Hi,

we're racing a national league and have a dedicated server with fixed ip On Sunday the master server had huge problems and so our "race weekend" suffered some serious "damage" Also when using the master server the data unnecessarily travels "abroad" and back.

I was wondering is it possible to race over Internet without the master server? This can be s stupid question, but as we have the fixed ip, we certainly don't need the race list etc. We also have our own stas system, so lfsworld stats are not important to us.

I know there's the "use master=yes/no" -option in the server cfg, but what does it actually do?

how about setting up a lan game and tunnel it trough the internet?
So that everyone invited can join.

Ok,

sounds promising... But how do I do that in practice?

You need a server which can handle a VPN (Virtual Private Network). I think Windows can do this, but i'm not sure. It can certainly act as the client.

The problem is that your drivers will each have to set themselves up as a client, and the process - no matter how complicated or simple - is guaranteed to confuse a few of them.

As a solution it does not strike me as ideal, but from a technical point of view it will work.

The only VPN server I have used is the Mac OS X Server software, it works quite well and is easy to setup. It does not need to be the same machine as the game server, but must of course be on the same local network.

There is definately a PC alternative, I am just not familiar with them.

Try Hamachi

Hamachi doesn't use local IP ranges. You'll need a virtual private network that uses the 192.168.* range or the other local IP-address range that I currently can't remember. Hamachi won't work.

Vain

LFS only allows connections to valid LAN IP ranges (or over the master server), so Hamachi's 5.x.x.x ranges (or similar) won't work.

Quote from Vain :

Hamachi doesn't use local IP ranges. You'll need a virtual private network that uses the 192.168.* range or the other local IP-address range that I currently can't remember. Hamachi won't work.

Vain

Quote from AndroidXP :

LFS only allows connections to valid LAN IP ranges (or over the master server), so Hamachi's 5.x.x.x ranges (or similar) won't work.

Didn't know that... Thx

Surely the Master Server is only used for race lists and host information. If it were a gateway for all server data then i wouldnt be able to play on any servers.

I don't think all the race data travels through the master server, since it would have to be some server. More of a heartbeat gets sent to the master server now and then. It's not an issue. Plus if you were to bypass it you'll lose loads of functionality.

Advertise your IP address in case of future problems with the master server, I believe racers can connect to IP addresses when typed in the 'connect to' box. Is this true?

No. You can enter server names into the "Connect To"-box, the masterserver will resolve that name into an IP address and the client connects.
There is no way around the master server unless you're connected via a lan-cable.

Vain

Quote from Becky Rose :

You need a server which can handle a VPN (Virtual Private Network). I think Windows can do this, but i'm not sure. It can certainly act as the client.

Windows Routing and Remote Access Server (RRAS), is what you'd need to configure for VPN; (un)fortunately this is limited to server versions of Windows. There are, of course, many third party VPN servers.

Quote from Becky Rose :

The problem is that your drivers will each have to set themselves up as a client, and the process - no matter how complicated or simple - is guaranteed to confuse a few of them.

If your racers are using Windows, its possible to setup a connection executable, which you then distribute to your racers. No setup required, other than installing the package you send them (See: Connection Manager Administration Kit).

Quote from Becky Rose :

The only VPN server I have used is the Mac OS X Server software, it works quite well and is easy to setup. It does not need to be the same machine as the game server, but must of course be on the same local network.

The same can be said for any good VPN servers

While the problem you experienced the other day is extremely unfortunate, it's an extremely rare occurrence. I'm quite sure that Scawen has in hand all that is required to ensure that the chances of losing contact with the Master Server in future are reduced to as near zero as is at all possible without the use of Kryptonite.

Bypassing the Master Server is not an option, and it shouldn't be an option either. The Master Server is responsible for maintaining the integrity of servers and licences alike. Bypass the Master Server, and you punch a hole through a very important aspect of LFS that we all depend on, to ensure that we're all racing with good people, on good software.

I'm not sure why VPN should be so hard though. I've raced over the net on a VPN, i.e. as a LAN game, with XP Pro as the server. You can create a new server connection that allows VPN's by going to Control Panel> Network Connections> New Connection> Advanced Connection> Accept Incoming Connections> Allow VPN's> [specify users]> [configure protocols]> Done.

