Steam: Playing on Local Servers with Local Only Accounts

So my situation is this - I have a router on my network - but I'm also able to make PPPoE connections, which makes things easier when I'm hosting a dota game to then dial a local only connection and not have to set up any port forwarding. [For FPS games, dialing an IS account with an IS server a SAIX account with a SAIX server and a WA account with a WA server will also result in better ping times.]

When Web Africa announced their new steam servers - I got all excited and installed steam on my system again. I then decided to dial a local only connection and connect to Counter Strike Source and TF2 servers. It worked fine for a while and then I get the message that I've been disconnected because I can't connect to the Valve VAC server.

What I did to resolve the issue - is to get the IPs for VAC servers and add them to my local router as follows:


This seems to have done the trick as I've been able to play steam multiplayer games with VAC just fine since I've done this.

Has anyone out there had similar experiences or alternate solutions to the problem explained above?

so, to get things straight, did u log into steam using a blended account and then switched to local only once in to be able to play on the local game servers, or how? I know SA has 2 local steam servers, but you'll still need to log into the team HQ server or an overseas login server.

That's correct - I connect normally without dialing a connection - then I look at the server list - and dial a connection accordingly -depending on who's hosting the server.

if you do the same for some of these ip's you should be able to log in to steam as well that way

thnx, I'll give it a try

im going to ask a very noob question here, but are you playing through steam here on an only local account? what about steam authentication? i know we have local steam content servers but as far as i know we don't have authentication servers?

Eish confused! coz i would really love to be able to play on local only!

Only way to play on Steam with local is using Route Sentry ( or similar ). VAC servers need to constantly communicate with the Steam servers in order to prevent hacking. Therefore you will lose connection because you are not authorised to play on the VAC server.

yeah that was i was familiar with, just thought OryxGazella knew of a way to bypass that would be nice! coz i have 30gigs of local cap going to watse every month coz i don't know what to download when capped, and i don't know where to look!

TheHxckid said:

im going to ask a very noob question here, but are you playing through steam here on an only local account? what about steam authentication? i know we have local steam content servers but as far as i know we don't have authentication servers?

Eish confused! coz i would really love to be able to play on local only!

Click to expand...

Authenticating to steam requires some form of international bandwidth somewhere. The method for creating a route for certain IPs is for people who are connected to the internet as soon as they plug in their computers into the network but who also have the ability to dial a connection from within windows. When a connection is dialed in windows, the operating system makes any internet traffic go through that connection. Thus, if you dial a "local only" connection - you will lose any international access.

So what I do is to log on to steam normally, without having my connection dialed (full international traffic). I then get the server list - if I'm playing on an IS or SAIX server, I dial my trusty IS connection, and if I play on WA server I dial my trusty WA connection (both local only). The VAC server requests still go through the router and all other IPs use the dialed connection.

f4ntom said:

Only way to play on Steam with local is using Route Sentry ( or similar ). VAC servers need to constantly communicate with the Steam servers in order to prevent hacking. Therefore you will lose connection because you are not authorised to play on the VAC server.

Click to expand...

The method explained above does not use route sentry, but is for a limited set of users (those who have a router but can also dial PPPoE connections from their local machines). It also takes away the need for port forwarding, but from what I understand from route sentry it should also not need any port forwarding...

Flippy_r_1st posted a helpful screenie with the authentication servers as well - if you "punch holes" through to your router with that "route add...", you should also be able to be connected with your local only throughout, though I have yet to try this, as I just dial a connection when I want to play something.

If this method has worked for anyone else, please let us know.

Is there a way to reverse the route add command?

route delete <ip>

With most windows commands adding /? brings up all kinds of info

I play a few min then my game quits with a message saying the client timed out.. hmm

Blaaislaai, can you look in your steam logfiles and verify what IP it's trying to go against for VAC? (I don't know if it's logged, the server admins helped me to get the VAC servers the other time) and I most definitely don't have this problem on local only accounts anymore. And just to verify, when you don't dial a con do you have international?