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Port Forwarding

From Liquipedia StarCraft Brood War Wiki

Why Port Forward??[edit]

Error message
"You were unable to join. The game you have selected is not responding. The latency to the game creator is too high."

Port forwarding is an essential step to hosting for those who use a router because routers block incoming connections by default unless an outgoing connection has been established first. For some, port forwarding is the only necessary step to hosting, but others may need to do additional steps such as whitelisting StarCraft in an antivirus or firewall. Port 6112 UDP should be forwarded for the computer that is playing StarCraft, attempting to forward port 6112 UDP for multiple computers will fail and not forward anything at all. If you did not forward your ports correctly while using a router, people cannot join game rooms that you host and will receive the message, "You were unable to join. The game you have selected is not responding. The latency to the game creator is too high."

Another reason is that StarCraft needs all players in a game to be connected to each other; failing to communicate between any 2 players leads to unplayable lag. If you have your StarCraft port closed you can only make outgoing connections. If 2 or more players in a game have their port closed, they can't communicate with each other, because neither of them can accept incoming connections, causing the aforementioned lag. Therefore, there can only be one player with closed port in a game. This is important for players who play more than just 1v1.

Quick Guide[edit]

Beginning with version 1.18.0 (2017-04-18) Starcraft supports UPnP, so mostly you have to do nothing. Just check your port with port checker below.

Step 1: Find your LAN-IP-Address
Open the command line

  • Start->Run
  • Type cmd into the box and press OK
  • Type ipconfig in the black window and hit the Return-Key

Your LAN-IP-Address (the one in the red box)
In this screenshot 192.168.12.114 is the LAN-IP-Address, it is probably different for you.

Step 2: Add a portforward.

  • Go to the configuration interface of your router. This can be reached by typing in the default gateway in your internet browser of choice (gateways such as 192.168.0.1, 192.168.1.1, 192.168.2.1 etc...)
    • If you have Windows Vista, this can also be reached via "Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network and Sharing > Double Click (whatever your network is) Icon > Right Click Router > View Device Webpage"
    • Manufacturer's user//password combinations are often either admin//admin, or //admin (blank user name). If these don't work, read your User Manual.
    • Refer to the port forwarding site below for any other difficulties.
  • There should be a section called "Port Forwarding", "NAT", "Applications and Gaming", or something similar.
  • There you add a new forward with the following data:

Add a forward in your router
You need to replace 192.168.178.25 with the address you obtained in step 1.

Sometimes StarCraft will use a different port (if you haven't changed the game port, it will be increased by 1 if old port was busy, such as when running PvPGN), so Blizzard recommends to forward the range of 6112 to 6119 UDP. To check which port StarCraft currently uses:

  • Connect to any Battle.Net or unofficial server. You don't need to log in.
  • Alt-Tab, Start -> Run -> cmd
  • Enter netstat -na | find "UDP" in the console
  • Search for something like 611x

You might see an entry like: UDP 10.1.1.55:6113 *:* which means that SC is listening on port 6113, so you would forward that port instead.

Links[edit]

Other Guides[edit]

Pictured guides for many different routers are available at portforward.com.