2500 ping issue on dedicated server

[KaRRiLLioN 0]

I'm still having no luck with mine. Server 2008 R2 has a firewall but I turned it all off so I don't think it could be causing the issue.

If I click Remote and put in the server IP then the ping comes up just fine. In the regular browser it still shows 2500.

This is bizarre.

[stk2008 14]

Why not put the server out side the fire wall out side the DMZ i think its called even if its just to check.

[mosh 0]

Why not put the server out side the fire wall out side the DMZ i think its called even if its just to check.

That didn't work in my case. For me it's just a crap shoot as I know little about networking... so I have tried every tip I have read.

EDIT - still working I think, and KaRRiLLioN you're server shows up as green with a decent ping as well in the browser... just to let you know

Edited February 10, 2011 by Mosh
new info

[nobrainer 0]

So you still can't get reply from a simpel ping?

[nobrainer 0]

well, I can only say that the ping issue is working / not working.....

We found it working, but it seems like its just for some people.

[Defunkt 431]

I believe what's needed is for BIS to amend (or have GameSpy amend since its their middleware) the in-game browser so that it ALWAYS uses UDP to interrogate the server. Reporting a server as query-by-ping might be useful for some titles but AFAIK ArmA uses the same UDP port(s) to query as it does to play and if you can't query a server you won't be able to play on it making an alternative query mechanism pointless.

[nobrainer 0]

not sure if I understand what you mean.

But maybe BIS do, and they are the ones who have to fix this probably

[james_manring 1]

I believe what's needed is for BIS to amend (or have GameSpy amend since its their middleware) the in-game browser so that it ALWAYS uses UDP to interrogate the server. Reporting a server as query-by-ping might be useful for some titles but AFAIK ArmA uses the same UDP port(s) to query as it does to play and if you can't query a server you won't be able to play on it making an alternative query mechanism pointless.

A very good point! If the ping fails and the ping uses the same communications structure that the game uses, then it will mean the game would fail too. Using an alternative structure that is just for pings and has been broken for a very long time makes absolutely no sense. BIS would be better off embracing some other software for matchmaking if this continues much longer. Hopefully within the next year a paid employee of BIS will see this post and several of the other threads about this topic and actually demand GameSpy does something other than refuse to act stating it isn't their problem (Though it quite obviously is!). My hope has severely plummeted though by the fact your message was posted 6 months ago. It makes me think someone in charge believes this problem is merely unintelligent users that cannot search, read, and manipulate their router/firewall settings. This could not be farther from the truth. Edited August 28, 2012 by James_Manring

[Nexous 10]

Still no fix available for this annoying problem? Going to try opening some ports and stuff on my router when I get home from work today, after what I've understood this will be fixed as soon as we open the ports exactly as they should be opened, not sure how much experience you guys have but ports can be tricky and won't work unless it's 100%.

[jagardaniel 10]

Hello,

I configured a server yesterday and has the same issue as many of you have. The server itself works great. Everyone can join and play without any issues. However, the server shows 2500 ping in the server list. Well, it isn't a "game breaking" issue, but it is hard to fill up a server when people can't see the ping correctly. People are afraid to join. I'm not a super good sys/network administrator, but I guess I know some basic stuff. I'm running the server at home on a vmware machine, WS2012, behind a linux router/nat. So nothing special about the setup. Have tried to google up the whole internet but I have not found something that has worked yet.

A funny thing, which some people have noticed earlier, is that it works if you are running the game (or in our case, Steam) as admin. Then you see the server ping correctly without any issues at all. My guess is that ArmA 2 is using different methods of "pinging" the server depending on if you are running the game as admin or not. I could be very wrong. I used tcpdump on my router/nat and tried to catch some traffic. I asked a friend to refresh the server browser both with the game started as admin and not.

When the game is started as admin, and the server list is refreshed, my server receives a ICMP echo request. And as you see, my server responds without any issues. In fact, this is actually my router responding since I don't redirect ICMP traffic in any kind of way. So, this is when the ping in the server browser works.

22:47:03.866071 IP 83.xxx.xx.xxx > 89.160.xx.xx: ICMP echo request, id 3368, seq 39430, length 14

22:47:03.866140 IP 89.160.xx.xx > 83.xxx.xx.xxx: ICMP echo reply, id 3368, seq 39430, length 14

When the same friend refresh the game without admin, and the ping goes up to 2500 (not responding), I don't receive any ICMP traffic at all. In fact, I don't see any kind of traffic from that source IP. So I guess there is some kind of relay server between the client and the server in this case? Or I'm wrong? Could it be different for different clients? I read something about that the standard method to measure "ping" is by sending a very small UDP packet instead of a ICMP-packet. Is that what I see below (with length 7)?

I also see much traffic that follow this "scheme". It look like this (bottenskrap.xxxx.local is the server where arma is running). Can't confirm if those guys see the ping correctly or not.

05:08:20.818279 IP xxxxxxxxx.net.27767 > bottenskrap.xxxxxxx.local.2302: UDP, length 7

05:08:20.818673 IP bottenskrap.xxxxxx.local.2302 > xxxxxxxxxx.net.27767: UDP, length 16

05:08:21.095430 IP xxxxxxxxx.27767 > bottenskrap.xxxxxx.local.2302: UDP, length 15

05:08:21.095935 IP bottenskrap.xxxxx.local.2302 > xxxxxxx.27767: UDP, length 761

The last packet send back some information about the server (playercount, mode etc).

So I'm just curious if some of you have solved this yet. I have found many topics, but no solution. All kind of firewalls are off, so the only thing that affects the network traffic is my NAT. I have portforwarded 2302, 2303, 2305, 8766 and 27016.

If you have any tips how I can continue my troubleshooting and what I should look for, that would be awesome. I really want to solve this. Hate to give up.

/Daniel

[johnsm 1]

guys don't waste your time with this, this never worked and never will. I come from Operation Flashpoint days and it never worked there and doesn't even work with Arma 3. It doesnt work because gamespy grabs internal ip and passes it to gamespy server. I have to put all the servers on public up in unprotected environment.

[LeeManatee 4]

ICMP. solved.

[skydive 1]

To be very specific, with a Cisco ASA or really any cisco device, if you want to allow a server to respond to ping you must allow ICMP echo-reply, ICMP time-exceeded and ICMP-unreachable on that server through the firewall.

On the windows side, if you want a windows server to respond to ping, you have to enable under Inbound Rules: File and Printer Sharing (Echo Request - ICMPv4-In). This is what to look for if the server is running Windows Firewall.

[zydu 10]

Ehm... so I did't read all the posts in this thread so I'm not sure if you see 2500 ping by using ping command in windows console or just in the server browser.

If it is the server browser, launch Arma client as admin. I'm running linux server, so I'm not sure maybe you should also launch server as admin as well.