5.0.0.1
DHCPv6 IAID . . . . . . . . . . . :
DHCPv6 Client DUID. . . . . . . . :

DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : fec0:0:0:ffff::1%1
fec0:0:0:ffff::2%1
fec0:0:0:ffff::3%1
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : home
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Marvell Yukon 88E8056 PCI-E Gigabit Ether
net Controller
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . :
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . :
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . :
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : 03 April 2012 18:39:22
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : 12 April 2012 06:39:23
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . :
DHCPv6 IAID . . . . . . . . . . . :
DHCPv6 Client DUID. . . . . . . . :

DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . :
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled

Tunnel adapter isatap.home:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : home
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Microsoft ISATAP Adapter
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . :
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

Tunnel adapter isatap.

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Microsoft ISATAP Adapter #2
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

Tunnel adapter Local Area Connection* 9:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IPv6 Address. . . . . . . . . . . :
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . :
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Disabled

If you need any more information please let me know, it is a sign of relief hearing at least someone trying to help since this is a big pain in the backside. If you really need even more information that I am too dumb to find you can TeamView. Found you on Steam.

Thanks!

 

Hm, trying to tackle things one by one here.

First off, nice rig. I'm jealous of your CPU

Second , with streaming I was referring to services like Spotify and similar, that stream things to you rather than downloading. They tend to be very sensitive to connection issues.

Third, I know I asked for details, but some of that network info probably shouldn't be out there for the world to see and abuse. My apologies for not being more specific on this particular part. For obvious reasons, I don't want you to post any personal information on a public forum.

Fourth and last, and on towards the important stuff:

Are you having the same issues if you connect with the same games to players in the UK? Are your friends in LA/Virginia/New Jersey having these problems with others in the UK/Europe, or just with you?

Is the modem in your router, or are they separate? If they are, can you bypass the router and plug into the modem, and does that make a difference?

I'm with you on firmware updates, I never do them until trying everything else first. Still scarred from bricking an mp3-player, years and years ago. :-D

 

Just adding to Mimsy's comments: uninstall Hamachi/Logmein and uTorrent for testing purposes.

 

Regardless of how the games were obtained, running a torrent client while playing an online game is generally not advisable, as torrents eat bandwidth with the kind of appetite usually only seen in bulimic werewolves.

 

Streaming like YouTube I presume or something were a video loads while you watch it? No it does not seem that I have any problems with that. I don't listen to Spotify but I have used this: http://www.1channel.ch/ to watch TV shows that I don't want to download and the majority of the time it's fine, sometimes it doesn't stream but that looked like a server issue from their end.

It seems an admin has edited out the sensitive information from my post, thank you LauraR.

I have tried playing BF3 with my classmate from London and we didn't have any issues. I have to admit, in the past when I did play with people in Europe the connection issue was almost non-existent this is for Battlefield 3. I can't say for sure but I think they same goes for other games too like I mentioned. I don't really know if my friends from USA have issues connecting to others in EU, but I think they would have mentioned this during the hours we spent trying to connect to each other. When I asked one he didn't seem to remember having problems with anyone else from Europe.

I am not 100% certain but I think my modem/router are combined (not that I know what modem/router mean or their specific functionality). But on Wikipedia it points to them being all in one.

I will try, with both uninstalled but probably later then sooner since it is a pain re adding all the torrents I seed and setting up settings in uTor. But if memory servers right I don't think I had Hamachi when these problems started occuring, and it was because of the issues I branched out to other ways such as Hamachi. uTorrent although for me has always been around, hopefully that is not the cause or it will be a bit of an issue since I download weekly and seed 24/7.

Hi David. I don't download games via uTorrent, only films from a site called HDME.eu, it is a private HD films tracker for 720p and 1080p films, mostly Blu-Rays. I only download games from Steam/Origin. The HDME site is quite secure and they know what they are doing on there, so I trust them far more then ThePirateBay which I haven't used in a long long time, although of course you cannot be 100% sure. I kind of have a good friend who sounds just like you "sorry but as soon as I see uTorrent or other P2P on a PC I have to ask as predominantly this route is not advisable for apps".

All I have is Malwarebytes which I hardly use, let alone leave on 24/7 unlike Security Essentials. From the way you said it sounds like I should have more security running?

And yes I have Service Pack 1. I don't like updating Windows since I have a, not so legal version of Microsoft Office 2007 installed which by my gut feeling seems to have caused problems when I did updates. Just felt like Microsoft found out about it being not legit and deliberately ruined my OS (plagued it with issues) after which I had to reformat twice in the space of a 2 or so years. And now that I haven't updated my Windows in ages these issues have not returned.

I got almost 300 games on Steam so only a handful are torrented like the Age of Empires 2 game and all the recent CoD games (since why pay for the same crap over and over? hehe) And no, I never ever run uTorrent while I'm actually using the computer, I only run it while I'm asleep or away in College. Even if I did want to, my internet at the moment is pretty bad, being in the centre of a city and all were there are a lot of users. No fibre optic until late June, it was pushed back from March were I had my false hopes up.....

This is a speedtest at average not during peak:

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1893173239.png

Max is around 8.5 Mbps down.