Long wait for games when forcing different servers

[Bat 'n' Ball]

18 minutes ago, N3CR0 said:

I would say most likely thats the game fault rather than DumaOS tbh. As you say, all other games work as they should.

At its lowest level, it is the DumaOS’s responsibility to comb through network traffic and to segregate it.

MW might be flawed, but it is the network traffic which is not being dealt with properly by the DumaOS.

[N3CR0]

5 minutes ago, Bat 'n' Ball said:

At its lowest level, it is the DumaOS’s responsibility to comb through network traffic and to segregate it.

MW might be flawed, but it is the network traffic which is not being dealt with properly by the DumaOS.

Might be something in the games network system trying to block or disrupt DumaOS in some way.

You know they don't want us choosing where and who we connect to so it only makes sense that they would try and put a stop to it.

[Bat 'n' Ball]

A game can be at ‘fault’ as you put it earlier, but its network traffic is still there to be analysed and processed. Enter DumaOS.

[N3CR0]

Maybe so but if its just one game thats not working right, thats the game at fault in my eyes.

[Bert]

Not really since you are not supposed to use 3rd party tools to interfere with their matchmaking.

 

There could be all kinds of issues, like maybe the playerpool gets limited to only players that can join a certain server. It's hard to say without knowing what goes on behind the scenes.

[Bat 'n' Ball]

1 hour ago, N3CR0 said:

Maybe so but if its just one game thats not working right, thats the game at fault in my eyes.

As much as I intensely dislike Modern Warfare (I really do despise it!), to say the game is ‘faulty’, and that is the reason DumaOS does not work with it, I find is a bit of a stretch.

I am bordering on hatred for MW (God, bring back those days when online gameplay was actually enjoyable and satisfying), but I strongly believe DumaOS is simply not doing its job with regards to Modern Warfare.

The network traffic is there to be combed through and manipulated, regardless of whether the game is supposedly ‘faulty’ or not.

If network traffic cannot be manipulated, what is the point in buying a DumaOS router?

[N3CR0]

11 minutes ago, Bat 'n' Ball said:

As much as I intensely dislike Modern Warfare (I really do despise it!), to say the game is ‘faulty’, and that is the reason DumaOS does not work with it, I find is a bit of a stretch.

I am bordering on hatred for MW (God, bring back those days when online gameplay was actually enjoyable and satisfying), but I strongly believe DumaOS is simply not doing its job with regards to Modern Warfare.

The network traffic is there to be combed through and manipulated, regardless of whether the game is supposedly ‘faulty’ or not.

If network traffic cannot be manipulated, what is the point in buying a DumaOS router?

All I know is it seems to be working for me. When I launch MW, it shows all the servers as it should and always connects me only to whichever servers I am wanting.

[Bert]

Well there is not so much manipulation going on. And there is not much to comb through if you want to put it like that.

 

The game pings the servers when you boot the game and DumaOS simply puts those outside your geofilter on a blacklist, which it recieves from the cloud.

 

This in turn causes the game to only connect to the servers it can ping on bootup. 

 

First issue here is that the cloud must be correct as otherwise it either won't let you connect to the servers you want (server is in radius IRL but mislocated in cloud outside radius) or connect to the wrong server (server is outside radius IRL but mislocated in cloud inside radius)

 

As for the PA method, we can also see an issue here. The game needs to ping the actual server for DumaOS to have a reading. So the game can't actually discard the server like it does on the strict method.

 

I think it also depends on their matchmaking algo. Like I said before I think it limits your matchmaking pool, most likely as a combination of people that can connect to certain servers and SBMM. This is all happening on the Demonware servers so really there is no way for people to know what's going on.

