Updated FAQ - Connection Issues

[Rod Fergusson]

Double posting here for effect

Hey all,

I just updated the sticky FAQ in General Chat but I thought I should call out the update as a seperate thread as well so that it's easily found.

11.0 - Connection Issues
Losing Connection

The main reason that people lose connections in multiplayer is because either they or the host have their NAT (firewall) set up incorrectly to work on Xbox Live. To see if you have this issue, go to the System Settings blade in the dashboard and choose Network Settings. From there choose to Test Xbox Live Connection. If your NAT returns "strict" or "moderate" then that is likely your problem. To work correctly on Live you want that test to return "open". To acheive this you simply have to port forward a specific set of ports to your 360 as detailed by this Microsoft support bulletin:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/908874

Unable to Connect to Host

Unfortunately, this error message is not really giving you the whole story as usually it simply means "Server is now full". What is actually happening is that between the time that the query for hosts was sent and the list was displayed, some of the servers have filled up. This is especially true of Quickmatch and of any host that is displayed with a greater player count than "4/8". In the short term, the best way to avoid this is to use Custom Match and only select servers that display "1/8" player count as that will increase your chances of joining before it's full.

Thanks,

Rod.

[eth-meth]

Thanks Rod, this should help ALOT of people. Great info.

[xX NizmyTY Xx]

umm mine wont search on live at all it says no matches found so i need someone to help me

[XxMarcusxX]

Thanks for the newest update, hopefully this will stop current lag outs or connection errors. Thanks Rod..

[C12EEPZ]

I been playing gears 2 since the last update I can't play online I need help

[Insanity Pirate]

Okay, so I've got a question:

What is WRONG with my connection to Xbox Live? I just ran a speed test and rank in at 24mbps, with a download speed of 11.90 mbps and an upload speed of .33 mbps. I never have any connection errors with my other computer-based applications, and can stream 1080p videos on YouTube with no problem.

However, when I go to play Gears of War online, my connection is up to an entire second or more late in every game I play. When this game first came out, I used to play it every day and my connection was instantaneous; it was like playing a local game, and it was great. But now, 5+ years later, my connection sucks, and I can't do anything to help myself.

I've fiddled with the QoS on my router (my xbox literally devoured all of our bandwidth to the point that almost no webpages would load on a computer), and it helped for about 45 minutes. Then my connection magically seemed to detect I was having fun, and throttled itself down. I activated port forwarding for ports 80, 85, 3074, and 53 to my xbox's assigned IP address for another 15 minutes before it seemed again that my connection detected acceptable performance, then throttled itself down. I switched out a 18'-long twisted-pair CAT5 ethernet cable with a 2'-long CAT6 cable I clipped and tailored to length myself and tested, and again my connection worked good for about 5-10 minutes, then throttled itself down again. Finally in agitation, I updated my router's (54 mbps) firmware from a January '07 to an October '09 version, and it seemed to work for about 20-30 minutes before my connection once again throttled itself down, and I went from lone-wolfing entire teams by myself, to watching my Grenadier do the "Zero Gravity" upside down rag-doll fall typical with a bad connection, glitch-spawned extra body parts and all in the span of about 15 minutes once more.

On top of that, setting my router's DHCP client table to a maximum of 13 users and assigning my xbox a static address have done little if anything to help. Nobody is stealing my connection, because I manually configured our connection to be accessible only from the 10 nodes in my house through WPA2-PSK security with a hidden SSID, 5 of which tend to be inactive 85% of the time. My xbox is hard-connected to my router, and my modem directly to my router as well. When I attached my wireless card to my xbox, again, beautiful connection for some reason only another 30 minutes, before my connection practically cratered out worse than my wired connection. I've set my router to route at the maximum 54 mbps and my MTU has been set to 1500 manually instead of automatically. WHAT THE ****!?!?!? I've done literally everything I can think of, including power-cycling my crummy router for a minute at a time, and I'm getting very agitated, because GoW1 is the only video game I've ever played for more than a month in my entire life (had it since "E-Day"). I've even gone out and bought another copy from a GameStop in case my old one was all Gear'd out (framed the disk and hung it on my wall, too; I almost failed Highschool with that disk!! >.<) also.

Can anybody tell me what it is my router's doing wrong? The one thing I haven't done (I think) is mess with my router's NAT configuration, because there isn't anywhere for me to do so on my router's settings control panel. I have only once gotten a "Your NAT type is set to moderate" message about a week ago, the first and only so far of its kind. After looking up the "Reset your router for 30 seconds" and doing it, it did away with the message, but I suspect this is still a problem somehow. Is this some kind of known issue with interfacing with Gears of War's servers now, or what? I'll admit, this is my second time on the forum since I made an account like a year ago, so I might've missed the memo. What gives?

