A heads up for FIOS server operators

[Ice Nine]

For those of you who use Verizon FIOS and host game servers...

Recently I had an issue where my servers would only spottily respond to refreshes in people's favorites lists. Another issue was people trying to join my servers would frequently get the dreaded "Server is not responding" message. However, once they connected, everything was fine.

It took me a while, but I finally figured out what was going on. Chances are, if you're a Verizon FIOS customer you already are already pulling your hair out over this problem.

The issue is the Actiontec router frequently used in Verizon FIOS installs. It only has a 1 kilobyte NAT tablesize. This means a lot of NAT requests to inside your network fail because the table fills up very quickly. While Verizon and Actiontec have not acknowledged this issue, it's definitely the reason refreshes and joins are so spotty.

The only solution at this point is to make your router a transparent bridge. This means you will have to have your server itself DHCP its own IP, OR you'll have to put another router between your actiontec and the rest of your network. I opted to just have my server get its own address since it's the only box I have on the FIOS network.

To make your Actiontec router a transparent bridge, you can read the article here:

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r17679150-Howto-make-ActionTec-MI424WR-a-network-bridge

I hope this post helps someone, because this problem drove me absolutely batshit crazy for a while

[Spartanfrog]

I have actiontec router and Im not noticing anything.

[Ice Nine]

with only one server, you might not. It really depends on how many servers you are running behind it.

Essentially you have to fill up that 1k NAT table before the problem shows up. If you have the basic FIOS package of 20/5, you will probably only try running 1 or 2 servers. But if you have the 20/20 package and are running 7 servers, you will definitely see the problem

[Spartanfrog]

I run 3 servers with 20/5.

[Ice Nine]

If you want to test to see if the problem affects you, have someone from outside your network add your 3 servers to their favorites list.

Have them refresh the favorites list every 2 seconds. They should NEVER time out. If they do at all, your NAT table is filling up and throwing out the request.

If you do a google on "Actiontec NAT table", you'll see all sorts of problems caused by this, some not even related to Steam. If you're not seeing the issue on your 20/5 connection, consider yourself very lucky as Actiontec's 1k entry NAT table is a serious limiting factor for a lot of people. But on the plus side, there's a workaround at least

[Spartanfrog]

Well I connect through LAN so I dont use the favorite list. In fact, my favorite list messes up with any server so I just use my history lol. No one has complained so Im not going to mess with it because that might mess it up.

[Ice Nine]

That's fine... it never stopped my servers from being popular, it just annoyed everyone who tried joining. If no one is complaining, you have nothing to worry about.

[Spartanfrog]

Exactly.

[Filth]

I threw that thing in the closet the moment I got it. DD-WRT all the way.