Cgnat and broadband

[Dizcan37]

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Hi,

I wanted to check if my ee broadband Is using CGNAT, my public ip addresses have all been within a certain range and this has led me to look into it.

Our gaming experience over my ee broadband has high latency, we have enough bandwidth (over 100mbps) and we use the 5ghz channel with the PS5. We used port forwarding but this had no effect, which led me to entertain the possibility that my ee broadband is using CGNAT.

Would it be possible to disable CGNAT please? so that when I port forward on my router our games can have less latency, without the added control of CGNAT.

Thanks for reading,

[Mustrum]

@Dizcan37  EE Home Broadband over Fibre of landline does not use CGNAT. Only the mobile broadband uses CGNAT.

Have you tried connecting directly via ethernet?

[Dizcan37]

Thank you for your response.

Yes I have tried a wired connection, but there is not much difference. When I change from broadband to a mobile data connection there is a great improvement, which leads me to believe there is an issue with my broadband for gaming. Outside of gaming, my download speeds are very good and streaming is wonderful.

I would love to hear any suggestions to what I could possibly do.

[Mustrum]

I am not a gamer, so the only suggestions I can offer is use ethernet, and try and make sure nothing else is using your network when you are gaming.

There are routers that offer better performance for gaming, but I am not sure, a WiFi6 router  and one that is able to control traffic - have a look here for some ideas. https://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/bloat/wiki/What_can_I_do_about_Bufferbloat/ 

[XRaySpeX · Accepted solution]

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@Dizcan37 wrote:

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my public ip addresses have all been within a certain range and this has led me to look into it.

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That's cuz they all come from the same IP pool assigned to EE, but they are not CGNAT'ed. They are unique to you for the duration.

[XRaySpeX]

Do your games really need Port Forwarding? Are you hosting a game server for others to connect to remotely unsolicited?

[Dizcan37]

I have been trying many things to improve my latency in other areas, so I thought port forwarding would help since lt was suggested on the games help pages.

This may sound strange but after I forward a port, my games lobby latency reduces to an acceptable level, after I finish 1 game , the latency spikes back up and never returns to a lower value until I forward another port.

I felt like the port was closing after it was used during the lobby but I do not know that for sure.

[Zeropointone]

Simply false. 

Many fibre networks such as Grain Connect, Lit Fibre, Giganet use  CGNAT, and indeed EE Confirmed to me this morning that they DO use CGNAT.

[XRaySpeX]

@Zeropointone : EE's Home BB network is none of those; it is Openreach's. That does not employ CGNAT.

[SamuelMusarika]

EE uses CGNAT. A simple tracert on my connection shows there is additional private IP, in this case, 172.16.17.140. I am on FTTP, so maybe they do not use CGNAT on FTTC but for my FTTP it's definitely on CGNAT.