Internet Routers, Opening Ports, UPNP, PS3 and ME3

[Mr.Argonian]

Most likely this will come out looking like a jumble of crap, but I'll see how I go.

So recently I began playing Mass Effect 3's multiplayer, and found it quite entertaining, then one day, about three weeks ago, I suddenly could not connect to a game through quickmatch. I had been using quickmatch for about a week, with no problems, and one day it just stops working. I get the searching for a game message, and it just never finds anything. I dont play with friends so this is the only way for me to find a game. So I thought I will create a game and wait for people to join it. But no one ever joins, after waiting up and over 30 minutes.

So after doing some reading it seems i have to enable UPNP and open some ports, I beleive it was 6000 and 3479. I tried following some guides, and I beleive I have enabled UPNP on my PS3, but do I need to enable it on my router as well? Also it had been stated some firewalls block games, do I need to change my firewall settings?

On the subject of ports, I was doing fairly well, but after getting the action invalid message many times, and then the whole "static IP" adress got me confused and I gave up eventually.

If anyone could give some assistance i would be extremely gratefull. I just want to play some Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, and I dont know what changed to stop me from playing. I'm not very tech savvy, but understand a few things.

Oh, and my router is a Billion BiPac 7800N

[Lindai]

I tried following some guides, and I beleive I have enabled UPNP on my PS3, but do I need to enable it on my router as well?

Yes. Look at your router manual to find out how to do this(or if it's even supported on your router).
If your router doesn't have UPnP, you'll have to manually open ports 6000 and 3479(UPnP would automatically does this for you). Again, your router's manual should tell you how to do this.

Also it had been stated some firewalls block games, do I need to change my firewall settings?

Firewalls "block" games by leaving ports closed. When you've opened the port, you've changed the firewall settings.

On the subject of ports, I was doing fairly well, but after getting the action invalid message many times, and then the whole "static IP" adress got me confused and I gave up eventually.

Static IP refers to giving a device(e.g your PS3) it's own IP address that is reserved for it. DHCP handles address allocation otherwise.

If anyone could give some assistance i would be extremely gratefull. I just want to play some Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, and I dont know what changed to stop me from playing. I'm not very tech savvy, but understand a few things.

Oh, and my router is a Billion BiPac 7800N

I read the contents of your router's manual and UPnP is included. It should explain further on how to enable it(it's a simple tickbox in your router's configuration page).
To access your router's configuration page(assuming you're using Windows 7):
-Hold the Windows key on your keyboard and press the R key.
-Type "cmd" without the quotes into the text field and press Enter.
-Type "ipconfig" into the black command-line window and press Enter. Something will show up similar to this:

Code: Select all

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.100
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1

The default gateway is your router's IP address.
-Type the router's IP address into your web browser's URL field and press Enter.

[Archea47]

Yep, you need to either enable UPnP on your router or forward the ports on your router to the static IP address of the machine you're hosting a game to, forwarded to the same ports. I recommend forwarding the ports so that malware you might happen to have on other machines on your network can't take advantage of UPnP

Most firewalls these days are stateful, so they allow outbound connections but don't allow inbound unless they're already initiated. This lets you play on other peoples' servers, but to accept incoming connections from other people when hosting a game you need to open those ports up.

Once you log into your router see where the DHCP range is on your subnet. If the starting DHCP address is something like 192.160.1.100, use a number under 100 (but not 0, because that's reserved, and not 1 if that's the address of your router) - so say 192.168.1.10. I don't have a PS3 so I don't have directions on setting a static IP but it should be somewhat straitforward