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Microsoft: The Best Xbox One Gaming Experience Will Be Over IPv6
- gentoomenpls 13y agoI wonder if this will create any sort of advantages for players? Back on COD:MW2 I put my XBOX on the DMZ, and that made me seem to have a better connection in the eyes of the P2P networking structure. This resulted in me always being chose as the lobby host. Essentially giving me the advantage of having ~0ms ping.
- belorn 13y agoNon-fragmented IPv6 network can bring better latency to than a fragmented IPv4 network. At this point, IPv4 address fragmentation is only getting worse.
- dfc 13y agoIf that was the case you screwed up forwarding ports 88 and 3074 to your xbox. Anybody that cares about XBL match outcomes does not connect without making use of port forwarding or their router's "DMZ." As far as comparative advantages go, this helped you with the bottom 20% of XBL. Moreover I am pretty sure that MW2 did lag compensation so I am not sure it was an "advantage."
- recursive 13y agoI would be amazed if 80% of XBL users are forwarding ports on their routers. I've never heard of this before.
- randomhunt 13y agoUPnP?
- dfc 13y agoRespectfully, if you have never heard of port forwarding before I think that you might not be very informed when it comes to XBL. Or maybe you have never heard of port forwarding because you bought a device with UPNP and therefore you never noticed the problems that can result from lack of port forwarding. Port forwarding has been a must for quality FPS match making since the beginning. What XBL games do you play?
- Lewisham 13y agoIt really depends whether he plays a game that warns about it. The dashboard only warns about a Moderate NAT if you run a network test. Of the games I played, only Halo 3 warned about Moderate NAT. Halo 4 doesn't bother anymore. So I don't think he's not "very informed." He's the normal player base. I don't even bother setting up NAT anymore and it works fine, even though I know I should go through the rigmarole of doing it.
- bmeckel 13y agoThis happened to me with a whole bunch of games, pretty much from around the first Modern Warfare up until somewhat recently. The reason was that I had great download and very solid upload, so it would set me as host in 9/10 games I would play in. I'd also be highly interested to see what kind of preference MS gives to IPv6, and whether it will be equal to the up/down of a user or not.
- n4n4ki 13y agoWhilst this is cool and all, I think more people are interested in whether PS4 will use it as well.
- theandrewbailey 13y agoI can't imagine PS4 not supporting IPv6. Hell, Windows XP has since SP1, though I find it extremely odd that none of the current consoles (PS3, 360) do.
- outworlder 13y ago"Support", as in, being able to connect using IPV6, in a IPv6 network, is one thing. Requiring it in order to enable some functionality, is something else entirely. This might spark customer demand.
- dfc 13y agoAre the video game console wars over? I did not realize that the PS4 was the clear winner. I am curious are you from Europe? It is my personal experience that xbox is the preferred platform (at least among my peers) in the US and that the PS is the preferred platform in Europe.
- lmik32 13y agoYes, it's all but over. Perhaps you're not a gamer and aware the new Xbox is less powerful than the PS4, has a camera for the NSA/advertisers, and is significantly more expensive. Microsoft also backtracked on horrendous anti-consumer DRM policies, which were wildly unpopular.
- dfc 13y agoI thought the PS4 without and with camera was $100 or $40 cheaper than the xbox one. If you do an apples to apples comparison does 10% really count as significantly more expensive? Backtracking or "responding to customer complaints" is a bad thing?
- nly 13y agoI'm glad they're promoting IPv6, but I very much doubt the 'experience' will change one iota
- dfc 13y agoMatch making with a game like CoD or BF will be much better if every player can host and or connect directly to every other player.
- arthulia 13y agoIf the server is hosted on the Xbox, why am I paying for XBox Live at all?
- cipherzero 13y agoSeriously? Running a service cost money. Yes they likely have a markup, but the point is you can't get everything for free. How slow would match making be if it was entirely p2p with no Msft central servers? On an entirely subjective note, I think xbox lives game recording will be baller!
- jlgreco 13y agoDoesn't Microsoft also make you pay for xbox live just so that you can connect to Netflix's servers (who you are also paying) over your home internet connection (which you are also paying for)?
- Zombieball 13y agoI do not believe this is true (although I haven't verified it). Xbox live basic level is free. Xbox live gold costs money. I would HOPE you can still use Netflix with Xbox live basic.
- georgemcbay 13y ago
- pjc50 13y agoThat's nice. It would be even nicer if any of the major UK ISPs supported IP6. (Some of the small ones do on ADSL, but AFAIK you can't have both fiber AND IP6 from any provider, and now that I have FTTC I'm not keen to go back)
- rjsw 13y agoI have native IPv6 on FTTC.
- dfc 13y agoSign up for Sixxs or HE ipv6 tunnel. In the states HE POPs are remarkably better than sixxs but I think sixxs be different on your side of the pond. Among dual homed sites/services I have yet to find a site that has lower latency or faster speeds via direct IPv4 than over my HE tunnel.
- wmf 13y agoActually don't. The Xbox will use Teredo auto-tunneling to give you IPv6 if your ISP doesn't, and Teredo is more efficient than tunnel brokers.
