A Snarling Trolls Server

[ST_Agent-86]

Thanks, I just switched some things around. Might be working now.

 

[Wanderfalke]

Still the same.

[Cynic_Al]

23 minutes ago, ST_Agent-86 said:

Thanks, I just switched some things around. Might be working now.

 

 

Same issue, must be a network problem. I would re-check the firewall settings for dserver (Windows firewall and any antivirus firewall too).   Also check the router forwarding is still addressing the right machine for both ports.

[ST_Agent-86]

Thanks for the input. I went through this last time..... Ports are correct, IPs are correct, firewall rules appear correct.... 

Are you guys getting an error message, # ? I see you join when I'm in there, only with a zero ping. Mal jumped in a few minutes ago, but I was unable to "chat", same with Wanderfalke a while ago.  Going to cold boot and see what happens.

Using the same config files as last time it worked. Copied them from an external  drive where I saved them...... I'm getting confused again  LOL 

[Zooropa_Fly]

Just tried - took the map a long time to appear.

When it did I clicked 'Start' but stuck on the map, despite hearing my plane flying.

Clicked 'Start' again and got an already spawned error.

 

How do you manage that ?

[ST_Agent-86]

OK Thanks Z ! I know I had to wait for a long time to see a spawn point. And it took a while to get to my pilots position ingame...... All settings look right at this end. 

Might be time to contact support.......

[ST_Agent-86]

Quick update...... There is none. Waiting to hear back from the "support team" ?

[Zooropa_Fly]

Have you tried a different map ?

[ST_Agent-86]

11 hours ago, Zooropa_Fly said:

Have you tried a different map ?

 I have 4 or 5 in the rotation, I can join all, but others cant get in at all. 

[ST_Agent-86]

OK guys, I heard from the support team..... They need screenshots of what you see when you try to connect to the ST server. 

I don't know how this will help, but it is what they are asking for. So, if some of you would be kind enough to post a pic or 2 here, I will relay it back to them ASAP.

Hopefully get this server back up, and maybe some new maps as well. 

Thanks 

[Wanderfalke]

 

1 hour ago, ST_Agent-86 said:

OK guys, I heard from the support team..... They need screenshots of what you see when you try to connect to the ST server. 

I don't know how this will help, but it is what they are asking for. So, if some of you would be kind enough to post a pic or 2 here, I will relay it back to them ASAP.

Hopefully get this server back up, and maybe some new maps as well. 

Thanks 

 

 

After pressing start you hear the game sound, but nothing happens.

After pressing start again, error message

[ST_Agent-86]

Thank you Wanderfalke,

I have sent the screenshot link to Olga, from support.

Cross your fingers 

[ST_Agent-86]

Well guys, This is what I received from "Support". I'm afraid it's of absolutely no help to me at this point. I will comb through these posts AGAIN  . I won't give up the ship just yet.

Any ideas or advice is welcome. 

Thanks ! 

 

https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/forum/83-multiplayer-servers-and-hosting/

On 8/10/2020 at 10:36 AM, Wanderfalke said:

 

After pressing start you hear the game sound, but nothing happens.

 

After pressing start again, error message

 

I gotta think the problem is in my router or port settings. From ingame, I have seen several people "connect" to the server. The ping is always "0", yet I see that they are listed as "connected"...... I appreciate your input in trying to get this server up and running again. Probably a check box not ticked somewhere.....

 

Thanks to Cat & Zilch & Wanderfalke and anybody I left out . I have reviewed everything you guys have submitted, no luck finding my problem..... Someone said recently, "It;s not rocket science"..... Well it didnt used to be.... LOL 

Still tinkering with all the time, keep trying guys. If someone IS able to get in and fly, please post here. I check back here every day.

Thanks for your help !

 

Edited August 15, 2020 by ST_Agent-86
typo

[US13_Ford]

Found this listed within that forum not sure if you have seen it:

 

Hi everyone!

 

Since I just spent a significant amount of time trying to get self-hosted coop games with my friends working, I want to share my findings with you. There is a lot of good information scattered in this forum which helped me, but nothing like an overall guide. I did find a solution that works for me and probably most other people.

