The only reason someone needs an open NAT is if they want to host the games 
themselves.  It varies depending on the game because some games do a peer host. 
 This is usually someone with the lowest latency connection.  Everyone connects 
to this person to host the game.  Gamers want to be this host because it gives 
them a few ms of advantage.  Having an open nat does not affect their ability 
to play games.  If they can’t host the games simply chooses someone else who 
can. When you have "Strict NAT" on the XBox, what it effectively means is that 
your XBox isn't able to open an arbitrary port on your NAT device and have it 
forwarded back to the XBox. If it can't do this, then it is never able to 
"host" any chat - all of its connections need to be made outbound. In cases 
like this everyone would need IPv6 because they would need to connect natively 
via IPv6, which isn’t going to happen for awhile.

Some other games connect to centralized servers.  World of Warcraft (PC), 
Destiny (Xbox and Playation), and others use centralized servers for the game.  
This means the natting issue is irrelevant.   

Too much nat can adversely affect voice quality and other things, but only when 
it comes to hosting. Otherwise the chat is “Streamed” to whomever is hosting.

Justin Wilson
[email protected]

---
http://www.mtin.net Owner/CEO
xISP Solutions- Consulting – Data Centers - Bandwidth

http://www.midwest-ix.com  COO/Chairman
Internet Exchange - Peering - Distributed Fabric

> On May 8, 2016, at 8:41 PM, Jon Auer <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> It seems to vary by game.
> Playing first person shooters I noticed that audio wouldn't work reliably & 
> I'd get dropped into games with undesirable latency characteristics. Pretty 
> similar to VoIP and issues with one way audio, not being able to do 
> reinvites, etc.
> 
> I wish they'd just bypass all the NAT issues by using native v6 with a 
> fallback to Teredo. Then I'd have no problem with the blame the ISP part. 
> Extra lag? Ask your ISP about IPv6 Today!
> 
> On Sun, May 8, 2016 at 3:20 PM, Ken Hohhof <[email protected]> wrote:
> Also, is it true this is only an issue for peer-to-peer games, not cloud 
> hosted games?
> 
> 

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