- dfc 13y agoI am not arguing I am just curious why teredo is more efficient than most tunnel brokers. I thought 6to4 and/or 6in4 had a lower protocol overhead? Efficiency aside for any site that I have tested HE's peering agreements seem to produce lower latencies and better throughput than the IPv4 network paths provided by TWC. But this might be unique to my situation due to how close I am to the HE pop in chicago.
- wmf 13y agoGoing through a tunnel broker should be a longer path than a direct connection. Also, services based on the kindness of strangers aren't sustainable.
- ginko 13y agoThey should have made IPv6 mandatory. I'm sure all the ISPs would then have suddenly found out that all those "technical" roadblocks to IPv6 migration weren't such a big problem after all.
- ben336 13y agoDid you see the outrage when they suggested requiring an internet connection? With the PS4 as a viable competitor they don't have the leverage to pull stuff like that.
- devcpp 13y agoHe said "They should have made IPv6 mandatory", as in, it cannot use IPv4. Obviously, "when connecting to the Internet is required" is implied, and having an always online console is irrelevant to his point.
- scott_karana 13y agoIt's the same issue, though. Everyone will start shit talking like this, I'd guess: "y do I have to get _offbrand_internet_ when a PS4 works with any? f u micro$oft"
- chc 13y agoThe galling thing about the Internet connection requirement was that it was extremely overbearing DRM that inconvenienced users in many cases and benefitted them in none. Requiring IPv6 doesn't have the same stink about it.
- imbriaco 13y agoIt turns out they are actually big problems. You can't dream them away. What would have actually happened is Microsoft would have had a customer revolt on their hands and not sold any Xbox One consoles -- I think they have enough problems without manufacturing one for no good reason.
- AceJohnny2 13y ago
- CountSessine 13y agoAs a network game programmer, this is sort of what I was telling everyone I knew a few years ago - that the real consumer push for IPv6 would be with video games. IPv4 address exhaustion will eventually force carrier-level NAT and make peered game connections and NAT traversal difficult in all cases and impossible in many. Microsoft now needs to make IPv6 a 'brand' - something that consumers know to ask about and demand from their ISPs. A nice warning screen in the XBoxLive connection test telling gamers that because their ISP doesn't support IPv6 their gaming experience will be degraded should do the trick.
- aray 13y agoIt's possible they could even update the Xbox 360 to do this as well (though without heavy branding to show that the update improves networking, users would likely be upset at a new 'you dont support ipv6' interstitial)
- shawnreilly 13y agoI find the article to be a little misleading. While I do realize the benefits and merits of transitioning to ipv6, I don't really see this transition resulting in a better gaming experience for gamers. It would solve some issues for some users in certain scenarios, but when I think about a better gaming experience, I think about lag (aka latency). I'm a little bullish on the subject because I am working on something new in this space (focused on multiplayer gaming connectivity), so maybe I'm being too harsh. But most of the gamers I know don't really care about their Router/Wifi Configuration or ipv4 vs ipv6. They just want to connect, they want it to work, and they want minimum lag.
- jpedrot 13y agoBut they will care when they can not play because they do not have ipv6 connection. Which will happen in the coming years, so MS is trying to stay ahead of the curve here. In addition to trying to fix an existing problem they have, which is NAT.
- Tomdarkness 13y agoI've never understood why consoles continue to use P2P for multiplayer games (okay I lie, there is obviously a economical advantage), especially when customers are paying for a online gaming service. Just from a technical standpoint it is full of problems: - You are using a consumer connection for one of the most challenging types of communication. It is very latency sensitive, does not play nice at all with dropped packets and makes heavy use of your upstream connection which is typically weak on consumer connections. - Consoles are typically about extracting the greatest amount of performance you can from the hardware yet you are also trying to host a multiplayer game. I've run a few gaming servers for some PC games (Arma 2, Source, Minecraft, etc.) and they can be very, very taxing and can require some serious hardware when you start looking at large number of players. - Not everyone who owns a console is some technical expert. While there are technologies designed to alleviate the problem, e.g UPnP, it places a requirement on the consumer that is not really required. - Host has an advantage. Almost zero latency and can abuse the fact they are hosting the game by using things like a lag switch.
- wmf 13y agoIt's especially confusing considering that MS is switching Skype away from P2P towards their supposedly cost-efficient and webscale data centers.
- larrik 13y agoSkype's change is necessitated by mobile more than just cost.
- malandrew 13y agoAnd being paid to be able to eavesdrop. Didn't the government have a huge bounty back in the day for anyone providing a way to decrypt and eavesdrop on skype?
- MAGZine 13y agoHas switched. It sucks big time, and as a result, Skype can now be wiretapped which isn't nearly as easy on a P2P network, since everyones a node, and supernodes were chosen based on availability.
- psionski 13y agoAt first the idea of every device having a public IP address seemed like a security nightmare to me... but how easy is port-scanning the IPv6 Internet? If the addresses are sequential it obviously won't make any difference (you just need a list of ISP address ranges, e.g. from BGP, and start from the bottom), but maybe we can hand out addresses some other way that will make it very unlikely to find another device on the Internet? Slighly related: is the last bit the reason why we still haven't met any aliens?
- yuubi 13y ago> If the addresses are sequential They aren't normally so. The bottom 64 bits of an IPv6 address will typically be either based on an ethernet address or random; see RFC 4291 section 2.5.1.