What do the network options do?

There are two main options available to you to edit on the Network screen, which previously required you to edit the AppConfig.xml file in your Elite Dangerous installation.

DETAILED NETWORK LOGGING

This option indicates to Elite Dangerous that you would like to record detailed logs of your network activity, which is extremely useful in helping the QA team investigate bug reports and for the Customer Support team to investigate connection issues. It is also useful for some third-party applications that read the logs, but please note that these are not officially supported by Frontier and questions regarding these should be directed to the developer of the third-party application.

The generated netlog files are automatically saved in a specific location related to your installation as shown in this FAQ article. Note that if you are using a test version of the game the folder elite-dangerous-64 will instead be PUBLIC_TEST_SERVER_64.

PORT FORWARDING

If your router does not support UPnP (Universal Plug 'n' Play) or if the feature does not work correctly, you may encounter issues playing Elite Dangerous. A solution to this is to manually allow Elite Dangerous access through your router.

1. To use port forwarding, you will need to configure your router which is a process often unique to each make and model. For more information on this please visit PortForward.com and locate your specific router. There should be a guide to help you set up port forwarding.
2. Elite Dangerous requires that you select a UDP port between 5100 and 5200.
3. Once your router is configured with a specific port, forwarding must be enabled in the Network options menu by switching Port Forwarding to 'On'.
4. Now set Mapped Port Number to the same number you configured your router with (5100-5200).

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

The network tab also contains a variety of information that may be useful to you. Note that unless you experience regular connection issues, you can normally ignore the options below.

• IPv6 - Your IPv6 details (if you do not have an IPv6 connection this will be blank).
  
  • IPv6 Address - This is your external IPv6 address.
  • Port Override - This can be used to allow connections through an IPv6 router. Requires appropriate configuration of the router to be effective.
• IPv4 - Your IPv4 details (if you have an IPv6-only connection, this will be blank).
  
  • Local Address - The address of your computer, used by your router.
  • Internet Address - Your router's IP address, used by other computers on the internet.
  • UPnP Enabled - Whether or not the game is currently using UPnP (Universal Plug 'n' Play).
  • Router Type - This is advanced but may be of interest to those who are familiar with NAT types.
  • Port Forwarding - As indicated above
  • Mapped Port Number - Used with port forwarding as indicated above
• Statistics - General network statistics.
  
  • MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) - denotes the largest size packet your connection is configured to handle.
    Normally this is 1500 but can be as low as 800* without impacting your experience in the game.
  • Ping Time - This is your average response time to the Elite Dangerous servers and other players.
    Lower is better. Anything above 500 MS is considered somewhat high and above 1000 MS would be considered too high for online gameplay.
  • Packet Loss - The number of packets that your connection drops, usually due to intermittent connectivity issues or low-quality connections.
    Above 1% is considered very high and above 2% would be considered too high for online gameplay.
• Connection Statistics - Your connections to other players or servers. These values accumulate the longer the game is open.
  • IPv6 Direct - This shows the number of successful connections vs the number of attempted connections to other players or servers via IPv6.
    This is normally 0 unless you have an IPv6 connection. A ratio of 1:1 is considered very good.
  • IPv6 via TURN - This shows the number of successful connections vs the number of attempted connections to other players via an IPv6 TURN server.
    A 1:1 ratio would be considered very good, however, TURN is used as a back-up should direct connections not currently be suitable so both values should generally be lower than IPv6 Direct.
  • IPV4 Direct - This shows the number of successful connections vs the number of attempted connections to other players or servers via IPv4.
    This will normally be 0 until you log in. If you have an IPv6-only connection this should remain at 0. A 1:1 ratio is considered very good.
  • IPv4 via TURN - This shows the number of successful connections vs the number of attempted connections to other players via an IPv4 TURN server.
    A 1:1 ratio would be considered very good, however, TURN is used as a back-up should direct connections not currently be suitable so both values should generally be lower than IPv4 Direct.
  • IPv4 on LAN - This shows the number of direct connections that have been made to players on the same local network as you.
  • IPv4 to Server - This shows the number of connections that have been made to any Elite Dangerous server.
  • Connection Failures - This is the number of connection errors that the game has encountered since it started up.
    This should be 0 but low numbers are to be somewhat expected on normal internet connections.
    
    **Note that we do not recommend manually configuring an MTU value as low as 800.  Unless you are encountering issues that relate specifically to packet size, your MTU should be left at the default value assigned by your router and/or recommended by your ISP.

CAN I TELL ELITE DANGEROUS TO USE JUST IPV4 OR JUST IPV6?

In the network settings on PC versions of Elite, you can select which IP version you'd like to use. In some cases, this may help prevent connectivity problems.

USING IPV6 ONLY:

1. Go to the game's Settings Menu, then Network.
   
2. Locate the IPv6 and IPv4 connectivity settings.
   
3. Set IPv6 to On and IPv4 to Disabled.
4. Elite Dangerous will now use IPv6 exclusively when connecting to the ED servers.

USING IPV4 ONLY:

Some ISPs are currently rolling out their support of IPv6. If you find that your connection becomes unstable or acts in an odd manner, you can also try disabling IPv6 until a later date. You can use the same steps as above, but disable your IPv6 connection and enable IPv4 only.

On Windows, you can disable IPv6 fully. Please see this article from Microsoft for instructions on how to do this.

For more information, and a small case study, see our forum post about the new features of Elite Dangerous' networking here.