Better Performance via Network Tuning

Crown · October 2016

I like many other people have been having internet issues lately. There's still server / lag issues in large scale PvP though that's outside the scope of this discussion.

In order to try and improve my connection and stability in PvP I've been working on some traffic management profiles for the PFSense traffic shaper. The results (when complete) should be usable in any other product if it supports traffic priority.

This site notes the ports being used by ESO as the following in additoin to TCP/80 and TCP/443 (normal web traffic which is probably the launcher downloading patches and visual content):
TCP / UDP Ports 24100 through 24131
TCP / UDP Ports 24300 through 24331
TCP / UDP Ports 24500 through 24507

Regarding IP addresses of the servers, I know that the North American servers are at least in the 198.20.200.0/24 range, though there may be more.

If anyone would like to help their fellow players it will take you less than a minute to do the following:
1. With the game open / logged in, open your task manager
2. At the bottom of the Performance tab, Open Resource Monitor
3. In the bottom half of the Network tab, look for eso64.exe and note the Address beside it
4. Post that Address here. It will be in the format of three separate numbers with a . (period) between them (like 192.20.200.25) if you're in the range of 192.20.200.something (from 1 to 254) then you can just say "in the range".
5. If there are multiple numbers, post them all (there will probably be two)

If you're familiar with using netstat, use PFSense already and can check your state tables, or have some other network monitoring app open, confirm if you see any ports outside the range of 24100-24507 (I've already seen a few outside that).

Once we have all this info, and can complete the instructions on how to set up higher priority for ESO traffic, what this will do is let you (if your router / firewall supports it) set traffic shaping rules, so that ESO traffic will take HIGHER priority than your room mate or sibling who is downloading torrents, and you should have less trouble with lag spikes in PvP (when they're due to YOUR network or internet connection being shared with other people - or being slower than all the things you try to do at the same time - such as watching movies or downloading things).

Serjustin19 · October 2016

Crown wrote: »

I like many other people have been having internet issues lately. There's still server / lag issues in large scale PvP though that's outside the scope of this discussion.

In order to try and improve my connection and stability in PvP I've been working on some traffic management profiles for the PFSense traffic shaper. The results (when complete) should be usable in any other product if it supports traffic priority.

This site notes the ports being used by ESO as the following in additoin to TCP/80 and TCP/443 (normal web traffic which is probably the launcher downloading patches and visual content):
TCP / UDP Ports 24100 through 24131
TCP / UDP Ports 24300 through 24331
TCP / UDP Ports 24500 through 24507

Regarding IP addresses of the servers, I know that the North American servers are at least in the 198.20.200.0/24 range, though there may be more.

If anyone would like to help their fellow players it will take you less than a minute to do the following:
1. With the game open / logged in, open your task manager
2. At the bottom of the Performance tab, Open Resource Monitor
3. In the bottom half of the Network tab, look for eso64.exe and note the Address beside it
4. Post that Address here. It will be in the format of three separate numbers with a . (period) between them (like 192.20.200.25) if you're in the range of 192.20.200.something (from 1 to 254) then you can just say "in the range".
5. If there are multiple numbers, post them all (there will probably be two)

If you're familiar with using netstat, use PFSense already and can check your state tables, or have some other network monitoring app open, confirm if you see any ports outside the range of 24100-24507 (I've already seen a few outside that).

Once we have all this info, and can complete the instructions on how to set up higher priority for ESO traffic, what this will do is let you (if your router / firewall supports it) set traffic shaping rules, so that ESO traffic will take HIGHER priority than your room mate or sibling who is downloading torrents, and you should have less trouble with lag spikes in PvP (when they're due to YOUR network or internet connection being shared with other people - or being slower than all the things you try to do at the same time - such as watching movies or downloading things).

Hi. Great post.

however I am on PS4. Would the above ports still work. Regardless of platform? Including the firewall on router? Thanks in advance.

Crown · October 2016

Serjustin19 wrote: »

Hi. Great post. however I am on PS4. Would the above ports still work. Regardless of platform? Including the firewall on router? Thanks in advance.

