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My friends and I have Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War and want to play it very badly. The problem is I am on a University network and my friend is at home. The network here doesn't support gaming very well and so we can't play on the GameSpy server. One of the options in multi-player play is directhost and direct join and we try to do that (by giving each other our IP's and one of us being the host), but it doesn't work.
My friend says it has something to do with our firewalls and ports. I understand firewalls, but I've always been a little fuzzy with ports.
I am connected straight into the wall, but my friend has a router.
Can someone help? [feel free to ask for more info]

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Dani AI

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As moved toward port-forwarding on the home router, that is the correct path: direct-host failures are almost always caused by NAT/firewall blocking inbound traffic. University uplinks typically prevent incoming connections, so the player on the home router must host and forward the game ports to their machine. The following checklist shows the reliable, minimal steps to make a Direct Host game reachable and how to confirm it.

  • Give the host a fixed local IP (either reserve it in the router DHCP or set a static address on the PC).
  • Determine which ports the game actually listens on (check the game manual/support first). If unknown, run the game as host and use these Windows commands from an elevated prompt to discover listening ports and the owning process:
    netstat -ano
tasklist /fi "PID eq <pid>"

    Look for entries marked LISTENING (TCP) or the UDP equivalents and note the port numbers and protocol (UDP/TCP).

  • In the router admin (Virtual Server / Port Forwarding), create rules that forward those port(s) to the host local IP. Forward the specific protocol(s) the game uses; if unsure, forward both TCP and UDP for those ports.
  • On the host OS firewall, allow the game executable or open the same ports for the private network. Do not leave a machine permanently in DMZ; use DMZ only as a short test because it exposes all ports.

To verify: obtain the router public IP from the router status page (or an external IP-check site), then test the forwarded ports with an online port-checker or by having the remote player try to join. If forwarding appears correct but the game still fails, check for ISP-level NAT/blocking (carrier NAT prevents port forwarding) or campus firewall restrictions; these cannot be fixed from the client side. If inbound hosting is impossible, a VPN-based virtual LAN or having the home player host remains the practical workaround.

Member Avatar for steosaur(oWn)

ok So ive been researching ports, and it sounds like I need to find an open UDP port and attach the IP address of the host to it. Does that sound right, and is so how do I find an open port/how to I configure a game to go through a different port?

Member Avatar for steosaur(oWn)

Woah yes all i need now is to find an open port! or figure out how to open a closed one!
I did this by downloading a program call SocksCap V2

Member Avatar for steosaur(oWn)

Nevermind the port crap, it's too much effort and risk, I think all my friend needs to figure out is how to configure his router with port forwarding. Can someone point us in the right direction?
p.s. I don't know how to delete this thread or edit so I have to keep replying to it.

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