Network Routers, NAT, and Games - recommedations?

[awdougherty]

Okay, I have three computers at home and someday I may hook up the xbox. I play a lot of games online with some friends and with my current router, I've had a lot of problems (Starlancer and Icewind Dale are 2 in particular). My current router is a D Link DI-704P.

Anyway, is this a good router? The printer port on it keeps crapping out, that was the first disappointment. Second is that even when I set a certain computer to be the DMZ, it doesn't work as it should (still have to forward ports). Third is it seems to be a NAT router which causes problems with DX 7 games such as the two I mentioned.

Generally speaking I haven't been blown away by this router. At first it seemed good, and I was told it acted as a switch as well (which I guess is a good thing). It's become more and more of a hassle recently and the main bonus it had, the printer port, hasn't worked right in a long time.

So what's a really good gaming router (so to speak)? Thanks.

[Lunch of Kong]

I've never had any technical problems with my linksys wireless router. (BEFW11S4) You can buy it for like $60 now.

I wish it had more than 10 forward ports, but this is only an inconvenience if you run a lot of server apps.

[awdougherty]

Is it possible to get these routers without a firewall built in or is that just the de facto standard?

[Stroker Ace]

I'm not an expert, but I think the firewall is fairly necessary given the function of the equipment. On a Linksys box you can enable a DMZ host so that all incoming packets go to one specified machine on your network, so that's like not having a firewall at all... is that what you needed?

Your other two options are blocking all incoming traffic (default) or selectively routing incoming traffic to different workstations based on traffic type (which the Linksys box can do, but only for 10 different port ranges). Any more complicated port forwarding structure requires a *real* router or maybe a Linux box running routing software.

[XPav]

What NAT does is share one internet IP address among many private addresses. You might be able to turn it off, but at that point, no other machines can share the internet connection. You can't really have a router without doing that. Older games don't always work with it, as you've found out, but there's no way to really solve that.

And this is what all the port forwarding/DMZ stuff does -- just take a port on the internet IP and forward it to the same port on the internet network, so that basically, that specific service is available to the internet.

The printer port seems like a gratuitous bag on the side to me. Just stick the printer on one of the PCs and share it there. It might be the box that has problems, it might be the printer drivers, it might be the printer. Poorly programmed printers/driver don't like being put places like networks and USB ports.

As for the benefit of a switch -- I severely doubt that you've got enough traffic to really need it. Its not like you can reall find hubs anyway, but don't pay a premium because it has a switch or anything.

[Brandon Clements]

I've never had any technical problems with my linksys wireless router. (BEFW11S4) You can buy it for like $60 now.

I wish it had more than 10 forward ports, but this is only an inconvenience if you run a lot of server apps.

I also have one of these, and have no problems whatsoever. Easy to set up, and rock solid. Just don't try to update the firmware. Even after following the directions to the letter, I burned through two of these before I figured that out.

[Xaroc]

I've never had any technical problems with my linksys wireless router. (BEFW11S4) You can buy it for like $60 now.

I wish it had more than 10 forward ports, but this is only an inconvenience if you run a lot of server apps.

I also have one of these, and have no problems whatsoever. Easy to set up, and rock solid. Just don't try to update the firmware. Even after following the directions to the letter, I burned through two of these before I figured that out.

I am pretty sure upgrading the firmware on my SMC caused it to go haywire as well. I have one of the Linksys Wireless-G routers now and it works great.

-- Xaroc

[awdougherty]

Thanks for all the responses. Sounds like direct x 7 games might just be up the proverbial creek o' stool. I normally would have just hooked up the printer to one of the PCs (ended up doing that anyway), but I wanted to try and use the printer with my Mac. Gave up on that for now.

The weird thing with my router is that the DMZ option doesn't seem to do anything. I've set my IP to be the DMZ, then I had to go forward the ports anyway. That seems a little messed up.

Thanks again.

[electragician]

Thanks for all the responses. Sounds like direct x 7 games might just be up the proverbial creek o' stool. I normally would have just hooked up the printer to one of the PCs (ended up doing that anyway), but I wanted to try and use the printer with my Mac. Gave up on that for now.

The weird thing with my router is that the DMZ option doesn't seem to do anything. I've set my IP to be the DMZ, then I had to go forward the ports anyway. That seems a little messed up.

Thanks again.

Do you have the routers internal DHCP server disabled? I'm pretty sure you'd need to do that, and manually assign each PC an IP address before you can get the DMZ feature to work correctly on some routers. If that isn't it, it must be a firmware glitch in the router, as there's no reason you should have to forward ports to a PC after setting it up in DMZ.

[Lunch of Kong]

Is it possible to get these routers without a firewall built in or is that just the de facto standard?

It's more of an expected feature than a standard. If you want to neuter your firewall, forward UDP and TCP port ranges 0-65535.

[awdougherty]

Thanks for the replies. I guess the question comes up, why do games like Starlancer and Icewind Dale still have problems as the host server if the host is set as the DMZ and/or has all ports forwarded to that system? This was the thing my friends and I couldn't figure out.

[Xaroc]

Thanks for the replies. I guess the question comes up, why do games like Starlancer and Icewind Dale still have problems as the host server if the host is set as the DMZ and/or has all ports forwarded to that system? This was the thing my friends and I couldn't figure out.

Are they forwarded as UDP or TCP? I know on some routers you have to make a choice. Certain games want UDP forwards and others want TCP.

-- Xaroc