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OPENING PORTS ON ROUTERS FOR NETWORK GAMES





For some routers, the game may not be able to automatically open the ports that are needed for network game connections.

This guide shows how to open those ports manually.

 

 

1) FIND OUT WHAT PORTS NEED TO BE OPENED

 

  • Go to the options within the game and select the "Network" or "Online" options.
  • The port number that you need will be displayed there.
  • Please ignore ports 2998 or 2999 if mentioned - these ports do not need to be opened.

 

 

2) GET YOUR LOCAL IP ADDRESS

 

There are different ways to do do this:

From within the game

If the game has a "Direct Connection" feature you can see it within the game if you press "Host" or "Create".

On Macs (credit to lifehacker.com)

  • Open System Preferences (via the Apple menu at the top lefthand corner of your screen).
  • When System Preferences opens, click on the icon labeled Network.
  • You should see a few options on the left with labels like Wi-Fi, Ethernet, Bluetooth, etc. The ones with green dots have IP addresses assigned to them. Click the one on top (if it isn't already selected) and look to the right. There should be a sentence that reads something like "Wi-Fi is connected to Chocolate and has the IP address 192.168.1.102." The number at the end of that sentence is your local IP address.

On PCs

  • Windows XP: Press the Start Menu and select Run then cmd into the search box and press Enter.
  • Windows Vista/7: Press the Start Menu and type cmd into the search box and press Enter.
  • Windows 8: From the Start Screen type cmd press Enter.
  • A command prompt window should now appear. Type in the word ipconfig into the command prompt window and press Enter.
  • Look for your IP address beside the phrase "IPv4 Address" that is shown.

 

Your local IP address is a series of four numbers connected by dots.
It will start with the one of the following numbers pairs: 192.168 or 10.10 or 172.16.
The last number of the four will not be 0 or 255.

 

 

3) OPEN YOUR ROUTER CONFIGURATION PAGE

 

  • Start your web browser.
  • Type into the address bar the first two numbers from your Local IP address with a dot between them followed by .1.1 and press Enter (e.g. "192.168.1.1" or "10.10.1.1").
  • Your router configuration page should show. If it does not, try .0.1 instead (e.g. "192.168.0.1" or "10.10.0.1").
  • Enter your router admin username and password - try the following combination: admin / admin or if that does not work try admin / 1234. If these do not work do a web search for the default password for your router.


 

4) OPEN THE PORTS ON YOUR ROUTER

 

Note that these steps are specifically for the LinkSys WRT54G Router.
For other routers similar steps will be needed - you may need to search the web for "opening ports" with your router model for more help.
  • Click the Applications & Gaming section in your router configuration page.
  • You will now enter a new port range for the game.
    • Enter the game name or something silimiar in the Application field.
    • Enter the port number from Step 1 above into the Start field.
    • Enter this same port number plus 1 into the End field (e.g. enter 124 if the port number is 123).
    • Leave the Protocol field as Both.
    • Enter the last number of your local IP address from Step 2 into the IP address field (the first three numbers should be the same as those in your local IP address).
    • Check the Enabled field.
    • Press Save Settings.

 

 

5) OTHER SETTINGS TO TRY

 

Some more things to try on your router configuration page (see step 3):
  • If your router has a "UPnP Settings" section, try enabling UPnP.
  • If your router has its own Firewall running, try turning it off temporarally. If this helps try to get the router's firewall to stop blocking the game, then turn on the router's firewall again.

 

 

SOME IMPORTANT POINTS TO NOTE

 

  • Your local IP address can change every time you restart your computer, so you may have to repeat this procedure various times. The number of times will depend on how many devices you have connected to your router (phones / tablets / tvs etc.).
  • If the above helped you and your router is a different model, and you had to change some of the procedure in Step 4 above, please let us know in the Hearts Forums or the Cribbage Forums.