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I am having issues on the older Call Of Duty: World at War game. I really need expert help with an issue that few people might have an idea on how to fix.

My issue is related to port forwarding. It worked perfectly for enough time in the past in this game and I could host Co-op without issues. Currently, the port forwarding entry (using default 28960 port) is perfectly at the router, but it seems like since 1-2 years ago the server allocation stopped integrating well with Windows 10 or something for me (can't really know the cause). I can definitely port forward other unrelated services perfectly and they are reachable from the Internet.

The netstat -aon output is as follows, while having a Co-op server active:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>netstat -aon|find "28960"
  UDP    192.168.1.9:28960      *:*                                    5344

The state field misses the LISTENING value, which means the binding fails for some reason. Also, I'm launching the game with the command option +set net_ip 192.168.1.9 to pick my LAN network as this is proven needed for other services since I have multiple network interfaces which seem to take priority over LAN one by default.

Compare the output to a working unrelated service, reachable to the Internet:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>netstat -aon|find "27017"
  TCP    192.168.1.9:27017      0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING       14740
  UDP    192.168.1.9:27017      *:*                                    14740

By the way this game doesn't auto-open servers with UPnP, they must be port forwarded. Also, disabling Windows firewall doesn't make a difference.

Would you be able to help me? It has been enough time since this problem arose randomly, and I'm totally lost.

EDIT: I've just found out here that not seeing state on UDP ports is normal as the protocol is state-less. I didn't realize that was the cause, though I knew that concept. So that's something at least. However the game might still should be supposed to allocate a TCP socket on the same port.

Adrián
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1 Answers1

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UPDATE: Never mind, I think everything was based on wrong assumptions. A friend of me told me he couldn't see my server in the in-game server browser for some reason, so I instantly related it to the network interfaces conflict issue (which is real instead in the other game server, which picks an incorrect one by default). But effectively, and as suggested by @JW0914 (thanks), CoD: WaW already binds the required ports to listen on all interfaces through 0.0.0.0. I have checked the server works without overriding game's net_ip by waiting enough time in the server pre-lobby and onserving few players joining.

My previous (wrongly based answer):

Alright, so I fixed the problem in a way. I'll expose a speculative reasoning to the real cause.

Basically the game uses port 28960 UDP for the server itself (by default; not UPnP'ed), then 3074 UDP and UPnP'ed apparently for informing the master server (from Activision).

However, even when the game provides the net_ip console variable to manually set an IP and supposedly cope with a wrong interface being chosen by the game in presence of multiple active network interfaces (as is my case), I just found out this parameter might only modify the main server IP itself, not the one for the master server (3074), as interpretable from the following output:

192.168.1.9:28960          *:*                                    13860

C:\WINDOWS\system32>netstat -aon|find "3074"   UDP    0.0.0.0:3074

: ```


(The 0.0.0.0 IP being a the result of the game always using
localhost alias for such port, regardless of game's net_ip value).


I can also kind of confirm the theory by checking that on a different
game server, which shows the chosen interface on startup and by demand
(unlike CoD: WaW game when not overriding net_ip), other adapter
interfaces are chosen unless explicitly setting the IP at startup.


So, the way the problem fixed was by disabling my other interfaces. It
is also important to note that after this conclusion, the game
server would have been properly exposed all the time (that is,
relating to the UDP 28960 port), but not the informative port for
the master server (UDP 3074), preventing my server to appear in the
in-game browser. I should have mentioned the issue and
troubleshooting context was whilst in the game lobby (as the game
requires > 1 connected players to start the action itself).


By the way, [adjusting provider priorities][1] and/or interface
metrics at ncpa.cpl (Control Panel's Network Connections) doesn't
seem to have an effect on these games. If anyone knows a way to make
these priorities have effect on all applications, I'd appreciate.
Adrián
  • 101