Microsoft: The Best Xbox One Gaming Experience Will Be Over IPv6 | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft: The Best Xbox One Gaming Experience Will Be Over IPv6

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86 pointsdanyork81 comments

As a network game programmer, this is sort of what I was telling everyone I knew a few years ago - that the real consumer push for IPv6 would be with video games. IPv4 address exhaustion will eventually force carrier-level NAT and make peered game connections and NAT traversal difficult in all cases and impossible in many.

Microsoft now needs to make IPv6 a 'brand' - something that consumers know to ask about and demand from their ISPs. A nice warning screen in the XBoxLive connection test telling gamers that because their ISP doesn't support IPv6 their gaming experience will be degraded should do the trick.

It's possible they could even update the Xbox 360 to do this as well (though without heavy branding to show that the update improves networking, users would likely be upset at a new 'you dont support ipv6' interstitial)

I've never understood why consoles continue to use P2P for multiplayer games (okay I lie, there is obviously a economical advantage), especially when customers are paying for a online gaming service. Just from a technical standpoint it is full of problems:

- You are using a consumer connection for one of the most challenging types of communication. It is very latency sensitive, does not play nice at all with dropped packets and makes heavy use of your upstream connection which is typically weak on consumer connections.

- Consoles are typically about extracting the greatest amount of performance you can from the hardware yet you are also trying to host a multiplayer game. I've run a few gaming servers for some PC games (Arma 2, Source, Minecraft, etc.) and they can be very, very taxing and can require some serious hardware when you start looking at large number of players.

- Not everyone who owns a console is some technical expert. While there are technologies designed to alleviate the problem, e.g UPnP, it places a requirement on the consumer that is not really required.

- Host has an advantage. Almost zero latency and can abuse the fact they are hosting the game by using things like a lag switch.

It's especially confusing considering that MS is switching Skype away from P2P towards their supposedly cost-efficient and webscale data centers.

Skype's change is necessitated by mobile more than just cost.

And being paid to be able to eavesdrop. Didn't the government have a huge bounty back in the day for anyone providing a way to decrypt and eavesdrop on skype?

Has switched.

It sucks big time, and as a result, Skype can now be wiretapped which isn't nearly as easy on a P2P network, since everyones a node, and supernodes were chosen based on availability.

Not the Microsoft Skype wiretap memee again. Read the PRISM slides, Skype was tapped before Microsoft bought the company, let alone rearchitected the system

I wonder if this will create any sort of advantages for players?

Back on COD:MW2 I put my XBOX on the DMZ, and that made me seem to have a better connection in the eyes of the P2P networking structure. This resulted in me always being chose as the lobby host. Essentially giving me the advantage of having ~0ms ping.

Non-fragmented IPv6 network can bring better latency to than a fragmented IPv4 network. At this point, IPv4 address fragmentation is only getting worse.

If that was the case you screwed up forwarding ports 88 and 3074 to your xbox. Anybody that cares about XBL match outcomes does not connect without making use of port forwarding or their router's "DMZ." As far as comparative advantages go, this helped you with the bottom 20% of XBL. Moreover I am pretty sure that MW2 did lag compensation so I am not sure it was an "advantage."

I would be amazed if 80% of XBL users are forwarding ports on their routers. I've never heard of this before.

UPnP?

Respectfully, if you have never heard of port forwarding before I think that you might not be very informed when it comes to XBL. Or maybe you have never heard of port forwarding because you bought a device with UPNP and therefore you never noticed the problems that can result from lack of port forwarding.

Port forwarding has been a must for quality FPS match making since the beginning. What XBL games do you play?

It really depends whether he plays a game that warns about it. The dashboard only warns about a Moderate NAT if you run a network test. Of the games I played, only Halo 3 warned about Moderate NAT. Halo 4 doesn't bother anymore.

So I don't think he's not "very informed." He's the normal player base. I don't even bother setting up NAT anymore and it works fine, even though I know I should go through the rigmarole of doing it.