 

First of all, when you host a game, other players will need to connect to the following ports of your machine:
- Port 28000 and 28100 TCP
- Port 28000 UDP
- Unless you changed the default configuration. no other port is required to be forwarded, despite what you may read in some threads. Trust me on that.

Pitfall 1: The dreaded Windows firewall

In order that your friends can connect to your computer, you first need to tell the Windows firewall to not block the ports I just listed. I just disabled my Windows firewall completely to make sure it isn't interfering at all. A better approach would be to only allow the mentioned ports but since I play on Linux and just started Windows for testing if it works here too, I didn't want to spend much effort fiddling with Windows settings. If your computer is directly exposed to the internet and not behind a router or your room-mate on the same LAN likes to catch viruses, never disable the firewall completely!

 

Pitfall 2: Your computer is behind a router
When your friends are not in the same LAN as you, they need to be able to reach your computer from the internet. Usually attempts of doing so are blocked by your router. Your router is the only device directly connected to the internet and just forwards network packets to you via LAN. If your friends try to connect to your public IP-address (your internet address), they will try to connect to the router but not your computer. To change that, you have to tell your router to forward attempts to connect to the ports required by IL-2 to your computer instead. This is called port-forwarding and there are probably plenty guides available how to do this with your specific router. You need to tell the router to forward Port 28000 TCP, 28100 TCP and 28000 UDP to your computer.

For some lucky people this may already be enough, but there are more pitfalls and I wasn't so lucky ...

 

Pitfall 3: Your router uses a DS-Lite gateway
A few decades ago someone thought being able to address 4 Billion computers in a network should be more than enough until nobody uses the IP protocol any more - turned out he or she was pretty wrong. Nowadays the world is running out of IPv4 addresses so not every person can get his own address. In my country, most ISP have transitioned to giving out only IPv6 addresses, which allows a lot more devices to have its unique address. In order to still be able to connect to older systems in the internet which only respond to IPv4, they introduced a technique called DS-Lite gateways (probably has other names too). You can imagine this as another router before your own router. It takes the IPv6 traffic from your home network and routes it into the internet as IPv4 traffic. However, you are not the only one using this gateway, a lot of other customers from your ISP are using it too - so usually you are not allowed to do any port forwarding like with your local router. When your friends try to connect to you via the internet (to the IPv4 address they think you have), they instead will connect with that DS-Lite gateway, which will just block the incoming connection. This is a huge problem and most of you will probably not be able to solve it without spending monthly subscription fees, sorry.

 

There are two solution I found for it using a VPN (Virtual Private Network). In short, your computer connects to a server somewhere in the internet and opens a tunnel into a virtual LAN.

 

The first solution is, if your friends connect to the same VPN and the virtual network supports client-to-client transition. It appears to your computer as if your friends were connected to the same LAN as you and may just be in the next room (except the increased ping times). You can then just host a normal LAN game. You won't even need to do the router port forwarding thing. Just pick a VPN provider supports client-to-client traffic (don't confuse this with peer-to-peer, this usually is advertisement for supporting bittorrent or something similar)!

 

The second solution requires that the VPN server provides access to the internet (which they usually do) and also allows port-forwarding (probably more rare) to your local computer. Since I own a Linux server with IPv4 address in the internet which I use for hosting another game, I was able to set up my own OpenVPN server on it and just configure port-forwarding for the 3 ports mentioned in the beginning of this post. After that, hosting the game works. You may need to look up VPN providers and pick one that allows port-forwarding to clients. At least with this solution, you only need one player with a VPN access, not all of you.

 

I'm not sure if there is another way to solve the DS-Lite situation. Theoretically, connections to a game via IPv6 and forwarding ports from your router via IPv6 (actually more letting it pass than forward in case of IPv6) should work fine, but neither me nor the friend I was trying to play with had any success. This may be due to outdated network code in IL-2, or just that the game does not communicate the IPv6 address to the game lobby service when there is also an IPv4 address. I did not manage to get it working despite some knowledge in networking stuff.

 

Pitfall 4: Ingame settings
Even when networking is setup correctly, your friends may still not be able to join you because you have not done the required settings in game.

