IP flooding question.
#1
Wed, 04/17/2013 - 06:57
IP flooding question.
I have been experiencing some very unusual network problems playing Halo 4. I get knocked out of parties and completely off XBLive. The really strange thing is that it's only happened during my Tuesday and Thursday night games. It's like someone knows when I play the most. I've had my cable ISP stuff looked into and that doesn't seem to be the problem. Is it possible someone is flooding my IP intentionally? How would someone go about doing that? In the Halo 2days I remember people bridging, getting your IP and then flooding your IP to get host and or knock you out of the game. Is that still possible? I know it can't be a 2old2play member but I've had encounters with unlikeable characters offsite more than a few times.
Deep,
It is not just you, I've been having the same thing happening to me for a while now.
At the end of games in MM I will get lagged or booted into my own lobby before scores come up and get no credit for playing an entire game.
I have also been knocked into the default lobby and can't join back up with any of my friends until I restart my 360 or go back to the 360 dashboard and restart Halo.
And then there is times where I get kicked completely off XBL and must restart my 360.
I think / hope these are M$ issues and not someone F'ing with us but IDK.
It's possible, but they have to get your IP first. The only ways I know people can do that are either being in a game with you or in a party chat. If it's the former, they will have to know your location and search all the ip's they are connecting to. For instance, if you're in a match with 15 other people, they will have to search each ip's location to get a match. And that's IF they know your location in the first place. However, if you're the only one in a party chat with them, then your ip is easily ascertained.
As far flooding your connection, that's a little more difficult. As I understand, there are two routes someone can take:
1. Flood your network using their own upload. This requires the person to have a faster upload speed than your download speed. Seeing as how most of the US has terrible uploads, this is highly unlikely.
2. Use a booter. Dealing with booters in Reach while I was an admin on btb.net, I learned that you can purchase booters or booting time. The people who run these booters are shady as I heard through grapevines of people losing money and CC info being stolen. If they are using a booter, there's not really any way you can determine who's doing said flooding. Any IP's that register during an incident will only be from the booter itself.
I'm sure there is more to it than that, as I'm not a network junkie. If one of my MT buddies logs onto skype today, I'll ask him more about it. He's into networking and programming and would be more useful than me.
Also, as hyghwayman noted, you're not the only one experiencing these problems. The same has been happening to me, but moreso in custom games. I know last night a few people in 2o2ph were getting kicked, so I'm beginning to wonder if it's more of a custom game problem? And I constantly go blackscreen, only to come back dead, meaning I was the only one in blackscreen. Of course, I attribute that to my shitty connection.
OMG,
We were playing in MM yesterday and last night. had two different friends in different games go to blackscreen while everyone else were still playing , they could hear us and we them then after almost the entire match they landed in their own lobbys, searching for a match. ! one of those was the CTF match I refered to above.
Thanks OMG and hyghwayman. Maybe I am having similar problems. They seem so frustratingly regular though. I had two weeks with no problems and it's back again.
I feel your pain DEEP.gif "54")
!
I have also had other Halo friends say they have been having some issues too.
Would love to hear more from OMG about what bad people can do to others on XBL. I think my party was victims of Lag Switching yesterday in a CTF game but IDK how to prove or disprove it. I remember back in Halo2 days it was so obvious and out in the open.
Same thing happen to me last night. I was booted from the room and could go back into MM til I rebooted my system.
Typically, when I go blackscreen, I can hear everyone else but no one can hear me. It usually lasts from 30 seconds to a couple minutes and I always come back in the respawn screen (free kill for the enemy!).
IP flooding is a DDoS attack, and would freeze up your modem. If you are having this happen a lot, it is probably your router crapping out, or your ISP throttling you without telling you. My guess is your NAT is moderate, as I can NEVER see anyone's party details in a room you were running.
It is very easy to aqcuire someone's IP address. Back in H3 days, it was common place for me to be DDoS'd in level 50 games, I have been DDoS'd once since then, and that was in arena in Halo Reach.
I played with the DDoS'r not long ago in H4, and talked some mad trash that he wasn't very good without cain and abel. It made me quite happy to carry him :)
Is your NAT open? You can see its status on the 'Network Status' tab in the H4 menu.
I remember having issues keeping larger parties together two weeks ago with you guys, and I am guessing this was the cause. Party chat also requires a fair amount of bandwidth from what I've heard, which may add to your issues.
Just a thought, may be useful.
In my experience, if you were getting IP flooded/DDoSed, you would be completely unable to get online until you changed your IP or the attack stopped.
Don't know your configuration Deep, Modem - Router - XBOX wireless? One possiblity is interference. If you are using a "regular" router then it and it's clients are probably communicating on the 2.4.ghz frequency. Might be possible there is increased interference on the frequency. I had been experiencing increasing drops from XBL recently and realized that there were a large number of networks broadcasting around where I lived, that along with cordless phones using the same frequency. It so happens I have a dual band router and an ethernet bridge (for my smart TV) with 4 ports which is connecting on the 5ghz frequency. So I connected my XBOX to the ethernet bridge, reset my network settings to wired network, and have had absolutely no problems since. Just a thought.
