The old NatNeg thread - How to avoid bouncing in Pitboss (without Gamespy)

[Lord Parkin]

Check this thread for notifications when Caledorn's server is down due to a storm. Usually they only last 30-60 minutes, and hopefully the weather should be easing up over the next couple of weeks.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Hi,

Thank you so much from the entire Civ 4 community for providing a fix. We almost started loosing players due to evolve issues . thanx to you many of them have come back and we enjoy a non laggy DIP game. I have helped over 50 people to get this fix and bring them back to CIv 4 MP. I would say success rate has been over 99.99% as all of them are now playing via DIP but there are few exceptions like Jojo who i tried to help as well but coudn't fix his pc. I hope you guys can help him.


Although we have been able to host and connect players successfully without any problems, still like today we can't connect via direct ip. This happened few days back as well. Can someone look into this? Can we contact or email someone in case DIP stop's working for everyone?

Thanx alot in advance.

Regards
Sunny

Wow, nice job spreading the news Sunny!

I'm going to guess the times you had problems connecting corresponded to the times Caledorn has had to take his server offline recently due to thunderstorms. He's had quite a few lately that have forced him to power down his equipment. If you tried to connect while his server was down that would mean the NatNeg application would have been unavailable for you and your fellow players to use to negotiate network address translation. In that event you probably would have been able to get one player connected to a Direct IP game, but no one else. I'm guessing that once Caledorn powered the server back you would have no longer had trouble connecting.

The next time you experience trouble connecting check this thread, it's where Caledorn posts announcements about server downtime. He posts there whenever the server has to go offline and when it's back online again. Once the server is back online the NatNeg application will again be able to facilitate network address translation negotiation services and you should be able to try connecting to your game again, hopefully with better results.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Ha, ninja'ed by LP.

[NobleHelium]

So, someone not as lazy as me should take the GitHub code and see if it could be feasibly hosted on Heroku using their test-level resources that they give you for free. That would provide a permanent server. Although maybe they don't give you a static IP address which would be a problem...

[spacetyrantxenu]

spacetyrantxenu,

ping civ4bts.natneg1.gamespy.com =

Pinging civ4bts.natneg1.gamespy.com [82.116.84.39] with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 82.116.84.39:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),


You seem to say it's ok and should work. Anyway I tryed youripconfig /flushdns after, but the problem is still here.

Sorry I missed this one before. Your ping request shows that it is resolving the correct IP address for the server (pulling the one from the hosts file, matching Caledorn's server IP address). I wonder if it was one of the times the server was down?

[supsunny]

Thank you everyone.

Community updated about the same. Also shared direct link for server downtime with everyone.

[spacetyrantxenu]

So, someone not as lazy as me should take the GitHub code and see if it could be feasibly hosted on Heroku using their test-level resources that they give you for free. That would provide a permanent server. Although maybe they don't give you a static IP address which would be a problem...

Yeah, I think if we're going to end up basically replacing part of the Gamespy load for this application (or all of it if it turns out no one else anywhere hosts an instance of the application) we may need higher uptime than our gracious host has so far been able to provide. I don't happen to have an always available server standing by, though. What are the requirements to run the application? I know it's a small program but what platform/packages are needed?

We have three separate server entries in the host file to use. I assume that if we could get two other application instances set up and hosted on different servers, of the three civ4bts.natneg instances one of them ought to be online. Though there's only one entry for civ4bts.available.gamespy.com, so maybe that'd be a sticking point anyway. I don't know enough about how that end of it works, maybe Novice could explain what's needed.

[supsunny]

So, someone not as lazy as me should take the GitHub code and see if it could be feasibly hosted on Heroku using their test-level resources that they give you for free. That would provide a permanent server. Although maybe they don't give you a static IP address which would be a problem...

Hi Noble

Its very difficult to make everyone understand and get the patch to our non tech savvy players. We are very happy with this server as long as someone is there to help us in case of issues, just like so many people have replied to our thread today. Its simply great.

PS: I am a techie and I personally don't understand how can a server not have a static ip. I am lost actually. What do u mean by maybe they dont give u static ip? sorry for my noobness here but according to me it will be impossible to keep changing ip in hosts file everyday.

[Lord Parkin]

I've been chatting to Caledorn about this, and there are a few potential long-term problems:

- His server doesn't have 100% uptime (which is really needed if there are hundreds of people using it)
- His IP may potentially change at some point (which will cause headaches for everyone including him)

Apparently it's not possible to configure the "hosts" file to reroute a DNS name to another DNS name - it has to be IP to DNS. So one option is to arrange a static IP server with close to 100% uptime. This would cost a certain amount of money though, so it might require some community funding.

Another option is to see if we can convince the Civ4 programmers and/or 2K to release an update which allows the IP (or better, DNS address) for the natneg server to be manually changed by the player in the .ini file. This would require a programmer to go back and edit whichever files were hardcoded to point at the Gamespy IP and make them into variables which read the IP from the .ini file. Maybe even having a default IP set to a server hosted by 2K? Possibly a long shot, but worth trying. I'll reach out to a few contacts from the Civ4/2K team and see what they think.

[supsunny]

I've been chatting to Caledorn about this, and there are a few potential long-term problems:

- His server doesn't have 100% uptime (which is really needed if there are hundreds of people using it)
- His IP may potentially change at some point (which will cause headaches for everyone including him)

Apparently it's not possible to configure the "hosts" file to reroute a DNS name to another DNS name - it has to be IP to DNS. So one option is to arrange a static IP server with close to 100% uptime. This would cost a certain amount of money though, so it might require some community funding.

Another option is to see if we can convince the Civ4 programmers and/or 2K to release an update which allows the IP (or better, DNS address) for the natneg server to be manually changed by the player in the .ini file. This would require a programmer to go back and edit whichever files were hardcoded to point at the Gamespy IP and make them into variables which read the IP from the .ini file. Possibly a long shot, but worth trying. I'll reach out to a few contacts from the Civ4/2K team and see what they think.

Funding....not sure if that will happen..lol. Call us stingy but don't see that happening. What you just told me will be disappointing to many. It would be hard to tell everyone about this. Thank you again for trying to talk to civ4/2k team, but we call them the most underpaid staff who cant do the jobs properly.

PS: It will kill the game if we have to change ip regularly in hosts file.