This happened to me with a whole bunch of games, pretty much from around the first Modern Warfare up until somewhat recently. The reason was that I had great download and very solid upload, so it would set me as host in 9/10 games I would play in. I'd also be highly interested to see what kind of preference MS gives to IPv6, and whether it will be equal to the up/down of a user or not.

I'm glad they're promoting IPv6, but I very much doubt the 'experience' will change one iota

Match making with a game like CoD or BF will be much better if every player can host and or connect directly to every other player.

If the server is hosted on the Xbox, why am I paying for XBox Live at all?

Seriously? Running a service cost money. Yes they likely have a markup, but the point is you can't get everything for free. How slow would match making be if it was entirely p2p with no Msft central servers?

On an entirely subjective note, I think xbox lives game recording will be baller!

Doesn't Microsoft also make you pay for xbox live just so that you can connect to Netflix's servers (who you are also paying) over your home internet connection (which you are also paying for)?

I do not believe this is true (although I haven't verified it). Xbox live basic level is free. Xbox live gold costs money. I would HOPE you can still use Netflix with Xbox live basic.

As surprising as it may be, Netflix requires Xbox Live Gold.

This is different than say the PS3 which does not require PS+ for Netflix.

This is one of the many reasons that while I may eventually own an Xbox One (I own 2 different Xbox 360s now), my first "next gen" console will be a PS4.

Yet PS3 requires you to have PSN+ to download in the background and to save games to the cloud. Both things you can do without Gold on Xbox. They each have their pros and cons for paid upgrade, but I find the Xbox live experience to be far superior to what the PS3 has to offer.

> Yet PS3 requires you to have PSN+ to download in the background [...]

This isn't true, either. Background downloading predates PlayStation Plus and everyone has had access to it since its launch. You might be thinking of automatic downloads, but that's not true either as of PS3 system software update 4.50, released last week.[1]

> [...] and to save games to the cloud. Both things you can do without Gold on Xbox.

Xbox support seems to indicate[2] cloud storage requires an Xbox LIVE Gold membership. Has that changed recently (so the support article is out of date)? I couldn't find any update notes indicating that it had.

[1]: http://us.playstation.com/support/systemupdates/ps3/

[2]: http://support.xbox.com/en-US/games/game-saves-in-cloud/clou...

That is correct. Netflix streaming requires an Xbox Live Gold subscription.

There are a few different reasons. One reason is that Xbox Live provides a Framework that allows the Game to determine who the Host is. Different Games (aka Studios) provide different multiplayer capabilities, but regardless of the type (one-to-one or one-to-many), Xbox Live provides the Framework that allows the Game to determine who the Players are, and thus who is placed in what role. So even if you are the Host (aka the Server is hosted on your Xbox and others connect to you), Xbox Live is essential in identifying your Account in relation to other Players. Another reason is the interoperable capabilities that Xbox Live provides in terms of the Xbox Community. Your Avatar, Statistics, Messages, etc, that are similar in terms of capability, but shared across the Game Library. This allows Games (Studios) to leverage the Xbox Live Framework to provide a better Community Experience.

At least on the 360, your Live account payments are not going to hosting any of the servers (at least not the ones that you pay for). Any actual game servers for 360 games are paid for by the developers of the game (and run independently of Microsoft).

How this changes for the xbone remains to be seen.

Is that a real problem? People have been gaming like that for about 20 years...

of course it is, 20 years ago if you had internet, you most definitely were not behind NAT. now, you most likely are. upnp is a prothesis that should die ASAP.

Even though I agree that UPnP is a solution for a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place, I wonder how secure that kind of P2P communication will be. I guess people will still need/want residential firewalls and automatic ways to bypass them.

And why is ipv6 needed for that? I works perfectly on 4. I have hosted numerous Serious Sam and Quake games on my PC.

With IPv6, there's no need for NAT and insecure, unreliable hacks like UPnP to break through it. Having worked in tech support for a major video game company I can say it's a serious problem, especially for people with crappy provider-supplied routers.

