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UT2004 & FW Client Lag Issues

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UT2004 & FW Client Lag Issues - 23.Oct.2004 1:22:00 AM

Vertigo

Posts: 5
Joined: 18.Sep.2004
Status: offline

I thought I'd share the problem and fix I had for this issue, in case any one else runs across this problem.

With ISA2000 I was able to use the FW Client and had no issues playing games or anything. However, with ISA2004, playing some internet games (most notably UT2K4) I was getting obnoxious amounts of lag.

It seems with the new encryption the FWC uses in ISA2K4, there's too much overhead (or maybe just a random bug) which causes a ton of lag in UT games. What I did was open up all the UT2K4 ports outbound, then killed the FwMngr.exe (or whatever it's called) and stopped the Firewall Client service on my box.

This greatly improved ping times, and most importantly, now I have no lag. I was averaging horrible pings of 600ms-8000ms with the FWC on, but once I opened the ports and disabled the FWC, I was getting more normal pings of 30ms and up. This also stopped the game from hanging while it was trying to ping all the servers or getting the list from the master server.

Here are the ports (and what you should open them to. Just create a new protocol called "UT2004" or whatever you want to call it, and add these ports to it. Making the source network "Internal" and the destination network "External." I copied these ports from another post in this forum, and I've tested them and they do work.

Create the following User-Defined Protocol:
Name: UT2004

Primary Connections:
27900 TCP outbound
28900 TCP outbound
28902 TCP outbound
7777-7778 UDP Send Receive
7787-7788 UDP Send Receive

Secondary Connections:
27900 UDP Send Receive
28900 UDP Send Receive
28902 UDP Send Receive

If you want to play online, create the following Access Rule:

Action: Allow
Protocols: UT2004
From/Listener: (Internal) / Local Host
To: External / (Internal) / (Local Host)
Condition: All Users

This is just for playing (not hosting) a game. You should just be able to reverse the source/destination networks to allow hosting of a game, but I have no clue about that, I don't host games.

Hope this helps!

Post #: 1

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RE: UT2004 & FW Client Lag Issues - 25.Oct.2004 9:40:00 PM

Justin

Posts: 13
Joined: 22.Feb.2002
Status: offline

I am noticing this too, ISA 2000 was fine with any game using the FW client, no need to define protocols because of that.

Now the new client seems to have much more latency, and brings server browsers like all seeing eye and CS Source to a crawl.

It would be nice if there was a switch to turn that encryption off, as it is completely unecessary in our network, which is just a small lan.

Wonder if we can get an offical word from MS on this, like yes the new FW client has more latency etc.

I really wish there was a way to just allow all outbound traffic though the NAT, which is pretty much what the FW client does, and of course what every $100 cable router does. I know its more secure, but there are many situations where that is just overkill.

[edit]

Wow just ran some more tests, looks like ISA 2004's built in protocol called "All Outbound Traffic" really does mean that now. I wish this was more obvious as ISA 2000 all outbound pretty much meant only what was defined in the protocol list. So turning the FW client off still lets any game I have tested work as secure NAT if you have interal to external all protocols defined and seems much lower in latency without having to setup protocols for each game!.

One issue is doing a server list thought all seeing eye or CS source is fast now, but it really hammers the firewalls cpu and causes it to each hundreds of megs of ram during the server listing.

Justin

[ October 26, 2004, 08:20 PM: Message edited by: Justin ]

(in reply to Vertigo)

Post #: 2

RE: UT2004 & FW Client Lag Issues - 26.Oct.2004 10:35:00 PM

Justin

Posts: 13
Joined: 22.Feb.2002
Status: offline

Another update for me,

Have learned alot about ISA 2004 and gaming in the last few days vs ISA 2000.

Basically ISA2k4 is much nicer overall but by default on installation it does not turn on the Configuration->Define IP Preferences->IP Routing->Enable IP Routing.

This causes (from what I understand) ISA to process everything in user mode vs trying to process most in kernel mode.

After enabling this setting ping times have drop ~20ms and applications that open alot of concurrent connections like server browsers do not overwhelm the ISA servers CPU.

Also from my previous post, one BIG change from ISA 2000 is that it is no longer necessary to run the FW client for gaming or define protocols for each game on SNAT. Instead if your Internal->External policy is allow all outbound it really means that now, not just protocols defined in ISA, this allows it to act more like a "cable router" or open nat for SNAT clients.

I know Thomas Shinder recommends running the FW client if possible insead of SNAT clients, but honestly I have found it much more of a nuisance as it installs a LSP in the clients tcp/ip stack and makes things more confusing when trying to troubleshoot internal connectivity as its intercepting client calls, also it adds overhead especially now since it encrypts all data from client to isa server which is bad for gaming wher every ms counts [Wink]

.

Justin

[ October 26, 2004, 10:36 PM: Message edited by: Justin ]

(in reply to Vertigo)

Post #: 3

RE: UT2004 & FW Client Lag Issues - 31.Oct.2004 10:32:00 PM

Vertigo

Posts: 5
Joined: 18.Sep.2004
Status: offline

Well on our LAN, we have a lot of people that love to click on bad stuff and we get lots of viruses and worms despite all the virus scanning and whatnot we have in place.

With that in mind, I didn't want to use "All Outbound Traffic" because if we get a worm or whatever on the LAN, I'd like to keep it as contained as possible. We have a rather slow net connection to boot, so some worm trying to propogate itself across the entire internet would absolutely kill us.

So now I'm stuck opening ports when necessary because even for non-gaming applications the FW Client lags to hell and back. Oh and UT2K4 is so bad with the FW Client on, it's unreal. Pun intended. You can't even contact the master server half the time. No idea what's up with that. Turning the client off makes the response times instantaneous and the pings are super-low, even with 3-4 people trying to play off a crappy net connection.

Anyway, yeah... there's something up with the FW client, or maybe it's just the redesigned firewall or something. I don't use it at all now because of the lag issues. It's supposed to make FW Admin easier... yet for me it has made it harder.

Oh well, gives me something to do anyway... heh.

(in reply to Vertigo)

Post #: 4

RE: UT2004 & FW Client Lag Issues - 16.Sep.2005 5:01:00 AM

Guest

Hi,

many thanks for this tip, you really made my day [Smile]

One more short thing about the firewall client in addition - you dont need to deactivate it:

-open your ISA config
-change to 'Global' (at the bottom)
-click on 'Define firewall client options' and add the following entry:

Application: ut2004
Key: Disable
Value: 1

HTH. Cheers,
Fritz

(in reply to Vertigo)

Post #: 5