Random Source Port Causing High Ping in Games

[mscaff]

Hey guys,

I've been playing Battalion as of recent, when I begun playing I noticed on the FaceIt servers I would get high ping, like 250+, when I normally see about 65 MAX.

I tested the latency to the game servers with the provider recommended tool located here:
https://www.hiperz.com/hiperz_latency.php

However in testing these, the test results came back fine with ping results as expected - 60 to 65.

So I figured it couldn't be much else but possibly too strict firewalling, so I enabled static port on my outbound NAT with the source IP as my gaming PC and this resolved it, ping is normal and game performance is good.

I then tested with WireShark and saw which ports the game uses for the connections to the FaceIt servers as they are not well documented, it appears the source port from the Game Client is also random, however its usually above 60000.

Any recommendations here guys? Not sure how to approach this but enable static port for my particular PC.
In enabling this, is it a security risk? What's the impact?

Thanks!

[kiokoman]

you can also do a floating rules so the port will open only when needed and set the ip of the game server on the destination also create an alias with all the port you need

[mscaff]

Thanks for your suggestion, however this has nothing to do with ports being open and more to do with source tracking and source port randomization.

Hope I understood your suggestion?

Thanks!

[KOM]

pfSense does not use static source ports by default due to a security risk that allows attackers to potentially use that to intercept data. I don't remember all the specifics as it was long ago tat I read that (assuming Im even remembering it correctly.)

For your gaming purposes, there is nothing wrong security-wise with adding an outbound NAT rule to make traffic from your console use static ports.