So I’ve been reading that you can’t host p2p games on TMHI due to the strict nat type issues (and can only join open nat players). I downloaded ProtonVPN to get around this, but decided to try it out before turning the VPN on. I was able to host and have people join in Remnant 2, Lethal Company, and Elden Ring. Am I missing something, or do we sometimes get a moderate nat and whether it’s nat type 1 or 2 is a roll of the dice?
From my understanding, it’s dependent on the towers. At my old house on my Switch I would get NAT type D every time, which can only play with type A and D. So playing a multiplayer game is almost guaranteed not to work because if there are 9 other people and a single person is not A or D (there’s a lot of B out there), the D gets kicked. Has to go through with seeing up a VPN on a router.
At my new house about 5 miles away and on a different tower I’m always NAT B.
It really depends on the game you’re playing. T-Mobile uses a mix of CGNAT and IPv4 Over IPv6 tunnels which means anything using direct P2P connections are not going to work (Eg many really old games). But thankfully since NAT and Firewalls in general are so common there are many methods that have been developed to get around it, so modern/recent games shouldn’t have a huge issue. Lethal Company for example makes use of the SteamWorks API which gives its a number of options for dealing with NAT traversal and tunnels, and it can do it pretty transparently to the player (Steam Networking (Steamworks Documentation)), Valve does all the heavy lifting for them. In short, most modern/recent games will have a method to get around T-Mobile’s network but your OG Warcraft/Starcraft games or anything wanting a direct P2P connection (like bittorrent) are going to struggle or just not work.
So, I have a switch and TM Wifi has restrictions that will not allow peer to peer even though the sale the product in terms “works like home wifi in every way”. They are going to end up in a law suit one day for false description of product to consumers for purpose of profit.
Okay, gotcha. Thanks for the explanation. So anything old (or with “outdated” p2p multiplayer implementation) that requires open/moderate nat can be circumvented with a VPN, while anything requiring ports forwarded (like wc and sc) will still not work for hosting games?
Actually, depending on your VPN setup, even the games needing forwarded ports will work. If you setup something like Zerotier or good ol’ L2TP with your other players you can get those older games to connect. But if your using a VPN provider like NordVPN or Surfshark or whatever the content creators are slinging this week, then the older Port-specific games are generally a no go.