Trying to play with my son online

[Taem]

Hello, I was wondering if anyone here knows how to play online on the same router with Diablo? My son and I are on two separate computers; he is on a wireless connection and I am on an ethernet connection, but we are both connected to my Linksys router. When we try connecting to b.net, it says there is too much latency and drops one of us. If we try connecting using Kali, it says we are using to same port, so I changed my port in Kali, but it still keeps dropping us and it says something about a NAT, but I have no idea WTF it's talking about. I was hoping I could connect directly to his IP or vice versa, but alas, there is no option for that in Diablo... Any help much appreciated.

[Taem]

I got a reply on The Dark forums which progressed me a bit further, however I'm still running into difficulties (see below):

Try using a local area network (LAN). It takes some tinkering with the net settings (the IPX protocol has to be enabled, I forgot how I did that), but the results are wonderful. Excellent speed and never a dropout. This can be achieved with one or more computers connected to the same router, and even with PC's hooked to the ADSL modem.

I googled "IPX protocol Diablo" and got a whole walk-thru on enabling IPX for your LAN network, so I did that. The next problem is apparently both computers need to be hooked up directly via Ethernet wires for this to work (i.e. computer to computer through the network cards). I think the way you must have got them to work together is perhaps through file-sharing? I don't know... I can't seem to find out anything else so far.

I finally got an idea however: there are 3-unsecured wireless networks around here, so I set up my sons computer to another wireless network that isn't mine and volia, we can now play via Kali, however whenever we try playing on Battle.net, it still says, "Cannot connect due to high latency" or something like that. My friends son wants to play with us online too, but can't afford Kali so B.net would be ideal. Any idea why B.net is still giving me this latency error?

[--Pete]

Hi,

Hello, I was wondering if anyone here knows how to play online on the same router with Diablo?

This is a perennial topic and the last time it was addressed was (I think) here. The solution to your problems *may* be in that thread. Good luck and let us know what worked (or not).

--Pete

[Taem]

Hi,
This is a perennial topic and the last time it was addressed was (I think) here. The solution to your problems *may* be in that thread. Good luck and let us know what worked (or not).

--Pete

Thanks Pete. Most of what [vl]Kp stated went completely over my head so I think I'll abandon the b.net idea. Here's my current problem with Kali however as posted on The Dark:

[P]Hello MEAT,[/P]
[P]If you can play games locally, over your own IPX LAN, you propably only need a single KALI account for all the systems at your place. Once the KALI host has created a game, it will automatically appear on the multiplayer session list in the game for all other systems within the same LAN.[/P]
[P]High latency messages from BNet are usually caused by slow connections. It may be your firewall setting that is causing this.[/P]
[P]Zenda
[/P]

At first, we could both get on Kali with the same Kali account, however whenever my son tried joining my game, it gave me the port error. This is when I changed my port#, but then it gave me a NAT error and kept dropping one of us. So I bought another Kali account for my son's computer and set him up on a separate network... So, are you saying if I found a way to get rid of that NAT error, we (my son, his friend, and myself) could all be playing over my network with one Kali account? I'll have to look into this more.

Regarding B.net, on my computer I completely shut off my firewall, but my sons my have Windows Firewall up; do you think that might be an issue? I'll try disabling his Windows Firewall when he gets home from school and see if that works.

Do you think this Kali issue is the same issue as with b.net with running two versions of Diablo through with the same router? After reading everything vpkp stated, I still don't understand why my son and I can't play together on b.net anyhow! We're not even on the same network anymore... I shut off both of our firewalls, so why the latency? Grrr...

[the Langolier]

he is on a wireless connection

I've helped a lot of people on b.net set up games locally, and I kept running into the problem that wireless users were never able to connect via IPX games (which is the best local option). I didn't know what it was until I connected to my Wifi at campus and it CLEARLY told me when connecting to the wireless connection that it was unable to establish the IPX protocol.

It seems that IPX isn't handled over wireless connections, which is of course required to play using the IPX option. Basically the IPX option in diablo is just like the "LAN game" option in newer games - IPX is simply an out-dated protocol. It's not even supported in Vista. There are two things you can do. One is your son can simply connect directly to the router with an ethernet cable when you two want to play and use IPX. (Make sure both computers have it installed by following the link already supplied). Baring that, you can use a single ethernet cable to connect one computer directly to the other and play using the "Direct Cable Connect" option in the multiplayer menu. That of course would mean that neither of you would be connected to the internet while playing.

