10 Years of the "???" Server Browser Ping Problem

[Philip.]

For those who are not familiar with this ancient problem here is a quick recap:
The game attempts to ping the servers that are being displayed to you in the Server Browser screen so it can sort them (not only) according to the assumed latency you would have when playing on them. So servers with lower assumed latency have higher priority in the server listing etc.

This in theory is indeed a very nice feature potentially improving the player's browsing and multiplayer experience by a lot. The problem is, most of the time this ping attempt fails so the browser shows either a very high ping or if the ping would be too high it shows "???" instead. Either way the server is doomed to being throw into the void of the "???" ping servers at the bottom of the server listing and nobody is going to play on it.

Yes, some servers do not allow to be pinged for whatever reason. But there are also a lot of servers that are capable of displaying this information.
Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. This RNG property of this problem makes it even more frustrating and there is nothing you can do about it.

Quote

Since so many servers cannot be pinged, we will likely come up with a better solution in the not-so-distant future.

This a quote from a comment on this problem posted on 5th December 2014. Now it's 2024 and yet the problem is still basically the same as it was 10 years ago.

Here is the original post for reference:

Here is also one of the newer posts mentioning this problem while also providing some interesting solution:

So either make the ping information more accurate (maybe by retrying it multiple times and calculating their average) or do not give it that much value when sorting the server listing as it has currently and use information that has higher accuracy for this (for example the country as mentioned in the post above).

There was a great opportunity for this to be looked at in the last year's Server Lobby and Networking Beta I was quite disappointed that it wasn't used.

I hope that this feature implemented with good intention will be able to finally manifest itself in it's true light and make the multiplayer part of this awesome game more enjoyable and a overall better experience.

[Auhrer]

• I think Klei doesn't care about this.

  It's unlikely that this will be resolved.

  In fact, it will never be resolved.

[loopuleasa]

I actually tried really hard to resolve this

The issue is not klei, it is my damn port forwarding

I cannot solve port forwarding for my home, this affects all games of this nature

[nome]

3 hours ago, loopuleasa said:

I cannot solve port forwarding for my home, this affects all games of this nature

Does your router have a real IP, or are you dealing with double-NAT where your router's "internet" IP is in one of the RFC1918 ranges like 192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x? If it's double-NAT that would absolutely explain you being unable to port-forward as whoever is doing NAT upstream of you would ALSO need to port-forward

[Guille6785]

I'd also be fine with ping just not sending servers down to the shadow realm even if this doesn't get fixed

[loopuleasa]

13 hours ago, nome said:

Does your router have a real IP, or are you dealing with double-NAT where your router's "internet" IP is in one of the RFC1918 ranges like 192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x? If it's double-NAT that would absolutely explain you being unable to port-forward as whoever is doing NAT upstream of you would ALSO need to port-forward

That's the problem: I don't know...

Everything is too complicated, and I don't have the time to spend on it

I already lost 2 years of my life trying to handle whatever the magic cables are doing

[Philip.]

It's too unreliable even if you have setup everything correctly, so giving it any weight in terms of server result priority does more harm than good.

One relatively simple solution would be to display servers higher if they are hosted in your country. Maybe the countries could be even displayed in a form of flags instead of the misleading ping as does this online server browser. This information tells you much more and most importantly, it doesn't require the server host to do any complicated port forwarding and other stuff people generally try to avoid.

[Jakepeng99]

On 10/31/2024 at 8:18 AM, Guille6785 said:

I'd also be fine with ping just not sending servers down to the shadow realm even if this doesn't get fixed

Yeah. It ruins alot of servers.

[Auhrer]

On 10/30/2024 at 9:10 PM, nome said:

Does your router have a real IP, or are you dealing with double-NAT where your router's "internet" IP is in one of the RFC1918 ranges like 192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x? If it's double-NAT that would absolutely explain you being unable to port-forward as whoever is doing NAT upstream of you would ALSO need to port-forward

I think that a filter by country or continent in the server list would solve most of these problems.

Finding servers even with ??? would not be a problem

[gaymime]

6 minutes ago, Auhrer said:

I think that a filter by country or continent in the server list would solve most of these problems.

Finding servers even with ??? would not be a problem

that would certainly help people like me who keep getting shuffled off into sea and the americas x''D i am too stupid to learn more languages just so i can ask where base is

[Auhrer]

Maybe this should be in the suggestions thread

[Lord_Maxwell]

On 10/30/2024 at 7:10 PM, nome said:

Does your router have a real IP, or are you dealing with double-NAT where your router's "internet" IP is in one of the RFC1918 ranges like 192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x? If it's double-NAT that would absolutely explain you being unable to port-forward as whoever is doing NAT upstream of you would ALSO need to port-forward

He comenzado hoy con este tema y al no contar con un servicio empresarial que me brinde acceso a una ip pública (real-ip) opte por utilizar DMZ con mi ip estática siguiendo los pasos usuales, sin embargo, mi proveedor de internet posee restricciones muy estrictas sobre la apertura de puertos, sí no es tu caso podrías revisar la configuración del firewall, tal vez probar con una VPN (no valdría la pena a largo plazo pero si para realizar una prueba), aunque hay servicios en línea como ngrok o No-IP que podrían servir no estoy seguro que sea posible configurar y que el servidor use el dominio dinámico de estos como su dirección IP, son tantas cosas que podríamos intentar.