Having done network game console programming before, I can tell you that dealing with some guy's random NAT was a huge problem. There are scores of people living in apartment flats with high-speed internet connections that happened to have everyone in the building behind an extremely obnoxious non-full cone NAT. Having to do NAT traversal with some of the weird building or carrier level NATs is a huge headache and in the long term isn't sustainable.

In PC-space, you have pre-teens managing to run minecraft servers for their friends. My cousin has one; I distinctly remember helping him install batteries into a new toy 3 or 4 years ago during Christmas. Is this somehow a console-exclusive difficulty?

Consoles figure it all out on the fly, on their own. Any kid can open a port in the NAT firewall, but it's more challenging to write software that can consistently do that on every network.

It's more like a very inconsistent difficulty. It will work fine for one person with a specific pile of hardware, then you look at a different person or part of the hardware pile gets replaced and suddenly nothing works.

They should have made IPv6 mandatory.

I'm sure all the ISPs would then have suddenly found out that all those "technical" roadblocks to IPv6 migration weren't such a big problem after all.

Did you see the outrage when they suggested requiring an internet connection? With the PS4 as a viable competitor they don't have the leverage to pull stuff like that.

He said "They should have made IPv6 mandatory", as in, it cannot use IPv4. Obviously, "when connecting to the Internet is required" is implied, and having an always online console is irrelevant to his point.

It's the same issue, though. Everyone will start shit talking like this, I'd guess:

"y do I have to get _offbrand_internet_ when a PS4 works with any? f u micro$oft"

The galling thing about the Internet connection requirement was that it was extremely overbearing DRM that inconvenienced users in many cases and benefitted them in none. Requiring IPv6 doesn't have the same stink about it.

It turns out they are actually big problems. You can't dream them away. What would have actually happened is Microsoft would have had a customer revolt on their hands and not sold any Xbox One consoles -- I think they have enough problems without manufacturing one for no good reason.

"technical" roadblocks like many routers in production punt IPv6 processing to their control plane, crashing performance?

There's lots of magic happening behind the scenes that'll suddenly collapse with such an influx of new users. See also: AT&T when the iPhone came out and proved their data capacity to be insufficient.

I find the article to be a little misleading. While I do realize the benefits and merits of transitioning to ipv6, I don't really see this transition resulting in a better gaming experience for gamers. It would solve some issues for some users in certain scenarios, but when I think about a better gaming experience, I think about lag (aka latency). I'm a little bullish on the subject because I am working on something new in this space (focused on multiplayer gaming connectivity), so maybe I'm being too harsh. But most of the gamers I know don't really care about their Router/Wifi Configuration or ipv4 vs ipv6. They just want to connect, they want it to work, and they want minimum lag.

But they will care when they can not play because they do not have ipv6 connection. Which will happen in the coming years, so MS is trying to stay ahead of the curve here. In addition to trying to fix an existing problem they have, which is NAT.

Whilst this is cool and all, I think more people are interested in whether PS4 will use it as well.

I can't imagine PS4 not supporting IPv6. Hell, Windows XP has since SP1, though I find it extremely odd that none of the current consoles (PS3, 360) do.

"Support", as in, being able to connect using IPV6, in a IPv6 network, is one thing.

Requiring it in order to enable some functionality, is something else entirely. This might spark customer demand.

Are the video game console wars over? I did not realize that the PS4 was the clear winner. I am curious are you from Europe? It is my personal experience that xbox is the preferred platform (at least among my peers) in the US and that the PS is the preferred platform in Europe.

Yes, it's all but over. Perhaps you're not a gamer and aware the new Xbox is less powerful than the PS4, has a camera for the NSA/advertisers, and is significantly more expensive.

Microsoft also backtracked on horrendous anti-consumer DRM policies, which were wildly unpopular.

