Three Wise Men

If you are using Ubuntu (and probably other distributions too) and you have an on board Realtek RTL8168/8111E PCI Express network adapter you might find your network not working as it should. Slow connections or no connection at all and your logs full of messages like these:

Oct 02 09:13:25 machine kernel: r8169 0000:04:00.0: eth0: link up
Oct 02 12:45:17 machine kernel: r8169 0000:04:00.0: eth0: link up
Oct 02 12:45:20 machine kernel: r8169 0000:04:00.0: eth0: link up
Oct 02 13:15:12 machine kernel: r8169 0000:04:00.0: eth0: link up
Oct 02 13:15:13 machine kernel: r8169 0000:04:00.0: eth0: link up
Oct 02 13:22:13 machine kernel: r8169 0000:04:00.0: eth0: link up

Read on if you want to know why this happens and how to solve the problem.

NAT stands for Network Address Translation. If you are a causal Playstation 3 user then you probably don’t know anything about this until you have a problem with it. An average PS3 is usually connected to the internet through a router and that router will take care of NAT for you. NAT Type will tell what kind of connectivity your PS3 has to the Internet. Having a Type 3 NAT will result in various issues, your voice chat might not work and you might have other problems with your in-game connectivity. The best solution for this is to check your router settings. In this Howto I will talk about Linksys WRT router running DD-WRT software. Settings for other routers are similar and you can probably use the information from this post to setup your router.

Modern Warfare 2 is these days pretty hot topic. Everyone is talking about it and everyone is playing it. However, there is some criticism around the game, which things are broken or badly implemented, so I will hop on the bandwagon and join with shameless bashing and criticism. ;)

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has broken UPnP support.

UPnP a protocol that enables software to talk with the internet traffic routers. For example, if you have (and most likely you do) some sort of the router in your network and you want to host a multiplayer game on the internet, you will need to tell your router that it should forward all the internet traffic for that game to your server. You will need to punch a hole in your firewall. The problem is that not many people know how to do that. UPnP is an attempt to remove this sort of complicated task. With UPnP your game server can tell your router which ports has to forward and where.

I use Linksys WRT54G series wireless router for internet connection. Firmware was upgraded with DD-WRT firmware and I have UPnP turned on. See the picture below.

As you can see UPnP is enabled and Xfire client successfully enabled port forwarding for itself. Great! However this is not good enough for COD: MW2. The game itself will still report that type of your NAT is Strict. But, but, but? I have no idea why. Windows 7 firewall is also disabled so that is not the problem.

You will have to fix things the old-fashioned way – hand job. COD: MW2 requires ports from 28960 to 29000 to be forwarded to your server. Again, see the picture below.

Run the game, go to multiplayer and check your NAT settings in the lobby. NAT type should say open.

Lube up and Good hunting.