Port Forwarding (PC)

Have you ever tried to join a server in a PC co-op game, only to have fail with some sort of nondescript error along the lines of "Failed to connect"? Have you been playing with friends and tried to host your own game, only to hear them complain of this? If so then you have probably encountered a host, or been a host, who has not correctly forwarded ports.

Most PC games today have some sort of co-op multiplayer in which a user can host their own game. Examples of these games include Borderlands, Magicka, Team Fortress 2, and the new Torchlight 2 to name a few. If you wish to host your own game with friends, there are a few simple steps you can take that will most likely solve your problems.

Click here to learn more about Port Forwarding.

To start forwarding your own ports start here:

NOTE: To find all of your internal port information, for PCs click start, then run. This will prompt a dialog box into which you should enter "cmd". This will open up the command line, into which you should enter "ipconfig". Now on the command line you will see a number of things. The first thing is IP Address, which is your internal IP address (which is needed for later). The second thing is not important for this, and the third thing, Default Gateway is the default internal IP to be added to

1) In the url of your browser, type in the "Default Gateway" of your router. The default IP is "192.168.0.1".

2) Enter the username and password for your router. This was most likely setup when you first setup your router.

3) Navigate to the port forwarding section in your router.

4) Enter the desired port you wish to forward. This is the main step, where you must find the correct port to forward, and select which computer on your network to forward it to. A list of ports for certain games can be found here (you are required to enter your routers information). For your convience, here are the few that I have found:

• Magicka - 7331
• Team Fortress 2 - 27000 to 27050
  
• Borderlands - 7777, 28900 , 27900, 28910, 28902
• Torchlight 2 - 4171
• Minecraft - 25565

NOTE: You can also search your games forums (as someone has probably already done this) by googling something along the lines of "(Game name) ports forwarding".

Next, you will be prompted to enter TCP or UDP. I personally enter both just to be safe (one less thing to worry about) but you can experiment yourself if you want to narrow down which one exactly you want. Finally you will be prompted to select which computer to forward to the port to. This is the "IP Address" from the command line.

And that is it! You should be able to host your own games now, and have friends connect and play with you. Enjoy!

-K