 

- In the game under Settings -> Multiplayer, there is the "Use IP" field. You have to set this to your LAN IP address when just using your router to forward stuff (usually 192.168.x.x) or your assigned VPN IP address when hosting via a VPN. I'm not really sure what this does to the game but it seems to be required. When not setting it, players would start loading the map when connecting but get thrown back to the lobby without any error being displayed. I honestly would have expected that this setting must be set to your external IP address, but when you do that the game server won't even start at all.

 

- When creating a server in the multiplayer löbby, you also have to set some important options. You probably need to increase the Ping limit to a larger number. Since I play with my friends I want them to stay connected even when they are temporarily lagging, so I set this to 1000, which seems to be the maximum allowed value. Then there is also the "Available from Internet" setting which you should set unless you are hosting in your LAN or a client-to-client VPN.

 

- I read somewhere that changing the traffic limit in the startup.cfg file has some influence on the hosting but I've been unable to confirm this. The default setting of 1000 worked fine for me, so did increasing it to 10000. Unless all of the above didn't work for you, just leave it alone for now. It certainly won't help dealing with any port-forwarding issues.

 

- I also read that certain missions may cause the connecting clients to the lobby again. I'm using missions generated via PWCG 10.0.1 (big thanks to Pat Wilson, this is what makes IL-2 fun for me!) and never have problems with them.

 

 

Well, that's my advice for you guys, I hope it may help you deal with your hosting issues or at least understand a bit better what may be keeping you from playing with your friends.

Arctu

[ST_Catchov]

14 minutes ago, ST_Zilch56 said:

Since I just spent a significant amount of time trying to get self-hosted coop games with my friends working ....

 

I got this far and then realised I had to wash my hair.

 

Best of luck @ST_Agent-86  We're all rooting for you and Olga to get the job done. 

[ST_Agent-86]

Thanks to Cat & Zilch & Wanderfalke and anybody I left out  . I have reviewed everything you guys have submitted, no luck finding my problem..... Someone said recently, "It;s not rocket science"..... Well it didn't used to be.... LOL 

Still tinkering with all the time, keep trying guys. If someone IS able to get in and fly, please post here. I check back here every day.

Thanks for your help !

 

 

repeat post from Wander's reply...... ????? 

sorry about that

[Cynic_Al]

Are you sure that emporium you used didn't install some security app that may be blocking something?

[ST_Agent-86]

Not that I can find. I've been building computers for years and when I figured it was less hassle to let the "pros" replace my MB I thought, cool, I'll get it back as a new machine......

Wow ! I wish that I would have just done the work myself. They didn't do what they said they would, installed the wrong OS to start with........ I won't bore you with all that was not done or done wrong. All I can say is that, I will never use "Computer Essentials" again. I don't think anything that they did is causing the problems I'm having with getting the server running. But I am getting a headache from beating my head against the wall ...... LOL

[ST_Agent-86]

Okie Dokie Gents,

I think we have the server running and joinable. Thanks to Wanderfalke, Catchov, ST_Mal, Nooney, Zfly, and everyone for continuing to pop in to see if it worked !! 

Probably some tweaking needed, but it works. Lets stress test it ! I'll leave it up from four to midnight Troll time for now. The Dserver machine will be in operation soon.  (I hope)

Sorry about the disco Wander, I was the cause of that one 

 

 

[US13_Ford]

Just tried it works great. Thank you Agent!

[ST_Nooney]

Been in tonight it's crap the wings on the Camel stay on, that's when Wanderfalke is not knocking them off like a crazy  Dutchman on weed  All good Redneck xx

[ST_Catchov]

Splendid news Agent. Top hole!

 

Now if you could only move it to Australia 

[ST_Catchov]

@ST_Agent-86 so how did you fix it? What was the issue? Olga? I haven't been able to get on yet (time zone ).  Is the dserver thing for stats and will players show up on the flying barans site and player numbers in-game? 

[ST_Agent-86]

5 hours ago, ST_Catchov said:

@ST_Agent-86 so how did you fix it? What was the issue? Olga? I haven't been able to get on yet (time zone ).  Is the dserver thing for stats and will players show up on the flying barans site and player numbers in-game? 

