Traffic thats not needed

[CalliduS]

Quick question. I've noticed that when a local game is being played, say Rome Total War, traffic is still being sent over GIT. I have know idea how much is being sent but in the forwarding log it is showing information being sent.
It does seem to be having an effect on the bandwidth overall
Here is a small cut from the log:

[Sat Feb 05 12:32:17 2005] network: hw:00:e0:4c:c1:b0:ef EthernetII ARP request to:00:00:00:00:00:00 from:00:e0:4c:c1:b0:ef(192.168.1.109) for:192.168.1.98 'ok'
[Sat Feb 05 12:32:17 2005] network: hw:00:e0:4c:c1:b0:ef EthernetII ARP request to:00:00:00:00:00:00 from:00:e0:4c:c1:b0:ef(192.168.1.109) for:192.168.1.97 'ok'
[Sat Feb 05 12:32:17 2005] network: hw:00:e0:4c:c1:b0:ef EthernetII ARP request to:00:00:00:00:00:00 from:00:e0:4c:c1:b0:ef(192.168.1.109) for:192.168.1.97 'ok'
[Sat Feb 05 12:32:17 2005] network: hw:00:e0:4c:c2:cd:be EthernetII IPv4 UDP to:255.255.255.255:26220 from:192.168.1.91:26220 'ok'
[Sat Feb 05 12:32:17 2005] network: hw:00:e0:4c:c2:cd:be EthernetII IPv4 UDP to:255.255.255.255:26220 from:192.168.1.91:26220 'ok'
[Sat Feb 05 12:32:19 2005] network: hw:00:e0:4c:c1:b1:20 EthernetII IPv4 UDP to:255.255.255.255:26220 from:192.168.1.90:26220 'ok'
[Sat Feb 05 12:32:19 2005] network: hw:00:e0:4c:c1:b1:20 EthernetII IPv4 UDP to:255.255.255.255:26220 from:192.168.1.90:26220 'ok'
[Sat Feb 05 12:32:21 2005] network: hw:00:e0:4c:c2:cd:be EthernetII IPv4 UDP to:255.255.255.255:26220 from:192.168.1.91:26220 'ok'
[Sat Feb 05 12:32:21 2005] network: hw:00:e0:4c:c2:cd:be EthernetII IPv4 UDP to:255.255.255.255:26220 from:192.168.1.91:26220 'ok'
[Sat Feb 05 12:32:23 2005] network: hw:00:e0:4c:c1:b1:20 EthernetII IPv4 UDP to:255.255.255.255:26220 from:192.168.1.90:26220 'ok'
[Sat Feb 05 12:32:23 2005] network: hw:00:e0:4c:c1:b1:20 EthernetII IPv4 UDP to:255.255.255.255:26220 from:192.168.1.90:26220 'ok'

This was noticed after 7 people were playing CS online while 4 were playing a local game of Rome Total war (not between LANs). Pings were at 150-200 for the CS players until I turned off GIT. I waited a while then turned GIT back on, where the increase in ping returned.
We can normally support 8 CS players online fine without pings going up.

Is GIT sending information to do with the Rome game even when there are no players at the other LAN playing ?

GIT ports used:

18321: total war
26220 : Rome
34987 : Rise of Nations
5555 : Panzers
6112 : WC3

No other ports were open while I was looking into it and I was getting the same with just these ports listed.

Cheers for your time.

[CalliduS]

I'm not 100% sure that the traffic by Rome is the problem. Not having any way to monitor what bandwidth GIT is using, its hard to work out how much its using.

Is there any monitoring tools out there that would be able list the incoming and outgoing traffic amount and the ports being used ?

I've got Netpeeker which is great for normal internet programs and does all this but its useless for GIT as it only lists the port that is tunnelled (213) and doesn't even list how much bandwidth is being used on that port like a normal progam would show :?

[Ark]

GIT only tunnels what traffic is already on the network. Clearly something is broadcasting onport 26220 from two different computers still, so GIT is tunneling it. Perhaps that game is not completely shutdown (tray icon for the game? bug in game that you have to nuke it from task manager after you are done playing?)

[CalliduS]

Seems the problem is that all PCs playing Rome Total War broadcast to 255.255.255.255 all the time (host and clients)

6 computers were used to test this with IPs ending 91-96

The port was removed from GIT and the only remaining port in the list was 6112 for WC3. A game of WC3 was hosted on 5 computers and no extra bandwidth was noticed on the ADSL connection.