* * * EDIT * * *

Whoops, 3 years ago; just checked my "Join Date" profile field, sorry.

* * * EDIT EDIT * * *

I'm not sure if this has to do with my ISP; last I remember, we had their high-speed online package, and I don't recall a switch any time during the last 4 years...

[aBiiG Choppa]

have you checked where your router is did u move your xbox?

[Zieu]

Any chance of editing the "Unable to Connect to Host" text to actually tell the whole story? Regardless, thanks Rod. This really helped us out.

[SuspectMisconduct]

hey rod, i'll be sure to pass the message along while i'm playing. all i keep hearing while i'm playing is that "this is the GREATEST GAME EVER!!!!!" and i keep telling people i game with to hit the gears' forums. thanx again for watching out for us gamers, we got your back, too.

*cough*f***EA*cough*

[Datee]

Everytime I get into a game lobby, and everyone is ready, the countdown starts but it goes 4,5,4,5,4,5,4,5 and then my 360 freezes. Whats the deal, cheif?

[CyberLink]

And why is it that everytime I try to join my friends private co-op game after he sends me an invite, that it says cannot connect to host. The same thing happens when I host it as well.

[MR704D]

And why is it that everytime I try to join my friends private co-op game after he sends me an invite, that it says cannot connect to host. The same thing happens when I host it as well.

Same here! And I know others who are also experiencing this. Rod, there is more to it than servers being full. What else is causing this problem?

[MR704D]

And why is it that everytime I try to join my friends private co-op game after he sends me an invite, that it says cannot connect to host. The same thing happens when I host it as well.

Same here! No one has an answer to this. It's NOT the NAT settings or anything else on our end! I've done everything, even connecting my cable modem directly into the 360. There is more to this! Any answers Rod?

[bigal4458]

Same here! No one has an answer to this. It's NOT the NAT settings or anything else on our end! I've done everything, even connecting my cable modem directly into the 360. There is more to this! Any answers Rod?

Ditto!!! Just w/ my brother too. The only person I can't conntect with online.

WTF!!! We bought the game to play TOGETHER online, as we are far apart. This is bull man...fix it.

[aBiiG Choppa]

go to speedtest.net or pingtest.net to test your internet maybe your router is to far away

[Stone Hardgod]

If your NAT returns "strict" or "moderate" then that is likely your problem. To work correctly on Live you want that test to return "open".

That's good news, Rod, but my NAT does return "open" when I do the test, and all but two games I've attempted to join between 3 and 4 this Emergence Day afternoon gave me either the "NETWORK: Your connection to the host has been lost," or "CANNOT CONNECT: No connection can be made to the host. Please try again." What makes this really frustrating is, I had a great connection over Live playing co-op until about 1am this morning with no problems at all. I suppose a lot of people were in bed then instead of playing.

Nonetheless, I love the game (and, call me a noob, but I am having a helluva hard time killing Raam (on Casual!)) and I look forward to more great games from Epic.

[U2MOFO]

Any word on the stat reporting issues that some of us are having. Ive got 15 games played on ranked and not one of them has updated. Started a new tag and the first game uploaded instantly.. so its something to do with specific tags... very annoying when you have achievements based on ranked games.

[BumTHPS]

This site really helps with configuring your NAT settings to OPEN as well.

http://tommccann.net/live/

[ericdrum]

This site really helps with configuring your NAT settings to OPEN as well.

http://tommccann.net/live/

Thanks for that post. That really helped me. I never tested my new router and my last one was "open" out of the box. Now I'm all set.

[NationalKato]

The game is amazing..the multiplayer so very tempting. Tempting? Yes, because the netcode for finding games is a huge handicap.

The time it takes to send a search request (either for Quick Match or Custom) is long. Then, once you've selected a game to join, chances are you'll get the 'Unable To Connect' message, meaning the game is full. Here's where the frustration starts: instead of hitting 'A' and seeing that list of games again to choose another, we're forced to 'Refresh' and wait for the list of games to transmit all over again.

There are many multiplayer browsers being used by different games that work 100x better than the Epic browser. It goes without saying that playing a Bungie game on the Xbox console is light years ahead of anything possible in Gears of War. I can't imagine the developers preferred the existing server browser functionality over other options already on store shelves? Heck, even the broken 2K Games browser is more forgiving.

It's a headache, to be sure. At a minimum, allow us to go back to the game list without forcing us to Refresh. Save us a lot of time and get us into the games faster. It's no fun staring at the Refresh screen for 15-25 seconds at a time, hoping to finally play.

[ibe6yoube9]

My NAT is "open" but I still haven't been able to join a multiplayer game.

At least I'm glad that I'm not the only one.

