multiplayer via cellphone hotspot doesnt work

[vonlanthen]

my friend tried to join my hosted game via his cellphone hotspot. he can join a random server and play it. when i host a game he cant join since it cant establish a network. always though, no matter what we cant play together. with hamachi it works.

any ideas as to why he cant join my games? steam invites and such have all been tested. though we have not manipulated any files or router forwarding and port stuff. i mean its 2019, one should not do it. i rather dont play with him than going inside my router and set the right port. kinda silly.

thanks in advance.

[slippycheeze]

my friend tried to join my hosted game via his cellphone hotspot. he can join a random server and play it. when i host a game he cant join since it cant establish a network. always though, no matter what we cant play together. with hamachi it works.

any ideas as to why he cant join my games? steam invites and such have all been tested. though we have not manipulated any files or router forwarding and port stuff. i mean its 2019, one should not do it. i rather dont play with him than going inside my router and set the right port. kinda silly.

I'm 99 percent certain the issue is that your phone network provider will not pass through the traffic you need through. Mentioning that using hamachi makes it work is the real clue: that will create an opaque tunnel through the one-way filters the phone network would use, and so bypass the trouble spot.

I'd even upgrade to 99.999 percent certain because, well, mobile phone internet has done stuff like this for decades, ever since you could route data over them. They love arbitrary restrictions to simplify their lives, and games are the most common thing that is "vaguely, kinda, sorta maybe a bit hard" to NAT properly, so they just drop them.... also because they attract people who notice when latency is inconsistent, or packets are dropped, or whatever, so attract more complaints to fix the network.

[PunPun]

my friend tried to join my hosted game via his cellphone hotspot. he can join a random server and play it. when i host a game he cant join since it cant establish a network. always though, no matter what we cant play together. with hamachi it works.

any ideas as to why he cant join my games? steam invites and such have all been tested. though we have not manipulated any files or router forwarding and port stuff. i mean its 2019, one should not do it. i rather dont play with him than going inside my router and set the right port. kinda silly.

thanks in advance.

If he can join other games then the issue is 100% on your end. It's 2019 people should have learned how to portforward to host their games already. There are router spesific tutorials for thousands of different routers in https://portforward.com/. For aslong as NAT is a thing there will always be games that require you to portforward to host. And because there are some major ISP:s that want all the money possible they will not be upgrading to a NATless setup in the forseeable future.

[slippycheeze]

my friend tried to join my hosted game via his cellphone hotspot. he can join a random server and play it. when i host a game he cant join since it cant establish a network. always though, no matter what we cant play together. with hamachi it works.

any ideas as to why he cant join my games? steam invites and such have all been tested. though we have not manipulated any files or router forwarding and port stuff. i mean its 2019, one should not do it. i rather dont play with him than going inside my router and set the right port. kinda silly.

thanks in advance.

If he can join other games then the issue is 100% on your end. It's 2019 people should have learned how to portforward to host their games already.

Dude. Dude. Aside from being rude, odds are that it isn't a "lern 2 inturnet" problem as you suggest. I know most folks are not up to date on the latest and greatest horrors that sit between a mobile phone and the broader Internet, but I'd strongly encourage you to avoid comments like these where "mobile" is involved if you are not.

Inbound connections are usually an explicitly "not supported, and not possible" feature on those plans. Partly because they frequently handle IPv4 only on the "client" side (ie, mobile to PC), and they pass through three or four different IPv4-only, usually one way, address translations before they reach the outside world.

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah, it's 2019. If the "I"SP (cellular or landline) isn't able to provide IPv6 and the control of the final router giving that IP, then they shouldn't be allowed to advertise that they are providing Internet access...

[PunPun]

Dude. Dude. Aside from being rude, odds are that it isn't a "lern 2 inturnet" problem as you suggest. I know most folks are not up to date on the latest and greatest horrors that sit between a mobile phone and the broader Internet, but I'd strongly encourage you to avoid comments like these where "mobile" is involved if you are not.

Inbound connections are usually an explicitly "not supported, and not possible" feature on those plans. Partly because they frequently handle IPv4 only on the "client" side (ie, mobile to PC), and they pass through three or four different IPv4-only, usually one way, address translations before they reach the outside world.

I'm sorry that it sounded rude. I didn't intend it to be rude. Does not make it any less true tough. I'm also on a 4g mobile internet. And I pay extra for it to not be behind a NAT. But because I have multiple computers I still have to portforward to allow them to host anything. And that is with the most modern 4g router available.

Also if you read the original post carefully it reads that the person joining has cellular hotspot. Nothing about the host having one. And the person trying to join can join other games. That means that his outbound connections are not blocked. Thus the problem is on the host side. Most likely because the host is behind a NAT and needs to portforward or their firewall is blocking the connection. Well unless there is somekind of grudge between their respective ISPs and they are blocking connections to eachother but I doubt that.

Yeah, it's 2019. If the "I"SP (cellular or landline) isn't able to provide IPv6 and the control of the final router giving that IP, then they shouldn't be allowed to advertise that they are providing Internet access...

Sadly by those restrictions most people in the entire world are living in an area where there are no legitimate internet providers landline or cellular. If I had a deathlaser satellite network I would happily make a deal to dismantle it if every household in the world was provided affordable no throttle/datacaps/blockedports internet with a ipv6 passthrough router and should they not I would start lasering the offices of those ISPs who don't. Sadly I don't have either satellites or deathlasers. And when those "not legitimate" ISPs can charge $200 for a shitty internet they don't really tend to offer anything better without charging absurd amounts of money for them.

Capitalism is great for things with relativily low investment barrier. But for something like being an ISP requiring millions just to start offering service for a small neighbourhood it creates all kinds of problems.

[BlueTemplar]

Well, yes, that's why I'm suggesting this.
That way, in addition to compete over who can deploy 4/5G the fastest,
ISPs would compete over who can actually provide Internet access.

[slippycheeze]

Well, yes, that's why I'm suggesting this.
That way, in addition to compete over who can deploy 4/5G the fastest,
ISPs would compete over who can actually provide Internet access.

Wouldn't it be nice if government would stop fighting over private vs public monop{oly,sony}, and instead focus on the fact that public establishes an inescapable minimum service standard, and that neither one is ultimately good.

...but on the other hand, we live in late phase capitalism, where profit is privatized and losses are socialized, so that isn't gonna happen.