forwarding ports for two PC's doesn't work

[F for Fragging]

My situation is as follows:

In my house there a two PC's connected to an Alcatel Speedtouch 510 router. My PC has the adress 10.0.0.155, my brother's PC has the adress 10.0.0.153.

When I started playing TA Spring for the first time, I noticed that I couldn't host games. I read the FAQ in the General forum, and I forwarded the port 8452 for TCP and UDP for my PC, 10.0.0.155, and since then I have been able to host games succesfully.

Now my brother also wants to play TA Spring. So I tried to forward port 8452 for his adress, 10.0.0.153. When I tried that my router said that wasn't possible, because I already forwarded that port (on my adress, 10.0.0.155).

How can I fix this, so that port 8452 is forwarded for both PC's?

After some searching on the web I read that it is not possible and that I should use different ports for the other PC. That could be a solution for the problem, but in this case that's not possible because I want to able to join my brother's game and vice versa. I'm hosting a game on 8452 and my brother wants to join my game, so he needs port 8452 forwarded as well?

EDIT: I wonder, why does TA Spring requires that I forward ports? eMule and some Bittorrent clients require it, but most games I have installed don't need any port forwarding...

[genblood]

.
.
If you both want to play on-line you CAN"T ... NOT until the
network code is redone. You can play it on your LAN, but not
both over the internet ... as far as I know ...

.
.

[F for Fragging]

Thanks for your quick reply. Concerning TA Spring over LAN, I read this: http://taspring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1002

I tried step 2 described there, I went to File -> Configuration and inputted my address, 10.0.0.155, there. I assume that 10.0.0.155 is my local IP address? If not, how do I get it?

Anyway, I tried to join my game from my brother's PC, but I couldn't connect to my game because it gave me an error message.

[Spectre]

you can play online with 2 computers.. I do that often..
Computer A open a battleroom and B joins... and extern people too
B renames spring.exe to something different..
A starts the game
B gets error -> he renames spring.exe back and opens script.txt and enters the local Ip of A
then B starts Spring.exe script.txt

[jouninkomiko]

... you only need to forward ports when hosting. if you want to be able to host on multiple computers, use another port and forward that. the hosting options allow you to pick the port. the network code does not need to be redone to "fix" this.

[Spectre]

well we were talking on playing with 2 computers in LAN in the same game with non local players.. not hosting 2 different games

[Vehementi]

If you'd pay attention, you don't need to forward ports unless you're hosting. You'd also notice that you can specify the host port. So if you're not both hosting, only the host needs to have that port forwarded. And if you are both hosting, you can forward two ports.

[F for Fragging]

Ok, thanks for telling that only the host needs to forward ports. Because I read this in the FAQ, and I did pay attention:

Secondly, if you are behind a router, you can forward the ports that the host is using (especially if you are the host), and it usually fixes the problem.

I interpret this as both need to forward the ports because it doesn't say explicitly that only the host needs to forward ports.



But alright, I hosted a game. My brother tried to join and he got this error message (partially in Dutch):



When he tried to connect to my game I got a similar error message, I only get it when he tries to join:



The problem is not on my side because I'm able to host games fine, before me and my brother tried to play together I hosted a game with another player succesfully.
So in short, I can host games for other people, but when my brother tries to join he can't. I thought this had to do with port forwarding but it seems that this problem has a different cause then.

[Redfish]

So what port do clients then use to connect to the servers. They must use some port. Problem is that you can't forward the same port to 2 pc's. I really hate that about NAT. DXport can be used in older games to assign port 3001 to pc 1 and 3002 to pc2. But no clue if it works with spring.

[Liam]

there's a difference between outgoing ports and incoming ports. outgoing is when you connect to someone listening on a port, incoming is when you're listening (the server). outgoing ports generally don't need to be forwarded, they are automatically. most firewalls can block them though, more business oriented routers will (or a firewall/router combo). the 'client port' is usually random, i think you can override that though. but i guess most people don't bother 'cause it doesn't need to be forwarded.

[F for Fragging]

Ok, thx for the info.

But any idea how I can solve my problem? We still can't play together.

[F for Fragging]

*Kick*

Please help, I still haven't got a solution for this problem.

[PauloMorfeo]

I'd like to help but i'm not easily seeing what's the problem...

Can you both join a same game on another computer?

[Frog]

you can play online with 2 computers.. I do that often..
Computer A open a battleroom and B joins... and extern people too
B renames spring.exe to something different..
A starts the game
B gets error -> he renames spring.exe back and opens script.txt and enters the local Ip of A
then B starts Spring.exe script.txt

That seems to be the only workaround for two (or more) players playing online with one internet connection. Can´t say I´ve tried it myself, but it makes sense to me.

[F for Fragging]

PauloMorfeo: I haven't been able to test if I can join a game hosted by someone else with both PC's.



Frog: it seems that it's a known bug and that I have to use that workaround with the current TA Spring version? I've got no idea because a lot of people in this topic are contradicting each other, some it's possible and some say it's possible with workarounds and some say it's not possible at al.

I guess I'll just wait for the next version.

[jouninkomiko]

the problem here is NOT in spring, but in routers' ip-routing optimizations. when the client on the lan tries accessing the server which it sees as being on IP address X, the request is sent to the router who notices "hey, this is my IP. let me send it right back to the person who sent it" so it goes back to not the host, but the client himself. there really isnt much of a method to go around this to allow for *both* out of lan and in lan players to join without changing the way spring works at the moment. when i can, i want to put this in.

[kookos]

I had nat about one year ago it was hard to disable telewells routers i use TW500.

[Redfish]

There is a new function in spring now to fix the port used in the game. Maybe you can try that.

[F for Fragging]

Ok, thanks a lot for your explanation jouninkomiko. But in the newspost on the TA Spring website you said that you couldn't help with the development of Spring for quite some time because you have a new job at Microsoft. So will I have to wait some months before this gets implemented?

Oh, and one question remains:

How do I play a LAN-only game then so my brother and I can play against each other? Do you think as well that I have to use the workaround which some people posted here?

[LordMatt]

How do I play a LAN-only game then so my brother and I can play against each other? Do you think as well that I have to use the workaround which some people posted here?

Use Spring.exe and one of you select to be server, and the other not to be server, and type in the local IP of the server where it says address. As far as I know there's no way to change between arm and core (select cmd 1000 for the regular starting options) so the server will always be arm and the non-server core. I too would also like to see this problem fixed so me and my brother could play online together.

LordMatt.