ᐅ Is a TAE socket still required nowadays?

About Internet Access via LTE:

In principle, you can play games over LTE as long as the bandwidth and ping allow it. Both factors depend on the specific cell tower and its current load. However, it also depends on the game itself. A standard game only establishes outbound connections to a game server. This works fine over LTE because it’s basically no different than loading a web page in a browser.

Modern games, especially on gaming consoles, also create direct connections between the consoles themselves, for example, for voice chat. This means that the connection is outbound from one console but inbound on the other. Inbound connections require port forwarding because an internet router shields the local network from the internet through NAT (Network Address Translation). This is where UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) comes into play, literally.

Port forwarding and UPnP only work if the router is reachable from the outside. In mobile networks, this is usually not the case because the LTE router is often behind a large router at the provider’s end. This means that unless the provider sets up port forwarding from their router to the LTE router, the LTE router itself is not reachable from outside. UPnP won’t help either because UPnP is essentially automatic port forwarding created without the user’s involvement or knowledge.

Depending on the game, it might detect that you are not behind your own public IP address and that port forwarding is therefore not possible. In that case, with some luck, another player or console might be designated as a temporary server. If that fails, connection issues will occur. For example, on PlayStation parties, this might mean you cannot hear player XY while others are audible — resulting in a "NAT Type" or "NAT problem" message.

Long story short: gaming behind an LTE router can work, but it depends on what you are playing and how. The PlayStation itself requires specific ports to operate correctly regardless of the game. These are the PSN (PlayStation Network) ports that the party feature uses. Some games also have their own in-game voice chat that might still function. Therefore, there is no universal answer — it all depends on the details.

(Quoted from an online source from a person named Raijin at Computerbase).
That sums it up quite well.

Of course, you never know in advance how busy your local cell tower will be. Gaming gets frustrating with a ping beyond 50ms. Unless, of course, you’re playing something like Hello Kitty Island Adventures.

Thank you very much for the enlightening quote. So it’s better to avoid LTE.

Tarnari schrieb:

Neither. Just regular DSL. I apparently misunderstood. I thought in general a fixed IP was needed. However, the technician’s statement is also a bit strange. Every internet connection has a public IP address. It’s just that the address changes and isn’t static.

There are both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. With IPv6, there are plenty available, but many server operators still haven’t integrated this option. IPv4 addresses, on the other hand, have become very scarce. To my knowledge, only Telekom and O2 have enough IPv4 addresses to assign one directly to every DSL customer. This was one of the reasons I switched to O2 two weeks ago. Other providers like 1&1 only offer DS-Lite as standard. This means a public IPv6 address but no public IPv4 address. In this setup, many users share a single IPv4 address that is separated by the ISP only in the background. As a result, no external access is possible, which gamers often require. This can also be an issue for home office setups. However, none of this concerns having a fixed IP.

For me, DS-Lite alone would be a reason to exclude a specific ISP. Some providers offer an IPv4 address for an extra fee, or you have to plead with customer support to get one for free.

Sure, that’s quite a different topic altogether. However, it mainly matters for VPN connections to home networks, since DynDNS doesn’t work in that case.
At least, I don’t know anyone who has issues gaming with this setup. And this configuration is fairly common.
But that doesn’t have to mean anything. It’s not really my area of expertise.

But this is only a problem for IPv4 applications; everything that relies on IPv6 works in both directions.

(Irony Stop complaining and just book the hybrid LTE option for more than double what vDSL with 50 Mbit/s (50 Mbps) would have cost. Not a bad idea. Artificially slow down network expansion and then sell expensive alternatives.

I talked to the telecom provider at length today. Fiber optic is planned for our development area, but strangely they only know about the apartment buildings. The semi-detached houses aren’t included. And apparently, nothing will happen here for now... I really wonder what is going wrong everywhere. After all, according to the federal government, there should be nationwide 1 Gbit/s (1 Gbps) coverage by 2025...)