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Relay

What does the "relay" mean after ip address? Used to be "nat"

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  • JuliusBorisovJuliusBorisov Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,714
    Head back from our programmers: it means that the server is likely only reachable over a relay, due to how their router is mangling their connections, i.e. a restrictive firewall or some types of nat.

    It doesn't have any implications. The connection process is always the same: a direct connect with a nat punch first, regardless of what was detected.
    lolienHc_Sephiroth
  • Hc_SephirothHc_Sephiroth Member Posts: 10
    edited April 2018

    Head back from our programmers: it means that the server is likely only reachable over a relay, due to how their router is mangling their connections, i.e. a restrictive firewall or some types of nat.

    It doesn't have any implications. The connection process is always the same: a direct connect with a nat punch first, regardless of what was detected.

    So that doesn't affect how well a server runs? Just never seen a ip address have a 5 digit number where the port number should be. 20 years of online gaming and first time I've heard of this.
  • nivniv Member, Moderator, Developer Posts: 410
    Hi,

    relays are the last-resort fallback if no direct connection with a NAT punch can be established. You can see relayed connections on the server console (Linux), in the server logfile, and via the provided scripting command. This is dependent on both your firewall/router setup, and that of the player.

    Using relays will make connections more laggy due to the incurred latency of the extra hop, so if you run a persistent server, it's always best to make sure you have a direct port map to the advertised port, for example: 5121/udp external -> 5121/udp internal. That way, all clients can connect directly.

    (As an aside, You can't portmap 5129/external -> 5121/internal; this is not something the masterserver can detect. The external port needs to match the one nwserver thinks it has.)
    JuliusBorisov
  • Hc_SephirothHc_Sephiroth Member Posts: 10
    niv said:

    Hi,

    relays are the last-resort fallback if no direct connection with a NAT punch can be established. You can see relayed connections on the server console (Linux), in the server logfile, and via the provided scripting command. This is dependent on both your firewall/router setup, and that of the player.

    Using relays will make connections more laggy due to the incurred latency of the extra hop, so if you run a persistent server, it's always best to make sure you have a direct port map to the advertised port, for example: 5121/udp external -> 5121/udp internal. That way, all clients can connect directly.

    (As an aside, You can't portmap 5129/external -> 5121/internal; this is not something the masterserver can detect. The external port needs to match the one nwserver thinks it has.)

    Thanks for the info. Wonder what happened . All I did was switch pcs to host the server. And it went to relay. I switched back to original pc and it stayed at relay.
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