Other than that, as others have said, make sure you have Open NAT. Do you have a laptop you can bring up wireless "side by side" with the XBOX to see if you are getting drops in signal strength on that as well?
Thanks for the additional info. My router is a fairly new Dlink 825 dual ban router. Barring hardware failure, it is a very capable router that lists as Open 99% of the time. I bypassed it it as a test last night and still got knocked off Live. I waited awhile and went back on through the router and showing offline. Problem didn't happen again, although I experienced some close calls. The problem is likely MS and their new Azure servers but how would a person ever know?
Try playing the game off the disc and not the HDD. I think their TU corrupted some DLC and maps on HDD's.
also you can try to see if you router firmware is up to date. I would also check to see if the current router firmware you have has any know issues with XBL.
I understand you may have been using this router for a while but if they recently put out an update or with the changes in xbl, maybe the current firmware might be funkyl
Just another thought.
Something else to consider. Don't know who your ISP is, but when Comcast went to digital in my area, they didn't tell me that my router needed an update and my conncection went to crap.
That being said, XBL seems like it is having some general issues.
Xbox Live had issues and service alerts recently. That lead to more talk about the "Always On" rumor and what it would mean in case of an Xbox Live outtage.
In other words, it's extremely unlikely to be an attack on you. For example, if you had been knocked off of Xbox Live, does your house's internet connection also become unusable? Or is this only related to Xbox Live?
If your house's internet is fine, your ISP says it's fine, but Xbox Live won't connect... why look for some mysterious attacker instead of checking Xbox Live service alerts or related news?
So that is why I am asking about the possibility of "some mysterious attacker". It seems unlikely that is the source of my problems based on what our friends are saying. OMG's response narrows the culprits to those with upstream greater than my downstream or using costly and less desireable methods.
I'm almost back to square one. Hoping it doesn't happen again.
2o2pH has problems every Tuesday clan night, and every other Friday. People get kicked out to a lobby, out of halo, or offline. One night it was so bad, anytime we were in a lobby, people hummed the Jaws theme. We had problems Saturday in MM too. One person left our party and it kicked two of us offline.
My brother said his friends had similar problems in CoD lately too.
What? I missed that night. :( Sounds like hell, but fun at the same time. Who's swimming in the open with a paper cut, because jaws is hungry again!
North Korea, just saying.gif "80")
Ah yes Deep, if you are experiencing regular Internet outtages at your house, then that is definitely something besides an Xbox Live service interruption.
I'm surprised your ISP didn't notice anything in that event. How long are the outtages each time? Just a minute or two? Or hours at a time?
A mysterious attacker type scenario would hopefully be easily identifiable by an ISP though. But it sounds like there is an issue with your service, and if it keeps happening like you say, I'm sure it's very annoying.
But yeah, how long are the outtages each time? Does it vary widely, as well?
Let's hope the problem just fixes itself of course. Still would be nice to know an actual cause that can be fixed to prevent it from coming back.
I am going to attempt changing my IP again soon. I will note whether it actually changed this time.
If you do other things that use the internet, such as downloading large files on a computer, does it cut out sometimes? Just wondering if it might be something related to high traffic/activity, or even if connecting to many different IPs quickly (such as people in a party, or matching several people, or something) can cause this for you.
Do you have a seperate modem and router? Or is it an all in one device? Changing the Router IP while the modem's one for the internet stays the same wouldn't do much. Hope you can figure it out though, and remember to try getting a credit on your ISP bill if you do figure it out :P
Your xbox needs a static IP, and ports forwarded. Might also need to set it to a priority when online, which can be done with a few tweaks of router settings.
I have been having issues with custom games kicking me offline in the Halo system, yet the dash still shows me online. I swear that the TU or the new map corrupted my "game" on the HDD. Still looking for the problem, but I bought a new audio dongle to see if it is the culprit of my more frequent xbox reboots. next step is a complete HDD replacement or a new xbox (which I am hesitant about d/t the new one probably coming out soon)
I may run a test next time and switch the xbox to wireless temporarily. It may identify a bad ethernet cable.
Thanks. :)
From the sounds of it Deep, I don't think anyone is flooding you. As others have stated, custom games and xbox live in general has been pretty shitty lately. And while your ISP stated there weren't any problems, there's no guarantee they really checked. I have Time Warner and last summer my connection kept dropping. After 3 calls and visits from their technicians, they finally replaced some stuff in my house and in my neighborhood. That helped for about a month, then the same problems began happening again. More calls, more visits, and the only result(s) I've seen is instead of being dropped from live, I simply go blackscreen for a bit. So while I could claim flooding, more than likely it was just both live and my isp. Have them send another technician out to have a look.
Your router should also have an activities log. When you get dropped, log into the router and check the log to see if there is a major increase in activity, but have to agree that it is most likely the XBL servers or your internet provider.
How'd everything perform last night? Any new issues?