Problems with Call of Duty on Xbox Live. Please Help!

HawkEye101 · 19-11-2009, 2:21 AM

Hey everyone. First time posting here.

This is quite the frustrating problem, I will explain the best I can.

No matter what Call of Duty game I play, this will happen.

When the game chooses me as the host of the match and I get picked about 8 out of 10 times because I have a pretty good internet connection, this will happen.

What happens is that people will be able to connect to the game and join and play, but after about 1-2 minutes about 95% of the players in the game will all leave. I assume they all leave because they are experiencing lag.

But I can host matches in other games perfectly fine, such as Gears of War and Rainbow Six Vegas. (I've hosted 12 player games in Rainbow Six Vegas with no problems) - I say that because in Call of Duty it's usually 6 on 6 games, so 12 players.

I don't know why this is happening because I can host in other games perfectly fine, but when I am host in Call of Duty games, this happens every single time.

My NAT is OPEN if that means anything.

So thats what happens. I hope it makes sense, I explained it the best I could. Thanks for reading and for your help. I appreciate it.

I just want to figure out whats happening and fix this once and for all.

UKBOY · 19-11-2009, 11:29 PM

Might be helpful to test your connection via this site :-

Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test

Also

Pingtest.net - The Global Broadband Quality Test

I would suggest testing your connection via the closest geographical server and do this over a period of a few days, in the morning, early afternoon and at intervals like 5pm, 8pm and 11 pm.

See, if like many peoples connection, you get a big drop off between 5 pm and 11 pm and these results may give you an indicator of how your connection speed and PING varies throughout the day.

It may also help if you post who your ISP is and also, even though people might be leaving games you set up, do you yourself (or your team) experience lag ? or is it just the players you play against ?.

HawkEye101 · 20-11-2009, 2:20 AM

Hey there.

I went to speedtest.net and ran the test and got: 9.78Mb/s Download & 0.93Mb/s Upload.

I almost always get close to 10Mb/s Down & 1Mb/s Up.

The pingtest.net result was: Ping: 28ms, Jitter: 9ms, Packet Loss 0% and the Grade (Line Quality) was an A.

I usually run these tests a few times a month. I have seen times where the download speed dips to around 5-6Mb/s.

My ISP is Rogers Cable here in Canada. The service I have with them is advertised as 10Mb/s Download & 1Mb/s Upload. I almost always get very close to those speeds.

PS: I ran the tests 5 minutes later and the download was roughly the same and the upload too. But the Ping went up to 63ms and the Jitter was 17ms. The Grade was a B and part of the description said "Some online games may not perform optimally."

I ran the ping one again just to see what happens and it went down to 23ms and got an A or "excellent connection" as it said.

The ping test as it seems can be very different each time you perform the test.

HawkEye101 · 20-11-2009, 9:53 PM

I've been running the tests for the past 2 days and the ping is almost always 20-30ms. Which is excellent according to the site.

Also, it made me host of the match I was just playing in MW2, and everyone was playing, then 9 out of the 12 players left 2 minutes into the game. So I had to leave and it went to Host Migration.

Sigh....... I don't want this to happen, Call of Duty games are my absolute favourite.

It's getting very frustrating.

HawkEye101 · 20-11-2009, 10:50 PM

Happened Again. Every. Single. Time I am the Host.

Sigh.........

HawkEye101 · 22-11-2009, 2:31 AM

I thought I should add that I connected my Xbox 360 directly into the modem, no router involved, just a plain direct modem connection.

This problem still happens even with a direct modem connection.

So I am almost out of ideas, and I am pretty tech savvy, and this has me stumped.

JazzyFonze · 22-11-2009, 9:36 PM

This does sound odd, cos your stats look pretty decent.

Do you notice any lag yourself? And does everyone leave at once (as if they've been dumped out of the game), or do they just leave gradually?

And what time of day/night do you usually play?

HawkEye101 · 22-11-2009, 9:57 PM

I don't get any lag myself, although there were times where my screen would freeze, but that was in CoD4 & WaW, haven't seen that happen in Modern Warfare 2.

It's about half n half how the players leave the game. Sometimes they will all leave at the same time in one big wave, (as if they were being dumped out of the game like you said), other times they will leave gradually.

The times of day that I play are anywhere between Noon until Midnight. If I had to say a time period that I usually play in, it would probably be between 3pm until 10pm or 11pm.

mapleleafguy · 23-11-2009, 12:47 PM

Hawkeye, thanks for posting this. I too am a first time poster. I have the VERY same problem as you.

It is definetly not a lag issue, but more they can't seem to get past the hand shake of the game. Some can connect, but most have problems.