The problem you are having with not being able to play together over b.net is not the install of diablo, but your ISP. You see, your router only gets one IP address from the provider, which is your external IP address. This is the address that webpages and the like send their data to your network. When it comes into your router, your router figures out which of the computer connected to it actually requested it, and it sends it to the correct computer. It is like if two homes shared the exact same address and you were trying to send mail to the correct one. It would be a problem, right? Well the router acts like a little mail stop that all the mail comes to and then forwards each piece to the proper house. The problem with Diablo is that in order to get it to work on b.net, you have to set up a rule to forward its information to one specific computer. That means when both comptuers are connected through b.net, both are requesting data from b.net, but all of the data is only going to one of them. Kp's method is an advanced way to set up the network so that each computer gets the proper data from b.net.

There are two ways to solve this problem. The first is the one Kp provided, which isn't really THAT complicated, it just has a lot of steps. I would be able to walk you through it over instant messaging or b.net if you are interested. The second would be to buy another IP address from your ISP (may or may not be available). Many providers will sell addtional IP addresses for an extra charge per month, and they will provide support in setting it up properly. This would be like having to completely different internet connections coming to your house. As far as b.net would be concerned, that would mean your two computers could be 10 miles apart for all it knew.

[[vL]Kp]

Thanks Pete. Most of what [vl]Kp stated went completely over my head so I think I'll abandon the b.net idea. Here's my current problem with Kali however as posted on The Dark:
At first, we could both get on Kali with the same Kali account, however whenever my son tried joining my game, it gave me the port error. This is when I changed my port#, but then it gave me a NAT error and kept dropping one of us. So I bought another Kali account for my son's computer and set him up on a separate network... So, are you saying if I found a way to get rid of that NAT error, we (my son, his friend, and myself) could all be playing over my network with one Kali account? I'll have to look into this more.

Regarding B.net, on my computer I completely shut off my firewall, but my sons my have Windows Firewall up; do you think that might be an issue? I'll try disabling his Windows Firewall when he gets home from school and see if that works.

Do you think this Kali issue is the same issue as with b.net with running two versions of Diablo through with the same router? After reading everything vpkp stated, I still don't understand why my son and I can't play together on b.net anyhow! We're not even on the same network anymore... I shut off both of our firewalls, so why the latency? Grrr...

Please try to get my name right. vL is capitalized that way to make it unambiguous in fonts where l and I are difficult to distinguish.

You have not provided technical details about the problem, so it is difficult to diagnose what is going wrong. I will grant that my instructions are long, but if your router supports configuring port forwarding, they should work and provide the behavior you want. To begin, please follow the instructions provided in my post on the other thread with regard to editing the registry on the different systems. Then post the output of the netstat -an -p udp from each of the systems, as seen while they are all connected to battle.net. Also, please post the make and model of router that you are using.

Windows Firewall might be interfering, but I strongly recommend not disabling it for a system connected to a wireless access point, especially an unsecured one. That is just begging for someone to come and attack your system.

The latency error is slightly misleading in this case. That error message simply means that the peer did not respond appropriately within the allotted timeout. If the request is being routed to the wrong system, then the correct peer will never receive it and will never respond, so the request will be considered to have timed out.

I suspect that your router is acting as a NAT device and that it is not smart enough to get the routing correct on its own. When you attempt to join your son's game, battle.net sends you the public IP address of your Internet connection. Your instance of Diablo then sends a game join request to the public IP address + port of your son's connection. If the router is not smart enough to recognize that this is meant for his system, it will drop the packet or perhaps send it to some other host on your network. Either way, your son's system never receives it, so it does not respond.

[Taem]

There are two ways to solve this problem. The first is the one Kp provided, which isn't really THAT complicated, it just has a lot of steps. I would be able to walk you through it over instant messaging or b.net if you are interested. The second would be to buy another IP address from your ISP (may or may not be available). Many providers will sell addtional IP addresses for an extra charge per month, and they will provide support in setting it up properly. This would be like having to completely different internet connections coming to your house. As far as b.net would be concerned, that would mean your two computers could be 10 miles apart for all it knew.

