sr102 open nat multiple ps4

[arrel006]

Hello there need help, been researching this on and off for ages. I have 3 ps4's in my household which whilst playing black ops 3 only one of them gets an open nat and the other 2 gets moderate (don't know if i've worded it correctly as the nat type is type 2 not sure if its open or moderate nat port that i am having trouble with)

In the past on 3 ps3's with sky's netgear DG934G router we used to get open on all 3, the next few sky routers we got had gave only 1 open nat. We switched to bt fibre and the home hub 5 would allow 2 open nat and 1 moderate. We switched to sky now and the crappy router is restricting us to 2 moderate nat. Putting one in dmz does work but will do so as a last resort, i have read there isn't much security threat in doing so in ps4 but i am still reluctant unless it cannot be helped. Sky t&c state that i have to use their equipments at all time. So i ask hypothetically is there a way i can use the home hub 5 instead of the sr102?

I've read the sr102 cannot be put in modem only mode but that was from an old source, can someone let me know if anyone came up with a way to do so. Or is my best option buying
a Huawei HG612 and using home hub 5 maybe asus rt ac66u as a router?

Other option was Tp link archer c7 ac1750 or Netgear R6250 which are modem/router combos and about 80 pound. Although i am not sure if these will let 2 or more open nat connection. Sorry for long thread, i am trying to give as much info as possible. Most info i get are for people trying to get open port on 2 ps4's not 3.

Thank you.

 

[MacrosTheBlack]

I think your issue is larger than any particular make of router.... UPNP acquired gaming ports over NAT to a single public IP is going to cause issues. The router can only assign an open port to any one PS4 device on the internal network at any one time. If the online game demands a particular port be open then all 3 devices can't all be connected at once.

Have a look at this support thread, you are not alone:
MULTIPLE PLAYSTATION 4's - ONE NETWORK - NEEDS FIX... - Page 4 - PlayStation® Forums

Only solution I can think of is to change your internet connection from home connection with a single public ip address to a business connection with 3 public ip addresses and then have a decent firewall connected so that each PS4 can use a separate public ip....... You'll pay more money to your ISP for that and a decent firewall isn't cheap either....

 

[arrel006]

Thanks for the reply. Was hoping for a different answer, guess got to make peace with moderate connection.

 

[MacrosTheBlack]

I think so yes. Does it really affect the games that much being open vs moderate?

Game designers and the console manufacturers really should consider that lots of houses are going to have 2 or 3 consoles all wanting to game online together and so should ensure that their networks and games are designed to cope with that.

 

[arrel006]

This has been troubling me for 5 years when we had 3 ps3's in our households. An old netgear router allowed 2 open nat by default. The next few routers sky sent didn't. I've search online and there have been several posts that say you can port forward one ps3/4 and dmz the second. Surely that shouldn't work because both of them will still try udp port 3074.

I only ask cause i've been experimenting with my setup. What i am trying to do is disabling the homehub5 dhcp server and firewall. Attaching that to my sr102 router/modem and on the sr102 put the homehub in dmz. So anything attached to the home hub has no firewall whatsover. then connect the ps4's to the home hub.

I am not that technical so i ask does that seem plausible??

 

[MacrosTheBlack]

Nope that's not going to help you. Have a read up here on NAT and the open, moderate strict types: What is strict, moderate and open NAT?

So in the past with your old router you were never getting true Open NAT to two different devices. It may of looked like it but in reality it was just fast swapping the Open status between devices. Having a port held open with data packets on a particularly port originating from the internet and arriving at your router, the router looks at the port and sends it to whatever internal network address currently owns that open NAT status with the router. So say for example you have an incoming bit of gaming data on port 4040, it hits the router on the routers single external ip address provided by your ISP (say 50.0.0.1) and the router looks at it's rules and tables and say's yes, playstation4 on internal ip address 192.168.0.21 has this port open with me, so it sends the data there. But it can only only send it to a single ip address that holds that port reservation open with the router at that particular time. Another internal device can request that from the router and take over that open port reservation and the next bit of incoming data on that port will now go to that instead. Pure incoming traffic can't go to different internal ip addresses simultaneously.

If however the requests for data come from the internal devices itself, then yes two or more devices can receive the data back on the same port as the router tags the packets on the way out and the incoming data back retains those tags so the router knows what internal device it needs to go back to.

That's kind of a really rough way of describing what's happening. So if a game absolutely needs a single port open to a internal device, then you can't then have another PS4 also playing that game.

It will work however if the game is set to use a range of ports, say ports: 4040 - 4045. Now one PS4 can lock and use one port in that range (4040) whilst another PS4 uses (4041), etc.

Hope that helps your understanding?

 

[arrel006]

ok cool that's making sense of my past experience. Thank you for breaking it down for me. Knew something wasn't adding up. You saved me time and potentially some money chasing tech to solve this.