@Serjustin19 That same page lists ports and protocols for PS4 and XBox:
Xbox One Ports
UDP Port 88
UDP Port 5060
UDP Port 5062
UDP Port 6250
UDP Port 3478 through 3479
UDP Ports 12000 through 32000
UDP and TCP Port 53
UDP and TCP Port 3074
TCP Port 80
TCP Port 433

PlayStation 4 Ports
TCP Ports 10040 through 10060
UDP Ports 50000 through 60000
UDP Ports 12000 through 32000
UDP Port 6250
UDP Port 5060
UDP Port 5062
UDP Port 3478 through 3479
TCP Port 80
TCP Port 433

If you're using PFSense, you can check your state tables, though I don't believe you can do anything from the console itself to check. The ranges are HUGE that they list, which means that there are a LOT of other programs on your network that would probably use those same ranges and defeat the purpose of traffic shaping. The 12,000 - 32,000 and 50,000 - 60,000 ranges are used by a LOT of other things including torrents.

Serjustin19 · October 2016

@Crown

thank you so much for info. Your guide is very awesome and helpful. I'll go ahead and try these. Good guide.

Sugaroverdose · October 2016

Crown wrote: »

I like many other people have been having internet issues lately. There's still server / lag issues in large scale PvP though that's outside the scope of this discussion.

In order to try and improve my connection and stability in PvP I've been working on some traffic management profiles for the PFSense traffic shaper. The results (when complete) should be usable in any other product if it supports traffic priority.

This site notes the ports being used by ESO as the following in additoin to TCP/80 and TCP/443 (normal web traffic which is probably the launcher downloading patches and visual content):
TCP / UDP Ports 24100 through 24131
TCP / UDP Ports 24300 through 24331
TCP / UDP Ports 24500 through 24507

Regarding IP addresses of the servers, I know that the North American servers are at least in the 198.20.200.0/24 range, though there may be more.

If anyone would like to help their fellow players it will take you less than a minute to do the following:
1. With the game open / logged in, open your task manager
2. At the bottom of the Performance tab, Open Resource Monitor
3. In the bottom half of the Network tab, look for eso64.exe and note the Address beside it
4. Post that Address here. It will be in the format of three separate numbers with a . (period) between them (like 192.20.200.25) if you're in the range of 192.20.200.something (from 1 to 254) then you can just say "in the range".
5. If there are multiple numbers, post them all (there will probably be two)

If you're familiar with using netstat, use PFSense already and can check your state tables, or have some other network monitoring app open, confirm if you see any ports outside the range of 24100-24507 (I've already seen a few outside that).

Once we have all this info, and can complete the instructions on how to set up higher priority for ESO traffic, what this will do is let you (if your router / firewall supports it) set traffic shaping rules, so that ESO traffic will take HIGHER priority than your room mate or sibling who is downloading torrents, and you should have less trouble with lag spikes in PvP (when they're due to YOUR network or internet connection being shared with other people - or being slower than all the things you try to do at the same time - such as watching movies or downloading things).

Sorry, but it does not make sense to tune endpoint when issue on server-side, it will not help due to obvious reasons.
PS: Try switching to OPNsence, they at least trying to be modern, it should help more than traffic prioritisation on legacy distro.

LrdRahvin · October 2016

Sugaroverdose wrote: »

Crown wrote: »

I like many other people have been having internet issues lately. There's still server / lag issues in large scale PvP though that's outside the scope of this discussion.

In order to try and improve my connection and stability in PvP I've been working on some traffic management profiles for the PFSense traffic shaper. The results (when complete) should be usable in any other product if it supports traffic priority.

This site notes the ports being used by ESO as the following in additoin to TCP/80 and TCP/443 (normal web traffic which is probably the launcher downloading patches and visual content):
TCP / UDP Ports 24100 through 24131
TCP / UDP Ports 24300 through 24331
TCP / UDP Ports 24500 through 24507

Regarding IP addresses of the servers, I know that the North American servers are at least in the 198.20.200.0/24 range, though there may be more.

If anyone would like to help their fellow players it will take you less than a minute to do the following:
1. With the game open / logged in, open your task manager
2. At the bottom of the Performance tab, Open Resource Monitor
3. In the bottom half of the Network tab, look for eso64.exe and note the Address beside it
4. Post that Address here. It will be in the format of three separate numbers with a . (period) between them (like 192.20.200.25) if you're in the range of 192.20.200.something (from 1 to 254) then you can just say "in the range".
5. If there are multiple numbers, post them all (there will probably be two)

If you're familiar with using netstat, use PFSense already and can check your state tables, or have some other network monitoring app open, confirm if you see any ports outside the range of 24100-24507 (I've already seen a few outside that).