Next a game of Rome was started. Still no port change made to the GIT config and the bandwidth was the low/none as expected.

Editing the GIT config to include 26220 port that Rome uses made the bandwidth go crazy. I was monitoring with a program called ItCan.Net and it showed 27kb/s upload and overall ping was effecting when pinging an internet IP.

It seems that Rome is spamming the 255.255.255.255 broadcast IP throughout the game.
.

[Mon Feb 07 12:50:53 2005] network: hw:00:e0:4c:c2:cd:be EthernetII IPv4 UDP to:255.255.255.255:26220 from:192.168.1.91:26220 'ok'
[Mon Feb 07 12:50:53 2005] network: hw:00:e0:4c:c2:cd:be EthernetII IPv4 UDP to:255.255.255.255:26220 from:192.168.1.91:26220 'ok'
[Mon Feb 07 12:50:53 2005] network: hw:00:e0:4c:c6:59:8d EthernetII IPv4 UDP to:255.255.255.255:26220 from:192.168.1.95:26220 'ok'
[Mon Feb 07 12:50:53 2005] network: hw:00:e0:4c:c6:59:8d EthernetII IPv4 UDP to:255.255.255.255:26220 from:192.168.1.95:26220 'ok'
[Mon Feb 07 12:50:53 2005] network: hw:00:11:2f:86:1b:ec EthernetII IPv4 UDP to:255.255.255.255:26220 from:192.168.1.96:26220 'ok'
[Mon Feb 07 12:50:53 2005] network: hw:00:11:2f:86:1b:ec EthernetII IPv4 UDP to:255.255.255.255:26220 from:192.168.1.96:26220 'ok'
[Mon Feb 07 12:50:53 2005] network: hw:00:11:2f:e0:1a:8f EthernetII IPv4 UDP to:255.255.255.255:26220 from:192.168.1.94:26220 'ok'
[Mon Feb 07 12:50:53 2005] network: hw:00:11:2f:e0:1a:8f EthernetII IPv4 UDP to:255.255.255.255:26220 from:192.168.1.94:26220 'ok'
[Mon Feb 07 12:50:53 2005] network: hw:00:e0:4c:c2:c8:50 EthernetII IPv4 UDP to:255.255.255.255:26220 from:192.168.1.92:26220 'ok'
[Mon Feb 07 12:50:53 2005] network: hw:00:e0:4c:c2:c8:50 EthernetII IPv4 UDP to:255.255.255.255:26220 from:192.168.1.92:26220 'ok'
[Mon Feb 07 12:50:53 2005] network: hw:00:e0:4c:c6:59:8d EthernetII IPv4 UDP to:255.255.255.255:26220 from:192.168.1.95:26220 'ok'
[Mon Feb 07 12:50:53 2005] network: hw:00:e0:4c:c6:59:8d EthernetII IPv4 UDP to:255.255.255.255:26220 from:192.168.1.95:26220 'ok'
[Mon Feb 07 12:50:53 2005] network: hw:00:e0:4c:c2:cd:be EthernetII IPv4 UDP to:255.255.255.255:26220 from:192.168.1.91:26220 'ok'
[Mon Feb 07 12:50:53 2005] network: hw:00:e0:4c:c2:cd:be EthernetII IPv4 UDP to:255.255.255.255:26220 from:192.168.1.91:26220 'ok'
[Mon Feb 07 12:50:53 2005] network: hw:00:e0:4c:bf:fa:28 EthernetII IPv4 UDP to:255.255.255.255:26220 from:192.168.1.93:26220 'ok'

Only IP ending 96 was the host.

Both tested games were done totally local and no computers were used from the other linked LAN

I'll now go and test another game and see what comes of it.
It's looking to be more of a problem with the Rome game itself than GIT.

[Ark]

Is that just how Rome communicates with the other clients, by broadcast packets? That could be perfectly normal, just how the game is designed to work.

[CalliduS]

This maybe so but its not idea for our setup due to the massive increase in bandwidth. Not sure why it would max out our upload but its a pain none the less.

Could maybe a future option to have tick boxes for the ports added ?
You can add them and then tick if you want them forwarded or not ?
Just an idea.

[Ark]

I suppose you couldn't use the save-profile option from the wizard to enable/disable whichever configuration options you want?

Some LAN games may max out all available bandwidth by design (they have 10Mb/s or more likely 100Mb/s to play with, so why not send as fast as you can)