[Squizz]

Hey @Bat 'n' Ball, excellent bit of testing there bud! Yeah it seems it all behaves a bit funny with MW, not sure if its DumaOS or MW at fault though cos MW seems to have some really finicky matchmaking going on, probably all part of the SBMM and the algorithm that goes along with that. Been at work alot so haven't had a chance to keep up with the discussion, but thanks for doing some testing. Will be interesting to see what happens once we get a cloud update if there are any issues on Netdumas side, cos I would imagine unfortunately that BO5 or whatever Treyarch is working on will have the same if not worse matchmaking criteria. Think there might be some strength to the argument that the algorithm is very strict though, which could affect how many lobbies are actually available to you depending on how good you are. And I'm not sure if I'm entering tin foil hat territory here, but maybe they've tried to remove some of the "advantages" you get using a Netduma router somehow. More than likely not the case though, as I cant really think how they could accomplish that.

[Bat 'n' Ball]

4 hours ago, Squizz said:

I would imagine unfortunately that BO5 or whatever Treyarch is working on will have the same if not worse matchmaking criteria.

Been playing COS since the first one on PC in the early 00's but if this is the way the franchise is going, I'm through with it. I'm not going to waste hard earned cash on rubbish like this any more 😐

[Brainbleach]

3 hours ago, Bat 'n' Ball said:

Been playing COS since the first one on PC in the early 00's but if this is the way the franchise is going, I'm through with it. I'm not going to waste hard earned cash on rubbish like this any more 😐

Says every cod player until next years release when you'll be playing cod just like the rest of us lol

[Bat 'n' Ball]

Just a thought Squizz but have you tried using the Hybrid VPN feature of the router? Proton VPN is free if you wanted to sign up and try it out. There's no data limit and you can connect to 3 countries (44 if you pay). Japan, Netherlands and United States. I usually go for United States servers simply because of English being generally spoken.

Like you, if I use the Filtering Mode with MW I can be waiting ages for a game but if use the free Proton VPN on a US server, I'm in games pretty much straight away. Pings are a bit high but relatively speaking, my game experience is quite good, considering how bad the game is!

Basically, you paste your Username, Password and Configuration into the Advanced tab of the Hybrid VPN Setup. You will need to download the Router', UDP, Server config file for US-FREE#1 (or whatever server you chose).

Copy the text in the .ovpn file from the 'client' line, all the way down to '</tls-auth>' and paste it into the Configuration field. Note, your VPN username and password are different to your account username and password. You'll find your VPN username and password in the Account section of the Proton VPN website, under OpenVPN / IKEv2 username.

I then delete all the lines containing 'remote us-free-01.protonvpn.com' and replace with 1 single line 'remote 108.59.0.37' for example. This way you have more control over the server you are connected to, rather than a random one in the US. Look here for Proton VPN US server IP's.

You'll need to put your Console or PC into the ADD DEVICE button on the Hybrid VPN page. Once it's connected, I then put Spectating Mode on and the game thinks I'm in the US and puts me on servers over there... but without the waiting times of using Filtering Mode. If you need help, just message me!

Good luck 😀

[Bat 'n' Ball]

22 minutes ago, Brainbleach said:

Says every cod player until next years release when you'll be playing cod just like the rest of us lol

[nods!] 😀

[Squizz]

2 hours ago, Bat 'n' Ball said:

Just a thought Squizz but have you tried using the Hybrid VPN feature of the router? Proton VPN is free if you wanted to sign up and try it out. There's no data limit and you can connect to 3 countries (44 if you pay). Japan, Netherlands and United States. I usually go for United States servers simply because of English being generally spoken.

Like you, if I use the Filtering Mode with MW I can be waiting ages for a game but if use the free Proton VPN on a US server, I'm in games pretty much straight away. Pings are a bit high but relatively speaking, my game experience is quite good, considering how bad the game is!

Basically, you paste your Username, Password and Configuration into the Advanced tab of the Hybrid VPN Setup. You will need to download the Router', UDP, Server config file for US-FREE#1 (or whatever server you chose).

