
Microsoft: The Best Xbox One Gaming Experience Will Be Over IPv6 - danyork
http://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/blog/2013/10/microsoft-the-best-xbox-one-gaming-experience-will-be-over-ipv6/
======
CountSessine
As a network game programmer, this is sort of what I was telling everyone I
knew a few years ago - that the real consumer push for IPv6 would be with
video games. IPv4 address exhaustion will eventually force carrier-level NAT
and make peered game connections and NAT traversal difficult in all cases and
impossible in many.

Microsoft now needs to make IPv6 a 'brand' \- something that consumers know to
ask about and demand from their ISPs. A nice warning screen in the XBoxLive
connection test telling gamers that because their ISP doesn't support IPv6
their gaming experience will be degraded should do the trick.

~~~
aray
It's possible they could even update the Xbox 360 to do this as well (though
without heavy branding to show that the update improves networking, users
would likely be upset at a new 'you dont support ipv6' interstitial)

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Tomdarkness
I've never understood why consoles continue to use P2P for multiplayer games
(okay I lie, there is obviously a economical advantage), especially when
customers are paying for a online gaming service. Just from a technical
standpoint it is full of problems:

\- You are using a consumer connection for one of the most challenging types
of communication. It is very latency sensitive, does not play nice at all with
dropped packets and makes heavy use of your upstream connection which is
typically weak on consumer connections.

\- Consoles are typically about extracting the greatest amount of performance
you can from the hardware yet you are also trying to host a multiplayer game.
I've run a few gaming servers for some PC games (Arma 2, Source, Minecraft,
etc.) and they can be very, very taxing and can require some serious hardware
when you start looking at large number of players.

\- Not everyone who owns a console is some technical expert. While there are
technologies designed to alleviate the problem, e.g UPnP, it places a
requirement on the consumer that is not really required.

\- Host has an advantage. Almost zero latency and can abuse the fact they are
hosting the game by using things like a lag switch.

~~~
wmf
It's especially confusing considering that MS is switching Skype away from P2P
towards their supposedly cost-efficient and webscale data centers.

~~~
MAGZine
Has switched.

It sucks big time, and as a result, Skype can now be wiretapped which isn't
nearly as easy on a P2P network, since everyones a node, and supernodes were
chosen based on availability.

~~~
anologwintermut
Not the Microsoft Skype wiretap memee again. Read the PRISM slides, Skype was
tapped before Microsoft bought the company, let alone rearchitected the system

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gentoomenpls
I wonder if this will create any sort of advantages for players?

Back on COD:MW2 I put my XBOX on the DMZ, and that made me seem to have a
better connection in the eyes of the P2P networking structure. This resulted
in me always being chose as the lobby host. Essentially giving me the
advantage of having ~0ms ping.

~~~
dfc
If that was the case you screwed up forwarding ports 88 and 3074 to your xbox.
Anybody that cares about XBL match outcomes does not connect without making
use of port forwarding or their router's "DMZ." As far as comparative
advantages go, this helped you with the bottom 20% of XBL. Moreover I am
pretty sure that MW2 did lag compensation so I am not sure it was an
"advantage."

~~~
recursive
I would be amazed if 80% of XBL users are forwarding ports on their routers.
I've never heard of this before.

~~~
dfc
Respectfully, if you have never heard of port forwarding before I think that
you might not be very informed when it comes to XBL. Or maybe you have never
heard of port forwarding because you bought a device with UPNP and therefore
you never noticed the problems that can result from lack of port forwarding.

Port forwarding has been a must for quality FPS match making since the
beginning. What XBL games do you play?

~~~
Lewisham
It really depends whether he plays a game that warns about it. The dashboard
only warns about a Moderate NAT if you run a network test. Of the games I
played, only Halo 3 warned about Moderate NAT. Halo 4 doesn't bother anymore.

So I don't think he's not "very informed." He's the normal player base. I
don't even bother setting up NAT anymore and it works fine, even though I know
I should go through the rigmarole of doing it.

------
nly
I'm glad they're promoting IPv6, but I very much doubt the 'experience' will
change one iota

~~~
dfc
Match making with a game like CoD or BF will be much better if every player
can host and or connect directly to every other player.

~~~
arthulia
If the server is hosted on the Xbox, why am I paying for XBox Live at all?

~~~
cipherzero
Seriously? Running a service cost money. Yes they likely have a markup, but
the point is you can't get everything for free. How slow would match making be
if it was entirely p2p with no Msft central servers?

On an entirely subjective note, I think xbox lives game recording will be
baller!

~~~
jlgreco
Doesn't Microsoft also make you pay for xbox live just so that you can connect
to Netflix's servers (who you are also paying) over your home internet
connection (which you are also paying for)?

~~~
Zombieball
I do not believe this is true (although I haven't verified it). Xbox live
basic level is free. Xbox live gold costs money. I would HOPE you can still
use Netflix with Xbox live basic.

~~~
georgemcbay
As surprising as it may be, Netflix requires Xbox Live Gold.

This is different than say the PS3 which does not require PS+ for Netflix.

This is one of the many reasons that while I may eventually own an Xbox One (I
own 2 different Xbox 360s now), my first "next gen" console will be a PS4.

~~~
tstrimple
Yet PS3 requires you to have PSN+ to download in the background and to save
games to the cloud. Both things you can do without Gold on Xbox. They each
have their pros and cons for paid upgrade, but I find the Xbox live experience
to be far superior to what the PS3 has to offer.

~~~
itafroma
> Yet PS3 requires you to have PSN+ to download in the background [...]

