The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
College, NAT, and Diablo II
Snork
wordJamaica Plain, MARegistered User regular
wordJamaica Plain, MARegistered User regular
So I've been having some real trouble connecting to b.net here at college, seemingly because of port 6112 being closed. I emailed my network admin asking him to open it, and they were all
"Our network is setup so that any traffic originating on our network going out and coming back in will be allowed.
The problem you are experiencing is not a port blocking issue but a NAT (network address translation) problem. We have several ISP's and all traffic is load balanced across them. Some video games do not work well with NAT. Check for any patches or information about Diablo II and NAT. Usually you can find a workaround. If you have any other questions please contact the helpdesk. Thanks."
I asked people on Blizzard about this, and nobody has responded, and I can't find anything on the Blizzard website about it.
Is there a fix for LoD?
"Our network is setup so that any traffic originating on our network going out and coming back in will be allowed.
The problem you are experiencing is not a port blocking issue but a NAT (network address translation) problem. We have several ISP's and all traffic is load balanced across them. Some video games do not work well with NAT. Check for any patches or information about Diablo II and NAT. Usually you can find a workaround. If you have any other questions please contact the helpdesk. Thanks."
I asked people on Blizzard about this, and nobody has responded, and I can't find anything on the Blizzard website about it.
Is there a fix for LoD?
Snork on
0
Posts
Likewise, even if it doesn't, your college could still have a fucked up NAT configuration that's breaking the b.net traffic from making it back to you at all/in time.
All nat does is map your private IP (campus PC's) to the public IP (internet). From this it creates a nat table, so when you connect to B.net it creates an entry from your Ip on port 6112 (or whatever port) to the internet. When b.net tries to talk back to your pc it hits your schools external firewall/router (whatever is doing the nat) and reads the table to find out where to go.
Since it works sometimes you know that it's creating this nat table correctly, so they are right that it isn't a problem with the nat creation or firewall blocks. But the fact that it fails so often and acts funky means that it's not doing a very good job of it. I know I've had a crapload of issues with pix firewalls and some symantec firewalls that just don't handle nat very well for certain types of traffic.
Likewise there are times when you have a natted network behind a natted network which is just a bear to work with (and gets worse the more layers of natting you add on). This is all assuming their NAT configuration is set up ideally for their network in the first place. If it deletes the NAT table too soon, the traffic will come back and not know where to go, meaning you are only getting in on the occasions when the entire process is quick enough.
Likewise the equipment/software they are using for natting could be slow and therefore destroying the process by simply taking too long to get back to you.
Or it could have intermittent drops of certain types of traffic (like UDP traffic, especially if it's fragmenting).
That was probably a lot more in depth that you're looking for, but there may not be a fix per se. But anyone who has had more experience on b.net with shoddy nat networks may know of some hacks/mods/settings that allow it to work more reliably.
Thanks for the ultra-depth, though.
Unfortunately I can't say it like that because then I'll get in trouble because it's like against the rules to talk about rushing and runs and shit, because you know, everyone plays the REAL game on b.net now.