Problems Connecting to an Online Race Room

[ALB123]

I am very unfamiliar with online gaming in general and even with GT6 I mostly stick to Seasonal Events, Career Mode/Hotlapping/Testing Tunes/etc... Recently, I joined up with a small group of guys and we like to race on Saturday's at 5pm EST. There are only 6 of us, yet every time I try to join the room I have problems. Last week I was getting the message "Room Is Full" repeatedly, even though there were only 5 people in the room and you could see that the settings were for a maximum of 16. Occasionally,
"Request Timed Out" would pop up as well when I tried to enter.

Tonight, I'm getting "Request Timed Out" repeatedly. It's the same situation. There are 5 people in the room waiting for me to join and for some reason I just can't get in there. I just keep getting the Request Timed Out message over and over and over again.

Whenever I decide to just join a random room, I always get in without issue. Admittedly, I don't do this often, but occasionally I will join a Nordschleife Cruising room just to check out other cars and mess around a little bit.

I'm on a 100Mbit/5Mbit line from Charter and my ping times are very good when I run speedtest.net. I've had Charter broadband for 14+ years, since their first package of 512Kbit/256Kbit and I can tell you that, overall, this has been a very stable and reliable internet connection...

Any ideas? I think the host is in the UK and I'm in Massachusetts, but I know at least one New Yorker who has no problems connecting. Again, I don't know much about how this actually works. When someone creates a room, is the "room" created on PD's server and we all connect to that server? Is the "room" actually created on the room hosts's PS3 - meaning HIS connection is the meeting point of all room participants? I could definitely use an overview on how GT6 manages these connections in user created rooms.

 

[ryzno]

From the numbers you gave your upload is very low. Making it almost impossible for your system to send enough info to the server and the other PS3's. Thus you time out.

 

[ynot]

I do not think your speed is the issue. I have Time Warner here in San Antonio and my connection on this desktop which is wireless is 15.34 mbps download and 0.94 mbps upload. I host lobbies on GT6 several times a week for hours at a time and never have any problems. My PS3 is hard wired to the router though. Not sure of the speed test on it. However, when I am online racing my son and daughter have their PS3's connected by wireless playing online and they have no problems either. My son also has his kindle connected watching youtube videos, my daughter has her iPhone connected listening to Pandora and sometimes the wife is either on her kindle or this computer. That's 3 PS3's, and 3 other devices connected at the same time and none of them have problems.

I have run across other players that cannot get into our lobby. They show they enter and then they leave over and over until they give up. I think it is just incompatibility between you and the host or another player. There is one guy that races with us and when he comes in the room, anyone that comes in after him will sometimes not be able to see other drives on the track that are below his name. When we get into this problem, once everyone is in the lobby we ask him to leave and come back in as the last person and it fixes this most of the time.

I did run across a situation a few months back where I was having problems getting the PS3 to log on the Playstation Network. I saw a post on the PSN forums where Time Warner customers were having problems logging on. I called Time Warner and they said they were not having any issues on their end. I got in an online chat with SONY Playstation support and they said Time Warner was having issues with their DNS servers and it was affecting logging into the PSN. They walked me through switching the PS3's DNS servers over to Google DNS servers and it fixed the problem and I have left it like that since. I have not had a disconnect since then. Another player was having similar problems with disconnects with his system out of Augusta, Georgia. I walked him through switching to Google DNS servers and he has not had a disconnect since then either.

If you know how to switch the DNS servers on your PS3 here are the Google DNS numbers to use.

Primary DNS is 8.8.8.8

Secondary DNS is 8.8.4.4

If you are not sure get on a live chat with SONY Playstation and they will walk you through it. It is very easy to do and they will stay with you online until you get it working.

Here is the link...

https://support.us.playstation.com/app/contact_options


And if you ever want to race with us you are more than welcome to join us anytime.

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/thre...race-weds-11-19-71-laps-red-bull-ring.268293/

If you have no luck getting it switched send me a private message and I will walk you through it over the phone.

Not sure this will help your situation or not but it certainly will not hurt.

Good Luck

 

[t_wilson01]

@ynot Good post. We've come across the issues you mentioned also, more so with GT5. I know op has his PS3 connected with a LAN cable so that eliminates the issues Wi-Fi can cause. Giving the PS3 a static address and setting it outside the router's firewall (DMZ) might help. We have the option of a different lobby host too.

 

[Streeto]

Yes, 5mbps upload is a lot, I only have 1mbps (UK caps upload speeds for some reason) and I can host lobbies without too much trouble, and I can join most people.

Ping/jitter is a much bigger thing to look at for gaming than DL/UL. Your "ping" response (ms) to a server is ever changing, and varies depending on physical distance. "Jitter" is how much your average ping time fluctuates and generally comes down to line quality. Check out pingtest.net

The DMZ setup helps, if you can find a guide, but its slightly different for every router brand.

 

[ALB123]

From the numbers you gave your upload is very low. Making it almost impossible for your system to send enough info to the server and the other PS3's. Thus you time out.

5 megabit upload isn't a lot? Do you have any idea what the AVERAGE upload speed is in the U.S.? Not 5mbit, not even close...

Thank you everyone for your suggestions. I really appreciate it. I will look into forcing the PS3 to use Google's DNS servers. I know how to do that. I haven't tried setting the PS3 in the DMZ yet. That's a possibility. Thank you. You've given me plenty to try. 👍

 

[ryzno]

Well the reason I said that is cause I have 55/25/.5ping and I have plenty of lag issues. I guess it's cause my net has to compensate for distance and other people's poor signal. I know it is not my BR drive, cause it's on my HDD and GTA5, no crashes or freezing or update issues, so it's not my system. And with Hi speed net nowadays 5 up seems low to me... No disrespect.

 

[t_wilson01]

Well the reason I said that is cause I have 55/25/.5ping and I have plenty of lag issues. I guess it's cause my net has to compensate for distance and other people's poor signal. I know it is not my BR drive, cause it's on my HDD and GTA5, no crashes or freezing or update issues, so it's not my system. And with Hi speed net nowadays 5 up seems low to me... No disrespect.

5mbps is actually good so that's definitely not contributing to the problem. It seems slow to you because your 25mbps upload speed is just awesome! 👍 Share the wealth.

 

[ryzno]

I learn something every day. I probably need to look into setting my router up as ynot mentioned, it might help my lag issues. #lazy

 

[ynot]

I learn something every day. I probably need to look into setting my router up as ynot mentioned, it might help my lag issues. #lazy

Not your router, just change the DNS setting on your PS3. See if it helps.