This isn't true, either. Background downloading predates PlayStation Plus and
everyone has had access to it since its launch. You might be thinking of
_automatic_ downloads, but that's not true either as of PS3 system software
update 4.50, released last week.[1]

> [...] and to save games to the cloud. Both things you can do without Gold on
> Xbox.

Xbox support seems to indicate[2] cloud storage requires an Xbox LIVE Gold
membership. Has that changed recently (so the support article is out of date)?
I couldn't find any update notes indicating that it had.

[1]:
[http://us.playstation.com/support/systemupdates/ps3/](http://us.playstation.com/support/systemupdates/ps3/)

[2]: [http://support.xbox.com/en-US/games/game-saves-in-
cloud/clou...](http://support.xbox.com/en-US/games/game-saves-in-cloud/cloud-
save-games)

------
ginko
They should have made IPv6 mandatory.

I'm sure all the ISPs would then have suddenly found out that all those
"technical" roadblocks to IPv6 migration weren't such a big problem after all.

~~~
ben336
Did you see the outrage when they suggested requiring an internet connection?
With the PS4 as a viable competitor they don't have the leverage to pull stuff
like that.

~~~
devcpp
He said "They should have made IPv6 mandatory", as in, it cannot use IPv4.
Obviously, "when connecting to the Internet is required" is implied, and
having an always online console is irrelevant to his point.

~~~
scott_karana
It's the same issue, though. Everyone will start shit talking like this, I'd
guess:

"y do I have to get _offbrand_internet_ when a PS4 works with any? f u
micro$oft"

------
shawnreilly
I find the article to be a little misleading. While I do realize the benefits
and merits of transitioning to ipv6, I don't really see this transition
resulting in a better gaming experience for gamers. It would solve some issues
for some users in certain scenarios, but when I think about a better gaming
experience, I think about lag (aka latency). I'm a little bullish on the
subject because I am working on something new in this space (focused on
multiplayer gaming connectivity), so maybe I'm being too harsh. But most of
the gamers I know don't really care about their Router/Wifi Configuration or
ipv4 vs ipv6. They just want to connect, they want it to work, and they want
minimum lag.

~~~
jpedrot
But they will care when they can not play because they do not have ipv6
connection. Which will happen in the coming years, so MS is trying to stay
ahead of the curve here. In addition to trying to fix an existing problem they
have, which is NAT.

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n4n4ki
Whilst this is cool and all, I think more people are interested in whether PS4
will use it as well.

~~~
dfc
Are the video game console wars over? I did not realize that the PS4 was the
clear winner. I am curious are you from Europe? It is my personal experience
that xbox is the preferred platform (at least among my peers) in the US and
that the PS is the preferred platform in Europe.

~~~
Bahamut
Brand loyalty goes out the window with new consoles - I'm hearing PS4
preorders at Gamestop already outnumber XBox One preorders in the states by
4:1 from a Gamestop manager. While this doesn't mean competition is over,
Microsoft has a lot of catching up to do.

~~~
byroot
> Brand loyalty goes out the window with new consoles -

But they could have easily ensured it by supporting / emulating previous
generation games.

I really don't understand why they haven't done it.

~~~
selectodude
Putting an entire Xbox 360 into the Xbox One would have jacked up the cost
rather substantially.

~~~
byroot
Given the performance gap (16 times more RAM, etc) I suppose software
emulation was an option, a bit like rosetta.

The first version of PS3 had an hardware support for PS2 but following
versions had software emulation:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_models#Model_comp...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_models#Model_comparison)

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
Actually, the later versions of the PS3 that don't include hardware
compatibility with PS2 titles have _no_ compatibility with PS2 titles at all.
The only software compatibility layer is for PS1 titles, which are
sufficiently simple enough to emulate in software.

The biggest reason that software emulation won't work for 360 titles is that
the hardware architecture of the new consoles is completely different from the
older generation. The CPU instruction set is x86 instead of PowerPC-based, and
the entire memory and GPU interaction system is different than the 360. To
emulate the entire instruction set of everything in software is just not going
to be possible.

~~~
byroot
> The only software compatibility layer is for PS1 titles

THere was a partial software emulation for european PS3s as stated by
wikipedia.

> the hardware architecture of the new consoles is completely different from
> the older generation

I knew for the PowerPC vs x86 this is what I mentioned rosetta. For the GPU I
thought they were both using DirectX.

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pjc50
That's nice. It would be even nicer if any of the major UK ISPs supported IP6.

(Some of the small ones do on ADSL, but AFAIK you can't have both fiber AND
IP6 from any provider, and now that I have FTTC I'm not keen to go back)

~~~
robinson-wall
I have FTTC with ipv6 from [http://aa.net.uk/](http://aa.net.uk/)

~~~
pjc50
Aha! That was a bit buried on their website.

~~~
skeffling
...it's on the front page in big letters :-) "11 years of providing IPv6"

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psionski
At first the idea of every device having a public IP address seemed like a
security nightmare to me... but how easy is port-scanning the IPv6 Internet?
If the addresses are sequential it obviously won't make any difference (you
just need a list of ISP address ranges, e.g. from BGP, and start from the
bottom), but maybe we can hand out addresses some other way that will make it
very unlikely to find another device on the Internet? Slighly related: is the
last bit the reason why we still haven't met any aliens?

~~~
yuubi
> If the addresses are sequential

They aren't normally so. The bottom 64 bits of an IPv6 address will typically
be either based on an ethernet address or random; see RFC 4291 section 2.5.1.