The fix had nothing to do with "support".  It was basically reading and rereading through old posts on server issues and problems. I found the problem in my router settings. It was an area that I just knew  I set up right, so didn't bother checking it a third time. Upon checking all my router settings, before throwing in the towel and curling up in a ball in the corner, I found the problem.......My downloader port was set to TCP not UDP. That stupid, all this time. I thought it would be something as silly as a check box not being ticked. Pretty close....

 Nothing set up with stats or flying barans yet. If you put the link up for the flying barans maybe I can get that set up soon.

Thanks to all for having faith !!!! 

                        

Is Vaal the contact for Flying Barans ?

Edited August 19, 2020 by ST_Agent-86
added to post

[Cynic_Al]

5 hours ago, ST_Agent-86 said:

My downloader port was set to TCP not UDP.

 

My first rule of diagnosis is: Never take anybody's word for anything.  The trouble is one doesn't always have a choice.

[BH_Adabadoo_VR]

Can't wait to try it!  Thanks ST_Agent-86!!!

[ST_Catchov]

8 hours ago, ST_Agent-86 said:

Is Vaal the contact for Flying Barans ?

 

No idea Agent but here's the link.

 

https://il2.flying-barans.ru/

[Cynic_Al]

17 minutes ago, ST_Catchov said:

 

No idea Agent but here's the link.

 

https://il2.flying-barans.ru/

 

Given that the primary purpose of a website is to deliver information, I have never understood why these server-listing sites don't take the opportunity to explain how to get a server included on them.

[ST_Agent-86]

1 hour ago, ST_Catchov said:

 

No idea Agent but here's the link.

 

https://il2.flying-barans.ru/

Thanks, got it, I'll contact him soon

[ST_Agent-86]

On 8/19/2020 at 5:58 AM, ST_Catchov said:

@ST_Agent-86 so how did you fix it? What was the issue? Olga? I haven't been able to get on yet (time zone ).  Is the dserver thing for stats and will players show up on the flying barans site and player numbers in-game? 

[ST_Catchov]

35 minutes ago, ST_Agent-86 said:

 

WooHoo!!!! That's great Agent. 

 

[ST_Catchov]

@ST_Agent-86 The server list gave me a ping of 260! But tested it out on a few maps and the other guys didn't notice any warping or other unusual behaviour (not me personally, that's a known) and I didn't see anything drastically unusual so it's all good. Thanks man! 

[ST_Agent-86]

That's cool Catchov, I was watching for a while last night, and yes, you get the award for high ping 

[ST_Agent-86]

Sorry guys, had a power glitch in the heat of battle. My PC still has some issues due to the repair shop I chose. I could not help the weather though.... 

Every once in a while I'm unable to chat in game, I get the cursor, but cant type anything.... Not being rude if I don't answer you or text back. 

[Cynic_Al]

On 8/22/2020 at 12:26 AM, ST_Catchov said:

@ST_Agent-86 The server list gave me a ping of 260! But tested it out on a few maps and the other guys didn't notice any warping or other unusual behaviour (not me personally, that's a known) and I didn't see anything drastically unusual so it's all good. Thanks man! 

 

The values displayed on the server list, represent the time your machine has to wait to get a response from the corresponding  server.  The value you read on the Barans site,  is the time that server waits to get a response from your machine and is usually a lower value. 

[ST_Catchov]

1 hour ago, Cynic_Al said:

The values displayed on the server list, represent the time your machine has to wait to get a response from the corresponding  server.  The value you read on the Barans site,  is the time that server waits to get a response from your machine and is usually a lower value. 

 

Really. Ok thanks Al.

[BH_Adabadoo_VR]

For Wonderfalke

 

He really made that plane move...

 

 

 

 

[Wanderfalke]

6 hours ago, BH_Bullet2_Adabadoo said:

For Wonderfalke

 

He really made that plane move...

 

Great stuff! Interesting to look at it it from your perspective.

 

It's always great fun to fly against you two.

S!

[BH_Adabadoo_VR]

Haven't seen the servers up in a while hope all is well with all...

 

You guys got me hooked on WWII because there's no fast food.

[ST_Agent-86]

The update caused a problem with maps, they wont load for some reason. Looking into it.