Well, I've been attempting to play on b.net with a few people to gain levels and items so I'll have a leg-up the next time I play with my son, but I'm quickly getting sick of ALL THE CHEATING! Honestly, and I do mean honestly, every single game I've entered or created, some jack-ass is doing something they shouldn't; i.e. "Player X Cast Illegal Spell". I've had diablo freeze numerous times after a player does this in town next to me, perhaps dropping an illegal item or something. Very frustrating that after all these years, Blizzard still hasn't fixed any of these problems. While searching for "Diablo anti hack" I found a lot of trainers with what you might call "patches" that stop most malicious hacks; seriously, how retarded is that, to have to use a "hack" to patch hacks on b.net because Blizzard didn't bother doing it themselves. Thanks Langolier, but no thanks. I think I'll just stick to Kali.

[Taem]

Kp' date='Oct 6 2007, 11:30 AM' post='138370']
Please try to get my name right. vL is capitalized that way to make it unambiguous in fonts where l and I are difficult to distinguish.

You have not provided technical details about the problem, so it is difficult to diagnose what is going wrong. I will grant that my instructions are long, but if your router supports configuring port forwarding, they should work and provide the behavior you want. To begin, please follow the instructions provided in my post on the other thread with regard to editing the registry on the different systems. Then post the output of the netstat -an -p udp from each of the systems, as seen while they are all connected to battle.net. Also, please post the make and model of router that you are using.

Windows Firewall might be interfering, but I strongly recommend not disabling it for a system connected to a wireless access point, especially an unsecured one. That is just begging for someone to come and attack your system.

The latency error is slightly misleading in this case. That error message simply means that the peer did not respond appropriately within the allotted timeout. If the request is being routed to the wrong system, then the correct peer will never receive it and will never respond, so the request will be considered to have timed out.

I suspect that your router is acting as a NAT device and that it is not smart enough to get the routing correct on its own. When you attempt to join your son's game, battle.net sends you the public IP address of your Internet connection. Your instance of Diablo then sends a game join request to the public IP address + port of your son's connection. If the router is not smart enough to recognize that this is meant for his system, it will drop the packet or perhaps send it to some other host on your network. Either way, your son's system never receives it, so it does not respond.

Sorry about misspelling your name [vL]Kp.

Well, I've actually decided to abandon the B.net idea due to the massive amount of cheaters on it. I still don't understand how, even though my son joined a separate wireless network than mine, we could not enter the same game because of this supposed latency error. We are not using the same wireless router or network, and when he joined the other network, it said his IP had changed, so why on earth would we still be getting this latency error? Individually, we can enter and create games without any problems. But none of this matters anymore as I'm not going to play on b.net.

[[vL]Kp]

Sorry about misspelling your name [vL]Kp.

Well, I've actually decided to abandon the B.net idea due to the massive amount of cheaters on it. I still don't understand how, even though my son joined a separate wireless network than mine, we could not enter the same game because of this supposed latency error. We are not using the same wireless router or network, and when he joined the other network, it said his IP had changed, so why on earth would we still be getting this latency error? Individually, we can enter and create games without any problems. But none of this matters anymore as I'm not going to play on b.net.

Most likely, the network you put him on was not set up to forward UDP traffic to him, so any attempt to join a game hosted by him would fail. It might work if you set up your router to forward traffic to you, then have you host the game and him join it. His join request would go to the unsecured WAP, up to the ISP, down to your router, and over to your system.

Yes, cheating in public games is a rampant problem. You could use password-protected games to permit non-cheating users to join you. Sadly, aside from inviting people from here, it is unlikely you could quickly find people who do not cheat.

[the Langolier]

Cheating is the norm on b.net, so much in fact that there is a large percentage of the population that can't distinguish between cheating and playing legit. That's no reason to abandon it altogether though. There aren't many legits around, but there are always at least a few - check in the channel Diablo LE on USEast. There is also a nice bot in there that tracks users that join the channel and can tell you (among other things) the last 20 some odd users that have stopped by and how long ago. There is also a convenient command that will report which users the bot has seen that are online at that moment (so you will even know which legit players are on even if they have left channel and joined a game).