Copy the text in the .ovpn file from the 'client' line, all the way down to '</tls-auth>' and paste it into the Configuration field. Note, your VPN username and password are different to your account username and password. You'll find your VPN username and password in the Account section of the Proton VPN website, under OpenVPN / IKEv2 username.

I then delete all the lines containing 'remote us-free-01.protonvpn.com' and replace with 1 single line 'remote 108.59.0.37' for example. This way you have more control over the server you are connected to, rather than a random one in the US. Look here for Proton VPN US server IP's.

You'll need to put your Console or PC into the ADD DEVICE button on the Hybrid VPN page. Once it's connected, I then put Spectating Mode on and the game thinks I'm in the US and puts me on servers over there... but without the waiting times of using Filtering Mode. If you need help, just message me!

Good luck 😀

Thanks for this guide mate, I wouldn't have had a clue where to begin with setting up a VPN, but you've explained it so well I'm gonna give this a try. Hopefully I'll have some good results, it can't really get any worse anyway lol. Really appreciate the detailed guide though pal 👍

[Sable]

48 minutes ago, Squizz said:

Thanks for this guide mate, I wouldn't have had a clue where to begin with setting up a VPN, but you've explained it so well I'm gonna give this a try. Hopefully I'll have some good results, it can't really get any worse anyway lol. Really appreciate the detailed guide though pal 👍

Please let us know how it goes.

[Netduma Alex]

19 hours ago, Bat 'n' Ball said:

In contrast to the above two games, this is the DumaOS startup flow when I start COD Modern Warfare from the PlayStation 4 menu, and it is ‘Connecting to online services’:

•    The DumaOS Geo-Filter screen lights up with ambiguous dedicated server and player icons overlaid over one another **
•    During a live game, DumaOS sometimes identifies the server icon (dedicated or peer) which is handling the session
•    Few, but usually no player icons at all, appear on the Geo-Filter screen for the game in progress (despite 12 people being in the session)

Based on this test, which was very thorough, it seems that we currently have a lot of miscategorized servers/peers. This is one of the hardest elements of Geo-Filter to get right, from our point of view, but theoretically the categorization shouldn't matter too much as long as Strict Mode is enabled.

So yeah I wouldn't worry too much about which icons are showing up, i'd worry more about their quantity and their location.

You probably already know this but let's run through how Geo-FIlter works so we can figure out what's not working in MW:

• Game starts up, pings all known matchmaking servers around the world to find the lowest ping
• Game only sees servers inside the Geo-Filter radius, assumes others are offline
• Game starts matchmaking, only sees servers and peers inside radius
• SBMM is defeated forever and there is no more war

Seems to me like there's an issue between the first two steps... I imagine maybe Modern Warfare is doing this:

• Game starts up, connects to authentication server which is always whitelisted
• Authentication server sends game a list of servers around the world, along with their current status
• Game starts matchmaking, can't seem to connect to the server it wants
• Game keeps trying because it knows the server should be up
• Game keeps trying...
• Game keeps trying...

If this is the case, there might not be much we can do beyond limiting a few peer connections.

I'm hoping that this isn't the case, and all that's needed is for us to relocate some servers.

[Squizz]

@Bat 'n' Ball @Sable well it looks like I fell at the first hurdle lol. Managed to get the VPN server details etc but I've gone into DumaOS and the Xr300 doesn't support HybridVPN apparently, a quick Google and some topics on this forum confirmed it. Apparently it might be available on the new firmware whenever that arrives, but as of now it's just the kind where you have to install the VPN software on the device intended for use it seems, which obviously is impossible on an Xbox. Sorry guys, was looking forward to trying this and thanks for all the help, it's a shame I cant try it out.

[Squizz]

@Netduma Alex sorry to bother you mate but can you just quickly confirm whether or not the XR300 supports hybrid VPN like the XR500 etc? I dont think it does from what I can see, just want to be sure I'm not missing anything. It just seems to have a basic VPN client set up section.