I currently have a thread going with Activision to see if they can help.

Let's start by seeing what is similar in our setups and what is different. I am glad to see that you tried this by directly connecting it to your cable modem. I too have tried this and had similar results.

What type of cable modem do you have?
Mine is a Scientific Atlanta DCP2100R2.
I have extreme internet from Rogers and my downswing is over 12mbps, and my up swing is 0.98mbps. I get a "A" grade from pingtest.net.

This is extremely frustrating and it is p'ing me off quite a bit. I am hoping that it is a cable modem problem.

I am wondering if the cable modem or even Rogers themselves is blocking specific ports for COD.

I would also like to hear from other Rogers customers who play COD4, CODWAW, or MW2 AND have a NAT type of OPEN to see if you are able to host games without problems.

Quote:

Originally Posted by HawkEye101

Hey everyone. First time posting here.

This is quite the frustrating problem, I will explain the best I can.

No matter what Call of Duty game I play, this will happen.

When the game chooses me as the host of the match and I get picked about 8 out of 10 times because I have a pretty good internet connection, this will happen.

What happens is that people will be able to connect to the game and join and play, but after about 1-2 minutes about 95% of the players in the game will all leave. I assume they all leave because they are experiencing lag.

But I can host matches in other games perfectly fine, such as Gears of War and Rainbow Six Vegas. (I've hosted 12 player games in Rainbow Six Vegas with no problems) - I say that because in Call of Duty it's usually 6 on 6 games, so 12 players.

I don't know why this is happening because I can host in other games perfectly fine, but when I am host in Call of Duty games, this happens every single time.

My NAT is OPEN if that means anything.

So thats what happens. I hope it makes sense, I explained it the best I could. Thanks for reading and for your help. I appreciate it.

I just want to figure out whats happening and fix this once and for all.

mapleleafguy · 23-11-2009, 12:54 PM

Incidently, if you actually purposely make your NAT type to moderate, but forcing the ports that xbox live uses to another ip adderss (one not in use), you will not be the host and not experience these issues. This is not a solution by any means, but thought it interesting.

HawkEye101 · 23-11-2009, 5:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mapleleafguy

Hawkeye, thanks for posting this. I too am a first time poster. I have the VERY same problem as you.

It is definetly not a lag issue, but more they can't seem to get past the hand shake of the game. Some can connect, but most have problems.

I currently have a thread going with Activision to see if they can help.

Let's start by seeing what is similar in our setups and what is different. I am glad to see that you tried this by directly connecting it to your cable modem. I too have tried this and had similar results.

What type of cable modem do you have?
Mine is a Scientific Atlanta DCP2100R2.
I have extreme internet from Rogers and my downswing is over 12mbps, and my up swing is 0.98mbps. I get a "A" grade from pingtest.net.

This is extremely frustrating and it is p'ing me off quite a bit. I am hoping that it is a cable modem problem.

I am wondering if the cable modem or even Rogers themselves is blocking specific ports for COD.

I would also like to hear from other Rogers customers who play COD4, CODWAW, or MW2 AND have a NAT type of OPEN to see if you are able to host games without problems.

Hey there. I have Rogers Extreme internet (Advertised speeds of 10Mbps Download and 1Mbps Upload) and my download speed is usually close to 9.70 - 9.98mbps and my upload is usually 0.95 - 0.98mbps.

So it can't be a problem with the speed of our connections or the connection itself, but rather a problem with how Rogers communicates with Call of Duty games.

My modem is a Motorola SURFboard Cable Modem SB5101.

Like you this is very frustrating because it happens way to often and it makes me angry hehe.

mapleleafguy · 23-11-2009, 5:34 PM

Well, they confirmed that they do not block ports 3074 UDP/TCP, and UDP port 88.
Who knows..... either way; they washed their hands of it.

I would recommend putting in a ticket with Activision, and calling rogers to inquire.
To contact Activision: http://activision.custhelp.com

If you get anywhere with this let me know. But I am now certain that there is nothing we can do put by perhaps changing providers, and for us Canadians there are not many options available to us.

HawkEye101 · 23-11-2009, 8:24 PM

Happened twice in row. First was about 5 mins ago, 2nd just now.

Man..... this sucks. I wonder if there is anything we can do that will make it so it doesn't choose us as host.

You mentioned something about purposely making the NAT moderate and forwarding ports.

I don't know what to do. Only option would be to change ISPs. But what other choice do us Canadians have. Bell & Rogers basically, theres also SHAW but thats only in British Columbia as far as I know.

An interesting note is that my friend who also has this hosting problem, told me that when he had Bell Internet, this never happened to him. But ever since he switched to Rogers, he has this problem.