I thought the PS4 without and with camera was $100 or $40 cheaper than the xbox one. If you do an apples to apples comparison does 10% really count as significantly more expensive? Backtracking or "responding to customer complaints" is a bad thing?

Most consumers do not want a camera, so the PS4 represents a significant saving. And even in your comparison it's more expensive while being less powerful.

Responding to consumer feedback isn't a bad thing per se, but creating such anti-consumer policies in the first place makes one reluctant to spend a significant amount of money when a competitor has a more impressive product for less money.

Anti-consumer? I don't think so. The plan was to allow you to use your games wherever you want without the need to bring the physical disc. I don't know why you MS bashers have such a strong need for discs. Disc technology is dead, Microsoft was just leading the new technology that people perhaps aren't ready for. Sony doesn't have nearly the online capacity of Microsoft, not even close - which is why they had to make a more powerful console. In the end, it's not going to matter wether the PS4 is slightly faster. Multi platform games never looked better on PS3, and I don't have to worry about exclusives it seems, since Microsoft has the better line-up at this point. MS has also stated formally that the console won't be used for ad targeting - you can also unplug it if you want.

> Disc technology is dead,

Apart from second-hand games. Or local play. Or slow connections. Or ....

The scuttlebutt is that Sony was planning on mirroring many of Microsoft's announced policies, but backtracked after the reaction of consumers. Could be bogus though.

My up-votes for you good sir!

Honestly, the ability to share a game with family & friends without ever having to exchange physical media would've been a killer feature.

The family sharing on Xbone would have been only a time limited demo, nothing of the sort what Steam introduced a few weeks ago.

Do you have any sources for this outside of that Pastebin post?

Multiplats never looked better on the PS3 because the cell platform was a PITA to develop for. PS4 is moving to x86, as is the Xbone, so whoever champions the better hardware is likely going to win the battle this iteration.

Also, discounting exclusives is pretty huge. You also need to discount indie games, since Microsoft has proven they don't give a shit.

Disc technology is far from dead. Tell me this again when you have people biting at the bit to download 50GB worth of data (blu-ray DL size disk). Microsoft wasn't leading the next generation of anything... both physical media and online media should be able to exist without a persistent internet connection.

If you want to buy a console from the guys who, when asked about an offline offering of the One said "we have that, it's called a 360," then go for it. Super consumer friendly, no doubt.

Brand loyalty goes out the window with new consoles - I'm hearing PS4 preorders at Gamestop already outnumber XBox One preorders in the states by 4:1 from a Gamestop manager. While this doesn't mean competition is over, Microsoft has a lot of catching up to do.

> Brand loyalty goes out the window with new consoles -

But they could have easily ensured it by supporting / emulating previous generation games.

I really don't understand why they haven't done it.

Putting an entire Xbox 360 into the Xbox One would have jacked up the cost rather substantially.

Given the performance gap (16 times more RAM, etc) I suppose software emulation was an option, a bit like rosetta.

The first version of PS3 had an hardware support for PS2 but following versions had software emulation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_models#Model_comp...

Actually, the later versions of the PS3 that don't include hardware compatibility with PS2 titles have no compatibility with PS2 titles at all. The only software compatibility layer is for PS1 titles, which are sufficiently simple enough to emulate in software.

The biggest reason that software emulation won't work for 360 titles is that the hardware architecture of the new consoles is completely different from the older generation. The CPU instruction set is x86 instead of PowerPC-based, and the entire memory and GPU interaction system is different than the 360. To emulate the entire instruction set of everything in software is just not going to be possible.

> The only software compatibility layer is for PS1 titles

THere was a partial software emulation for european PS3s as stated by wikipedia.

> the hardware architecture of the new consoles is completely different from the older generation

I knew for the PowerPC vs x86 this is what I mentioned rosetta. For the GPU I thought they were both using DirectX.

Historically the console hardware itself has typically been a loss leader, at least towards the beginning of its life cycle. Most of the profit has typically come from the sale of games. So, supporting legacy games increases the cost of a product that has little or no margin, while simultaneously reducing demand for a higher margin product.

