NTL/Virgin Media Cable vs Port 26000

Since writing this article, Virgin appear to have resolved the port 26000 issues but introduced other traffic shaping measures relating to bandwidth that shouldn't affect Eve gameplay as Eve uses relatively little bandwidth. I'm unsure about the Tiscali situation but reports still get posted on various gaming sites about port blocking and other traffic shaping methods.

There's a lot of chat about Tiscali traffic shaping their network and blocking traffic on port 26000. This makes you disconnect frequently if you play Eve Online.

As this seemed to be a Tiscali only problem, I disregarded it as being a possible reason for my disconnects. After all, I am with Virgin Media Cable - not even ADSL. And not the same company.

I was wrong.

I went to various sites testing port 26000 on my PC and it was closed. I checked my router, 26000 was forwarded to my pc. Firewall had an exception rule allowing 26000 too.
GRC Scanner

Probing 26000 revealed:
26000
quake
Closed

It wasn't closed by me. It wasn't closed by CCP. Sneaky gits! It can only have been closed by my ISP!

Sure, I can confirm this by paying on a premium rate telephone support line and rebooting my PC and cable modem ad infinitum but ffs where is the sense in that?

Go for the jugular and test the hypothesis without paying for "support".

I read a thread on Eve-O that details how to change the default port number. However the instructions refer to the pre-Trinity client so I will write here what I did after reading that thread.

Go to the prefs.ini file specified...
i.e.
C:\Documents and Settings\%USERNAME%\Local Settings\Application Data\CCP\EVE\settings folder if you use XP

C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\CCP\EVE\settings if you use VISTA

Edit PREFS.INI file. Please change the networkAdvanced=0 to networkAdvanced=1.

You will NOT see a new ports option as that disappeared with Trinity so change the ports value in that file to 3724.

After doing this, I went to the same GRC site and port 3724 was stealthed - which is GOOD.

This means it is not BLOCKED and showing as CLOSED as 26000 was. Different result. How interesting. I have saved a fortune on that telephone line.

Since then, I had ONE disconnect during 5 hours of play, where normally I would have about 10.

CCP have been quite canny in doing this as that is the same port WoW uses...so now ISP's risk the wrath of the WoW users if they block that and therefore block EvE.

Don't forget to add 3724 to your firewall exception rules and your router port forwarding.