Once we have all this info, and can complete the instructions on how to set up higher priority for ESO traffic, what this will do is let you (if your router / firewall supports it) set traffic shaping rules, so that ESO traffic will take HIGHER priority than your room mate or sibling who is downloading torrents, and you should have less trouble with lag spikes in PvP (when they're due to YOUR network or internet connection being shared with other people - or being slower than all the things you try to do at the same time - such as watching movies or downloading things).

Sorry, but it does not make sense to tune endpoint when issue on server-side, it will not help due to obvious reasons.

^THIS

Crown · October 2016

Sugaroverdose wrote: »

Sorry, but it does not make sense to tune endpoint when issue on server-side, it will not help due to obvious reasons.

We live out in the boonies, and our ISP ends up with saturated uplinks in prime time. They've enabled QoS and a traffic prioritization, and I do some work with the PFSense folks - so there's no reason not to start tagging and prioritizing if your ISP supports it. Many will do so for VoIP traffic, so if they allow it for other things why not take advantage of it.

I also have three guildies who live in a house with another dude who is downloading torrents 24/7 and saturating their 25 MBit connection. Using the default traffic shaping (we spent about 10 minutes setting it up) settings they've now limited him to 50% and a limited number of sockets (they're messing with it as I write this). Seems to have solved their problem.

As I said at the start, there are server side issues, and that's outside the scope of this. Not everyone lives in fibre to the home areas unfortunately, and this very well can help people who have issues at the end point or whose ISPs are cooperative.

Sugaroverdose wrote: »

PS: Try switching to OPNsence, they at least trying to be modern, it should help more than traffic prioritisation on legacy distro.

I'll take a look at it this weekend, thanks for the suggestion!

ZOS_PeterT · October 2016

This thread has been moved to: General Help

CapnPhoton · October 2016

The issues are not all server side. The OP has a great post and useful info. Just to add something to it for console players: I have posted about this before but if your router is capable of it, you may want to name your devices in your router page that displays connected devices. This way the device has a name attached to the device's permanent MAC address. When you set ports, assign them to the device name instead of IP. This is useful because your router at times may not assign the same IP to a device every time. So in order to make sure the ports always get assigned to your device using ESO, assign to name.

I had problems at first, then I did this and I have few issues, even with carnage in Cyrodill and 50 people in front of me dueling. My connection is the lowest of the low at 3 mbps.

Crown · October 2016

@ZOS_PeterT This isn't a "General Help" topic, this is intended specifically to help people in PvP who have connectivity / network challenges and whose games are impacted by it.

Sugaroverdose · October 2016

Crown wrote: »

I also have three guildies who live in a house with another dude who is downloading torrents 24/7 and saturating their 25 MBit connection. Using the default traffic shaping (we spent about 10 minutes setting it up) settings they've now limited him to 50% and a limited number of sockets (they're messing with it as I write this). Seems to have solved their problem.

Did you heard about FQ_CoDel anything? It's made for low bandwidth and do it's job perfectly.

GorraShatan · October 2016

198.20.200.35

ZOS_CoriJ · October 2016

This isn't a "General Help" topic, this is intended specifically to help people in PvP who have connectivity / network challenges and whose games are impacted by it.

While we understand the intention the move was made to the Support/Tech forum since it is a discussion of assisting technical issues. Here it can be of help to a wider audience and also stick around a little longer. So you know, the thread was left available on the PVP Alliance forum as well just in case anyone was looking for it. It simply leads here.

Rune_Relic · October 2016

The only issue with this is low bandwidth ADSL in the UK is still swamped and literally 'taken over' by xbox1.
So if you have a PC and someone running xbox1 on your network with low bandwidth you are stuffed.
Many players on the xbox forum have been pleading with Microsoft to provide bandwidth limiters within Xbox1.
It has fallen on death ears for months.
QoS literally has no effect.
I have been shaping by IP/MaC and port...all of which was pointless.

At one point I will start sniffing the network to see what xbox is upto and probably poison the xbox traffic in some way.
No doubt they are doing similar already.
https://xbox.uservoice.com/forums/253802-home-xbox-guide-and-settings/suggestions/6033072-downloads-bandwidth-limit

Crown · October 2016

ZOS_CoriJ wrote: »

Here it can be of help to a wider audience and also stick around a little longer. So you know, the thread was left available on the PVP Alliance forum as well just in case anyone was looking for it. It simply leads here.

@ZOS_CoriJ Thanks for the explanation - and for leaving the link on the PvP forum.