11-24-2007, 01:04 AM
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
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