[Squizz]

11 minutes ago, Netduma Alex said:

• Game starts up, connects to authentication server which is always whitelisted
• Authentication server sends game a list of servers around the world, along with their current status
• Game starts matchmaking, can't seem to connect to the server it wants
• Game keeps trying because it knows the server should be up
• Game keeps trying...
• Game keeps trying...

I think this is exactly the issue. I think that it tries to connect you based on your matchmaking ranking, and when it cant do that it kinda shits the bed for want of a better term. Because obviously its most likely ATVI/IW dont factor in for geofiltering etc essentially trying to defeat their SBMM system, so it kinda gets stuck in a loop trying to connect to a server/peer that DumaOS is blocking. Because i have noticed sometimes when im camping a foreign server that i can see DumaOS is picking up a peer/server, but it just doesnt complete the connection for whatever reason.

[Bat 'n' Ball]

16 hours ago, Squizz said:

@Bat 'n' Ball @Sable well it looks like I fell at the first hurdle lol. Managed to get the VPN server details etc but I've gone into DumaOS and the Xr300 doesn't support HybridVPN apparently, a quick Google and some topics on this forum confirmed it. Apparently it might be available on the new firmware whenever that arrives, but as of now it's just the kind where you have to install the VPN software on the device intended for use it seems, which obviously is impossible on an Xbox. Sorry guys, was looking forward to trying this and thanks for all the help, it's a shame I cant try it out.

Sorry Squizz, I didn't realise you had an XR300 and it doesn't support Hybrid VPN ☹️

Before I got my XR500, I used to use a TP-Link router flashed with a DD-WRT firmware and used the VPN on that. Then I plugged my PlayStation directly into the TP-Link Router.

I know that doesn't help much but if you're confident with Windows networking what you could try is downloading the Windows Proton VPN client. Once installed, you should have a new adapter in your Control Panel\Network and Internet\Network Connections called TAP-ProtonVPN Windows Adapter. [edit] Right click Start button, Network Connections, Change Adapter Options.

Basically you are looking to share that adapter on the LAN port of your computer so you can plug your xbox into it. Right click the TAP-ProtonVPN Windows Adapter and enable sharing on the sharing tab. You then have your computer connect to your XR300 via wi-fi and connect your xbox to the ethernet on your Windows PC. You might have to bridge both ethernet adapter and TAP-ProtonVPN Windows Adapter by selecting them both then right click and bridge connections.

The setup basically looks something like this:

Xbox <ethernet> PC connected to VPN <Wi-Fi> XR300 

You might have to play around a bit and it can be a lot of work but if you are confident with changing networking on your computer, it does work.

Sorry I couldn't be more help but hopefully Hybrid VPN will be available to you in a future firmware update.

[Squizz]

@Bat 'n' Ball yeah I'm familiar with network bridging so it's definitely a possibility I can look into, I'm just a bit concerned it might introduce some jitter or other issues using wifi but it's a good idea for sure.

 

54 minutes ago, Bat 'n' Ball said:

Sorry I couldn't be more help but hopefully Hybrid VPN will be available to you in a future firmware update

Couldn't be further from the truth, you've been a great help mate. It's just a shame my hardware doesn't support it right now for whatever reason lol. Maybe it's just one of the added extras that separates the higher and lower models, mine is a lower spec router admittedly as it's my first step into the gaming router market. Thanks again for the help with everything.

[Netduma Alex]

On 2/7/2020 at 2:55 PM, Squizz said:

@Netduma Alex sorry to bother you mate but can you just quickly confirm whether or not the XR300 supports hybrid VPN like the XR500 etc? I dont think it does from what I can see, just want to be sure I'm not missing anything. It just seems to have a basic VPN client set up section.

Unfortunately the XR300 doesn't currently support Hybrid-VPN. I'm not 100% sure if we'll be adding it with DumaOS 3.0 or not. I assume that if we can get it to work reliably on that hardware, we'll include it. I don't think this has been finalized yet, 3.0 development is focused on the XR500 at the minute.