[Yugo2Heck]

Originally Posted by Mr.Burns

I'm no quake expert but it seemed as though quake wanted to assign random ports for the various connections.

That is correct: the standard Quake server uses a separate random local port number for each client. Furthermore, the Quake protocol is designed such that the server sends from this random local port to the client before the client sends to the server, which confuses connection-oriented firewalls/routers on the client side as well.

My "single server port" patch makes the server use the same local port number for each client that it uses for connection and status requests (26000 or whatever you use for "-port" on the command line) which makes the server much more firewall-friendly (on both server and client sides).

[Lardarse]

Patch for which engine?

[Baker]

Yugo's patch is a general Quake engine patch, he uses it on quake.ihoc.net which runs a custom IHOC engine, but he released a patch to do this for ProQuake server 3.50 as well.

http://www.quakeone.com/q1files/down...q350-ssp.patch

[Yugo2Heck]

If you're running your server on a Windows machine, forget it -- Winsock is unable to bind multiple UDP sockets to the same local port number. It definitely works in all versions of Linux, and I expect it to work fine in *BSD and MacOSX.

Does anybody actually use Windows for Quake servers? It sounds crazy, but I know it was fairly common back in the 1990s.

The patch linked above applies to ProQuake 3.50; I (or anybody who knows C) could pretty easily adapt the patch for other engines as well.

[Baker]

Clan HDZ's servers, Phathookups, some others ... so it still happens with great frequency.

[Yugo2Heck]

Before the SSP patch my custom engine used a fixed range of local ports for client connections (I think 26100-26199) which is at least more firewall-friendly on the server side. As this technique works in all operating systems, it may be worth applying it to other engines. Basically, when a client connects instead of binding the new socket to port 0 you run through the fixed port range trying to bind to each until one works.

[Lardarse]

Does anybody actually use Windows for Quake servers?

I do when testing RQuake with RocketGuy.

Could you build me a wqpro.exe with both your any-OS patch (preferably with just 5 ports available to be used for connections) and the RQuake changes needed? That would be very helpful for me...

[Mr.Burns]

Thanks Yugo,

This sort of information is invaluable and becoming increasingly hard to get
hold of these days. Where were you when I needed you :d (jk)

Just a couple of things:

1. Yes, guilty as charged, in the past I have, in a moment of weakness and Blackthorn Cider induced madness, run a quake server using windows 2k server. I also occassionally run corporate events where guests play Quake on a small LAN using win2k server.

2. Is there a download address for your patch and does it work on Linux and MS ports?

Kind regards

Monty