WTH ROGERS?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?

mapleleafguy · 23-11-2009, 10:44 PM

yeh... you can statically assign your xbox an IP address and then forward the 3074 port to an ip other than the one you chose for the xbox.

There is obviously something different about rogers. There is another thread on DSLReports where someone is complaining about the same thing.

Rogers is up to something whether they will admit it or not, and unfortunately it is affecting the COD series of games on xbox live. The trouble is, nobody really cares to help.

*W*T*F Rogers.

mapleleafguy · 24-11-2009, 5:27 PM

Curious if this problem is geographically localised.

I am in Ottawa Ontario.

HawkEye101 · 24-11-2009, 7:32 PM

I'm near Toronto.

pistonbroke · 24-11-2009, 7:51 PM

This is global, and linked to cable BB suppliers. Here in the UK we have Virgin broadband with speeds up to 50mb d/load. A few of us are experiencing the exact same issue.

mapleleafguy · 24-11-2009, 8:26 PM

Thanks Piston for replying....
I am starting to believe it is a result of traffic shaping and the dropping of random packets (as if I was downloading from a bittorrent site).

Do any of you (in the past of present) download bittorrents? I wonder if our connections have been black listed ?

HawkEye101 · 24-11-2009, 8:42 PM

Hmm.... I wonder if that is the case?

If we used to download torrents, whether it be way back or now, that Rogers (or whatever ISP) saw that we were doing that much too often, put our internet service on a "black list" and now whenever they see lots of P2P connections (like torrents use) they cut off those connections.

If thats what it is, then I'd say were screwed.

mapleleafguy · 24-11-2009, 8:47 PM

lol, i guess you have used torrents then.

Which again p'ees me off as a subscriber to rogers I pay for xx amount of megabytes a month. they should not be able to have so much control with what i do with the bandwidth that i PAID for.

HawkEye101 · 24-11-2009, 9:02 PM

Or, it could also be that regardless of who you are, when Rogers sees lots of P2P connections they will drop random packets.

mapleleafguy · 24-11-2009, 9:10 PM

Thats a good point.

HawkEye101 · 24-11-2009, 9:52 PM

Well, all I can say is that this sucks hard.

I wonder if I should try that thing where you make the NAT moderate on purpose so it doesn't choose you as host.

If that even works....

i_lashez · 24-11-2009, 10:43 PM

Same boat here. I have removed the router from the equation, and swapped modems from the motorola surfboard to the scientific atlantica one. Same results no matter what i do. Rogers tech support is clueless as to why. I have also had this exact issue on COD 4, WAW, and now MW2. SUX. Oh well, ring the BELL....i guess.

HawkEye101 · 24-11-2009, 10:59 PM

Wow, another person with this problem.

It seems like if you have Rogers this happens to you. So that would be myself, my friend, mapleleafguy, i_lashez, and a few other people on the dslreports.com forums.

Almost 10 people this happens too. 10 that we have confirmed, who knows how many more people have this same problem. If all of us have this problem, then I would imagine lots more do.

i_lashez · 24-11-2009, 11:05 PM

Im certain 80% of the people on live have no clue whether or not they are hosting a match. Im sure this happens to most rogers subscribers with COD games. Ridiculous. I aslo have done my share of torrent downloading. I wonder if there is a connection??

HawkEye101 · 24-11-2009, 11:23 PM

There could be a connection, but I would say it is probably that Rogers doesn't like the idea of so many P2P connections, and thus they drop packets.

I'm not sure if this is related, but I know that when I hosted Gears of War matches, it would take forever, and I mean FOREVER for people to join. Same thing in Rainbow Six Vegas.

Maybe it was because my connection was showing as 1 Red Bar in Gears, and 1 Red Dot in Rainbow Six when people searched up a match.

HawkEye101 · 25-11-2009, 12:11 AM

Sigh... it just happened again.

This time 5 people left right as the game started.

i_lashez · 25-11-2009, 12:17 AM

Yep. Happens to me about 9 in 10 tries. When i get host i mean. And it's not like the extreme service is some $20 a month connection. SUX.

mapleleafguy · 25-11-2009, 1:04 AM

Spent over an hour with xbox live support. They did all they could to help. They said it is either the modem, or the provider. They did say that Rogers is a compatible provider with xbox live.

I'm willing to bet it is traffic shaping.
I still have an open case going with Rogers. They are trying to stonewall with the usual rederick but I am trying to persist. They are saying that they do not provide support for xbox live. I have kindly stated that I am not looking for xbox support but rather looking as to why they are blocking access to the service.

Ill keep you all posted.