The public reaction to the XBox One at E3 was catastrophic. Microsoft is making an all-singing all-dancing entertainment device while Sony is making a pure gaming machine - this allows Sony to charge less and have more to show off that interests their core audience.

Microsoft also made some DRM-oriented plans related to used games that they've had to intensely backpedal on, and this really hurt them.

Basically, Microsoft completely disappointed and enraged the biggest hardcore gaming fans. It's worth asking whether those fans represent the entire market, but they definitely have a huge marketing footprint. You might see MS recoup this loss when they start getting demo units up with their impressive TV features and home automation stuff and whatnot. If MS can really produce a killer app for the Kinect (which is integrated into the One) they could do some damage - Sony has completely backed off on their plans to provide a 3D Move camera as a bundled feature of the PS4, which allows them to whoop MS on price, but also means they'll be in trouble if something makes the camera a "must have" feature.

Xbone got postponed to sometime in 2014 for much of Europe.

That's nice. It would be even nicer if any of the major UK ISPs supported IP6.

(Some of the small ones do on ADSL, but AFAIK you can't have both fiber AND IP6 from any provider, and now that I have FTTC I'm not keen to go back)

I have native IPv6 on FTTC.

Sign up for Sixxs or HE ipv6 tunnel. In the states HE POPs are remarkably better than sixxs but I think sixxs be different on your side of the pond. Among dual homed sites/services I have yet to find a site that has lower latency or faster speeds via direct IPv4 than over my HE tunnel.

Actually don't. The Xbox will use Teredo auto-tunneling to give you IPv6 if your ISP doesn't, and Teredo is more efficient than tunnel brokers.

I am not arguing I am just curious why teredo is more efficient than most tunnel brokers. I thought 6to4 and/or 6in4 had a lower protocol overhead?

Efficiency aside for any site that I have tested HE's peering agreements seem to produce lower latencies and better throughput than the IPv4 network paths provided by TWC. But this might be unique to my situation due to how close I am to the HE pop in chicago.

Going through a tunnel broker should be a longer path than a direct connection. Also, services based on the kindness of strangers aren't sustainable.

As far as path length is concerned it is my experience that HE.net has better peering agreements and faster interconnections between routers than TWC. I live in Syracuse, NY and regardless of destination all of my traffic is routed over TWC's network until it reaches Chicago. Upon reaching TWC's infrastructure in Chicago my traffic can be handed off to Cogent, Level3, Telia, etc or continue on TW's network. Or as luck would have it can be handed off to the HE POP in the same data center as the first hop in Chicago. Traffic that goes through the HE node has lower latencies and higher overall throughput. This is not just a general impression or anecdotal wget -4/-6 benchmarks. I have a local stratum one ntp server (GPS+PPS) for stability/robustness (and because I was interested in the overhead of the tunnel) the machine is configured to query a number of dual homed S1 ntp servers. The ipv6 associations consistently have lower delay and jitter statistics than their ipv4 counterparts.

I am not a teredo expert but I thought teredo used relays for some portion of traffic?

The second bit has nothing to do with efficiency and its worth pointing out that HE's tunnel broker service is not motivated by altruism.

I have FTTC with ipv6 from http://aa.net.uk/

Aha! That was a bit buried on their website.

...it's on the front page in big letters :-) "11 years of providing IPv6"

At first the idea of every device having a public IP address seemed like a security nightmare to me... but how easy is port-scanning the IPv6 Internet? If the addresses are sequential it obviously won't make any difference (you just need a list of ISP address ranges, e.g. from BGP, and start from the bottom), but maybe we can hand out addresses some other way that will make it very unlikely to find another device on the Internet? Slighly related: is the last bit the reason why we still haven't met any aliens?

> If the addresses are sequential

They aren't normally so. The bottom 64 bits of an IPv6 address will typically be either based on an ethernet address or random; see RFC 4291 section 2.5.1.

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