minecraft connection timeout

FIX: Minecraft Connection Timeout

August 22, 2012 3 Comments

PROBLEM: Minecraft Game connection timeout error during the start of the game [Hunger Games]
FIX: Replaced the Belkin router with Linksys WRT54G with DD-WRT v24-sp2

Tools:
Linksys WRT54G v4
DD-WRT v24-sp2 firmware
TCPView
WRT54G Mod Downgrade

Summary:
Two days ago, my son celebrated his 16th birthday. I asked him what he want for his birthday and he replied, “I want a new computer to play the Minecraft Hunger Games”. In my house, there are at least 8 computer/servers running. My answer was “No, I will not add another client pc in the house”. We have enough computing power in the house to run a small business. Two days passed and I have not given a birthday gift to this guy and I wanted to make an impact [emotional deposit]. I asked him why do you need a new computer? He told me that Minecraft will not even start on his x64 desktop with Windows7.

My son is in Junior High and ranks #5ish in the class. He is very smart and sometimes I imagined if only he has my organizational skills and habits, I think this guy can easily get to the top. I really don’t want him to be immersed on Quadrant4 items [small rocks in life [ie-video games]. But as a learned/smart parent, it is not my place to impose on my kids of what I want for him. My leadership style is empowerment and freestyle. I want my kids to be autonomous in their lives. I want them to be self sufficient and able to make smart decision on the fly. I’ve been teaching them how to live a life without me and I think they already have attained that.

Lately, I’ve been reading a book called “Power Listening” and currently in Chapter 4. What I learned from this book in the early chapter is to listen well to others. My son was determined to get what he want on his birthday and there is no backing down. At the current chapter of this book, this situation with my son becomes the litmus test of life application. He really wanted to play Minecraft and I was not listening and this bothered me a lot. What he’s been doing lately was just watching YouTube a replayed version of the game. Being a model father and plenty of spare time to waste, I asked him, “Show me what is Minecraft and why it will not work on any of the desktop and laptop in the house”.

And so, he fired up my Dell Latitude E6400 notebook and proved to me that it failed to run. He then took my wife’s Dell Latitude E4200 and tried to play and that too failed. The graphics is so sluggish and it cannot even start a multiplayer game on the network.

Hmmm ….and that’s when the challenge started and it took us 5 hours to find a true fix. Here’s my journey with my son in trying to fix the Minecraft Connection Timeout error. Yes, Minecraft will run on Dell Latidue notebooks E6400 and E4200 and youdon’t really need to buy the latest and the greatest hardware to play Minecraft.

Step By Step:
1. Updated Java to x64 version, no fix
2. Run Minecraft on Dell Latitude E6400, no fix
3. Run Minecraft on Dell Latitude E4200 with SSD drive, no fix
4. Set video settings as listed below, now able to play “Single Player”

5. Use a faster WIFI Access point, Multiplayer Connection Timeout
6. Use a wired LAN connection, Multiplayer Connection Timeout
7. Add pc to DMZ, Multiplayer Connection Timeout
8. Turned off Windows Firewall Inbound settings, Multiplayer Connection Timeout
9. Launched TCPView and observed the failure mechanism. Noticed that the failure happened at the start of the multiplayer game.
10. Repeated Step9 for 3x to test the theory that it is a LAN bandwidth issue, able to repeat, Multiplayer Connection Timeout
11. Opened Belkin Firwall Log, noticed that the logs were littered with several “Blocked/RST by DoS protection” [this is the hint]
12. Installed a Linksys Router instead of Belkin, the problem disappeared [case closed].

Conclusion:
The Belkin router F6D4230-4 v1 had a feature called DoS protection which I have no idea on how to turn off at this time. When people started connecting to the Minecraft server, the router inbound connection jumps, this jump of many inbound connections is interpreted by the Belkin software as denial of service attack [DoS], therefore, cuts off the connection for safety. The problem went away on the Linksys WRT54G because of the firmware that I have on it [DD-WRT]. Those so called Denial of Service threats were not treated strictly on the configuration that I have setup in DD-WRT.

NOTES/SCREENSHOTS:

Minecraft Hunger Games Website
Minecraft in YouTube
SyntaxErrors

Firewall log:
Tues Aug 21 18:04:15 2012 1 Blocked/RST by DoS protection 192.168.1.2
The Minecraft Game [view sample in YouTube]