[mellowspaz]

This site really helps with configuring your NAT settings to OPEN as well.

http://tommccann.net/live/

Thank you Bum. This fixed every problem I used to have. I would get disconnected in a co-op campaign on average every 15 minutes, now it is non-existent. You are the man To the rest of you experiencing connection problems, I highly suggest this site.

[buurin]

Thank you Bum. This fixed every problem I used to have. I would get disconnected in a co-op campaign on average every 15 minutes, now it is non-existent. You are the man To the rest of you experiencing connection problems, I highly suggest this site.

I get disconnected from ALL games (co-op AND versus) after only about 5 minutes of playing. This has occured ever since I bought the game (2 days after it came out)

The XBox Live Test says NAT is open. The ICMP test takes maybe 30 seconds, is that abnormal?

My connection is wired and I have tried both using port forwarding via my router AND connecting directly to my cable modem. Both result in me being kicked out of games.

This happens not frequently but EVERY game.

What is the deal? This game gets old quick when you can't play online.

I can play other games without a problem and I have no other network issues. I am pretty convinced this is an issue with this particular game seeing as how it occurs when connected directly to my cable modem.

Thanks
B

[Revolution]

I need help !!! whenever i host a game .. everybody else lags really bad except for me and people end up quitting..now i know it might be the connection i have..which is verizon dsl..i dnt know how im supposed to fix this problem. i have a westell wireless gateway which is probably the best i can use. can someone help me out on this?

[onechop]

ROD can you tell me when the update is going too come because every body i know in the uk has not had it yet any clue? thanks.

[SHk_Chimo]

Thanks for the info!

[ferretman17]

thats not what im having trouble with my problem is it say remote parties have restarted the matchmaking search and it takes forever like 20 mins till i find a team

[Balazorz]

im gonna post a small guide if its kool that i think will help alot of people here

[hfghgh]

this site is relly good to play the games it's good for a play boys

[nervous648]

well i agree with one thing the moderator said people have strict or moderate settings on theyre router not being configured properly but for people like myself that have it setup right i still get kicked occasionally especially when im party leader trying to find a match it will let the party continue but not me i get stuck in the matchmaking screen where it says searching for players oh by the way this issue has just started with latest update. oh off the topic here epic if you guys are supposedly going to fix the shotgun plz do it right what do i mean it seems with latest update you can do more damage with shotgun from faraway but if you put your shotgun in someones chest about 70 pct of the time does not register plz fix great game but if gears3 isnt on dedicated servers im not giving your company anymore money ill just play killzone3

[2th]

Thanks Rod for all the info!

[Slezey]

I get a message saying "Your connection to Xbox Live has been lost" when I try join a game, sometimes it happends when im searching for a game, sometimes when a game is about to start and sometimes while playing.

I also get your connection to the host has been lost sometimes.

The thing about "Your connection to Xbox Live has been lost" started happend yesterday, before that it was fine.(Sometimes I got connection to the host has been lost)

my NAT is Open.


Update: 5 minutes after I posted this, I tried the xbox live connection again. Now I get Failed at XboxLive and NAT dosent even get tested. Everything else is Confirmed.

Update: 1 minute after I posted the above, I tried it again. Now XboxLIVE says Connected and NAT says Open. :S Must be something crazy with my router?

[S.IcE]

How do you open ports?

[gloomlord]

How do you open ports?

A question for the manufacturer of your router, not the designers of GoW... but since you asked, see the link BumTHPS posted a few above yours, it's got the info your looking for most likely.

[S.IcE]

A question for the manufacturer of your router, not the designers of GoW... but since you asked, see the link BumTHPS posted a few above yours, it's got the info your looking for most likely.

Oo, ok. The post helped, I have a Linksys.

[NakaCoco]

"NETWORK: Your connection to the host has been lost."

I have received this error multiple times tonight and my 360 is NOT connected behind a Firewall / NAT device. My 360 has a direct connection to an unmanaged switch that my Cable Modem is connected to.

I received the error during rounds and also between rounds (Split Screen: Account + Guest).

I didn't bother traceroute / packet loss testing to the different hosts that the error pertained to because after receive a few too many of this error, I inserted the Call of Duty 3 disc and played on a couple different hosts with a very smooth, stable connection experience. My other Xbox 360 Online games work great too, never had any real issues with them.

[imusthaveGoW]

ooooo i thought the message was sayin that the connection during the gsme was not good i guess this is why everyone should just make their own room cause they fill so darn quiklee

[cryptmagic]

Nothing you can do, its a bug in the game. You will not be able to play until they release a patch. Just make sure other games work online, if they do then theres nothing you can do. I have the same problem, i guess you have to wait.

[S.IcE]

Thats weird, I just went to try it, but my NAT switched the Open by itselft, yesterday it was on Moderate.

[pWnyoUNOw]

thanks rod but one question, i dont know if this is already on a thread but is there going to be a patch for not being able to hear people in a lobby its pretty annoying.