I play a game called L4D that connects through Steam. When I look at Usage, right click on the App and select Host’s, I can then select the “…” and search out the country of origin for the Host. I see about 8 Hosts from the Russian Federation, one from Hong Kong, several from Germany and one from Poland? What does this information mean. Are these IP’s that are connected to the L4D App on my computer? This occurs when I have played a game with three others who’s country origin, USA, I know including their actual address. Why am I seeing the “Russian Federation” connected to the L4D app on my computer? Any help in understanding this would be appreciated.
The host information would depend on how the game operates. If it connects directly to the other gamers you are playing, then these IPs are the addresses for the other gamers. In your case though it sounds like you know the other people you are playing are in the USA.
It’s most likely a content delivery network for the game. Content delivery networks allow a game to work well world-wide for everyone who plays (with less lag). The servers may be located all over the world.
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Thank you. That is helpful. I do know the other three players and can track their IP’s to known locations close to them. If one of them hosts the game, I can track the IP to roughly his location. From what you have told me, I might expect to see other servers around the globe but in this case, most are not in my country. I would expect that most would be but certainly not expect most to be in the Russian Federation. I will run this by Steam next. Thanks again.
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It sounds strange but I have noticed some Windows Updates come from Hong Kong. Not sure why, but it happens sometimes. It’s possible a CDN could have servers in the Russian Federation.
If you mouse over the house a small circle with three dots will appear. You can then click that and look up more information about the IP, or just type it in here in place of Google.com.
https://www.glasswire.com/host/google.com
Next scroll down to properties and click “whois”.
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Omg mother russia is coming…
Don’t worry about the russian ips…soon you may have to worry about the american ips
a good antivirus solution in these instances can be helpful too in my view (in case u don’t have one) as it can block malicious servers…kaspersky/malwarebytes/many others…
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Thanks for your response. I have antivirus running but I see many legitimate App’s that are attaching to Host’s that intern are attaching and communicating with Host’s all over the world. Without invoking, “Welcome to the WWW”, how do I keep a legitimate host, while rejecting their ability to attach to unwanted Hosts? The only way I can think you would control this is to be asked each time a host tries to connect with and App, “Is this OK”. In the beginning, it would be very time consuming but after awhile, you might block entire ip’s with a 46.255.255.255 kind of approach. In any case, thanks for your reply.
I randomly stumbled upon this thread and just wanted to give an answer:
This is normal and due to the multiplayer component, it will connect to game servers, and possibly players (matchmaking functionality) all around the world to find the best candidates based on ping. In some games this happens as soon as the game is started, for instance to preview available servers.
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Missed this two years ago but have some more information. The Russian servers are still there but now I have about 150 Chinese Servers connected as “Hosts”. Each one is uploading 5 bytes to 26K. Anyone know what this data being uploaded is? Thinking, 150 servers x times 15K suggest 2.25MB per game. Steam support can’t seem to tell me what this is or how to just connect to US servers and adds there is nothing they can do about it. Checking status of Steam servers never list more than a few Chinese servers. Since I am not sure what they are uploading, I tried blocking those IP’s in Windows Defender Advanced Security but that does not seem to keep them from being listed as “Hosts” for my Steam games. These are likely harmless connections but it is a little unsettling that I can not control just who my games are connecting with and sending little chunks of data to. (<; I do realize that there is an amazing amount of data continuously moving from everyone’s computer to and from the World Wide Web. I also like the Chinese people enough to have at one time in my life, learned to read, write and speak their language. But still a little paranoid about inability to stop sharing to any specific source/location. Would like to add, these are not just ping’s. Please comment.
Thanks again for this reply. I just reread it.