I started with this topic today and since I don't have a business service that gives me access to a public IP (real-IP), I chose to use DMZ with my static IP following the usual steps. However, my Internet provider has very strict restrictions on opening ports. If this is not your case, you could check your firewall settings, maybe try a VPN (it wouldn't be worth it in the long run, but it would be worth it to test it). Although there are online services like ngrok or No-IP that could help, I'm not sure it's possible to configure them and have the server use their dynamic domain as its IP address. There are so many things we could try.

Estoy consciente de que es necesario que se haga manualmente o con la prestación de servicios de un profesional confiable, porque es un tema de ciberseguridad, las restricciones estrictas sobre los puertos nos brindan una red privada y segura, los servidores de klei envía paquetes UDP para enviar solicitudes a los servidores dedicados y no dedicados por defecto es desde el puerto 10998 hasta el 11000 para medir el ping, es necesario que los puertos estén abiertos para que pueda pasar el ping. Todas las soluciones que han plantado son válidas, sin embargo, no las veo viables dada la naturaleza misma de los servidores, no obstante, creo que es posible implementar soluciones alternativas tales como lo son Relay Servers, TURN, STUN, servicios en la nube (Se tendrían que migrar los servidores y eso tal vez limite mucho la cantidad de mundos que podríamos poseer) y ICE que es como el TURN y STUN que sirven para agilizar la ruta o comunicación más corta entre dispositivos obviamente a través de NAT.

TODO ESTO IMPLICA GASTOS DEMASIADO ELEVADOS (No soy experto en finanzas para saber si es de verdad Klei cuenta con la posibilidad de implementar un cambio en la infraestructura de red de esta manera para que todos puedan visualizar el ping de las demás personas, amo este juego y aunque no me guste no todo es perfecto).
 

I am aware that it is necessary to do it manually or with the provision of services from a trusted professional, because it is a cybersecurity issue, strict restrictions on ports give us a private and secure network, klei servers send UDP packets to send requests to dedicated and non-dedicated servers by default it is from port 10998 to 11000 to measure ping, it is necessary that the ports are open so that the ping can pass. All the solutions that have been planted are valid, however, I do not see them viable given the very nature of the servers, however, I believe that it is possible to implement alternative solutions such as Relay Servers, TURN, STUN, cloud services (The servers would have to be migrated and that may greatly limit the number of worlds that we could own) and ICE which is like TURN and STUN that serve to speed up the shortest route or communication between devices obviously through NAT.

ALL THIS INVOLVES TOO HIGH EXPENSES (I am not an expert in finance to know if Klei really has the possibility of implementing a change in the network infrastructure in this way so that everyone can see the ping of other people, I love this game and even if I don't like it, not everything is perfect).

[ALCRD]

I have "???" ping on official servers too.. even from my region.

It's been like this for as long as i remember.

But when i join the ping is minimal like the "???" is just improper reading / false but the ping is actually fine when i join in.

[mima_]

1 hour ago, ALCRD said:

I have "???" ping on official servers too.. even from my region.

It's been like this for as long as i remember.

But when i join the ping is minimal like the "???" is just improper reading / false but the ping is actually fine when i join in.

the problem with ??? ping is the server will be burried under thousand of available servers.
unless people curious enough to find the "hidden ping" server name, they probably wont ever find it, even it hosted on your neighbour pc with ping less than 10 when playing.

[loopuleasa]

Are there other games that have this issue?

I don't think counter-strike has this issue for instance. Don't know what valve did, but an alternative more robust way exists.

This is impacting the server browser much more than people think

[Philip.]

5 hours ago, loopuleasa said:

but an alternative more robust way exists.

Either the more robust way, which definitely exists, or some of the many alternative solutions that the community has suggested over the years.

However, I am surprised that this thread is still alive after more than half a year. This again, indicates that the problem is still relevant today and should be looked upon by the devs or at least they should provide an official statement on this.

[loopuleasa]

4 hours ago, Philip. said:

Either the more robust way, which definitely exists, or some of the many alternative solutions that the community has suggested over the years.

However, I am surprised that this thread is still alive after more than half a year. This again, indicates that the problem is still relevant today and should be looked upon by the devs or at least they should provide an official statement on this.

I just got a new PC with win11 on it and not only I can't see ping on servers, I literally can't connect to ANY servers to play the game

 

[AteIas]

Yes, guys, we have very serious problems. It scares me to imagine how many people the game has lost and continues to lose right now because of this problem.
??? - its not normal.

It's terrible and we need the help of the developers

p.s. Atelas, 2000+ hrs, event and mod-maker.

[FillerText]

On 2/5/2025 at 11:38 AM, loopuleasa said:

Are there other games that have this issue?

I don't think counter-strike has this issue for instance. Don't know what valve did, but an alternative more robust way exists.

This is impacting the server browser much more than people think

Valve server browsers are awful. Wdym? They are completely littered with fake players, and ping to get you to join. Also servers with 255/24 players. It doesn't take a genius to know that stuff can get shady with it.