You do need to ensure your router can handle VPN's, my crappy POS router didn't have a problem with any such thing. If you do run into a problem you could make sure you have a decent firewall installed and switch the race host to DMZ for the duration of the races.

The clients will then create a new VPN connection and upon connecting be assigned LAN IP's (RFC whateveritwas compatible) and you then type the host's IP in the local network game IP box in LFS.

*edit: If you do have a router for the host, AFAIK the port you need to forward to the host is 1723.

Okey dokey,

I'll try that tunneling stuff later on : Thanks ja kiitos

/thread hijack

um, sorry to ask here but can anyone help me please wich service is at fault when your dependencies cannot be resolved?
i get errormessages that say "win32: the service cannot be startet, he's deactivated or not connected to active devices" (free translation).
I found out about this while maintaining my system, finding the syslog messages box "overflowing" with error messages concerning "DCOM" but these were generated by "Routing & Ras" (mentioned by Angry_angel) ending with following message:
"routing & Ras cannot be started on local machine. fourther information to be found at Event-protocol.
Contact the service-provider, if it's not a MS service.
Tell them about the errorcode "340"...blah" (free translation)

thx for any advice...
regards

Just thought I would point out that when the master server went down it did not affect people who were ALREADY racing.

Quote from micha1980de :

/thread hijack

um, sorry to ask here but can anyone help me please wich service is at fault when your dependencies cannot be resolved?
i get errormessages that say "win32: the service cannot be startet, he's deactivated or not connected to active devices" (free translation).
I found out about this while maintaining my system, finding the syslog messages box "overflowing" with error messages concerning "DCOM" but these were generated by "Routing & Ras" (mentioned by Angry_angel) ending with following message:
"routing & Ras cannot be started on local machine. fourther information to be found at Event-protocol.
Contact the service-provider, if it's not a MS service.
Tell them about the errorcode "340"...blah" (free translation)

thx for any advice...
regards

Any chance we could actually get the full event log? If you press the little copy icon on the right it'll copy the formatted event into your clipboard - then just paste it into the forum? Sometimes theres a lot of data that you can miss

In my work I tried many VPN solutions, and IMO anything is better than the built-in Windows VPN. The VPN is built on PPP tunnelled over TCP connection, which maybe was a nice 5-minute hack 10 years ago when you had no other tools, but a really bad idea for anything requiring either low latency or high bandwith.

Applications using UDP will not work well in case of any packet loss, because the underlying TCP transport layer will retransmit lost packets, and block any other packets from reaching the application until the lost packets arrive. They may not even work well in case of no packet loss, because of the underlying TCP protocol's Nagle algorithm.

Applications requiring bandwitch will choke in case of any network congestion, because TCP flow control algorithms have terrible properties when layered on top of another TCP connection. Basically, any lost packets in the lower layer will cause build-up of retransmission packets in upper layer, wasting the bandwith, and causing the upper layer to either back-off to a crawl, or loose connection.

For me, trying Windows VPN was a wasted time, because it turned out to be unusable for anything other than checking email (provided there were no big messages in my mailbox ).

I am currently using OpenVPN. It supports, among other things, compression, encryption, tunnelling over UDP, tunnelling ethernet frames (ethernet bridging), and works well for me even in poor network conditions.

If you suppy your clients with ready to use configuration files, setting it up is a breeze. Basically just click through the installer, then click on the *.ovpn configuration file, and that's it.

sure here it is... (and i knew that little button :P, was just wondering since i translated most of the important lines, because this report will be in german...)

Ereignistyp: Fehler
Ereignisquelle: DCOM
Ereigniskategorie: Keine
Ereigniskennung: 10005
Datum: 14.09.2006
Zeit: 15:19:18
Benutzer: *pixelized*
Computer: *pixelized too*
Beschreibung:
Bei DCOM ist der Fehler "Der angegebene Dienst kann nicht gestartet werden. Er ist deaktiviert oder nicht mit aktivierten Geräten verbunden. " aufgetreten, als der Dienst "winmgmt" mit den Argumenten "" gestartet wurde, um den folgenden Server zu verwenden:
{8BC3F05E-D86B-11D0-A075-00C04FB68820}

Weitere Informationen über die Hilfe- und Supportdienste erhalten Sie unter http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

ok have a look, and thx for the effort