Definitive answer: You can do either, but routing the full range from 2300 to 2400 will guarantee the best experience for the gamers who come to your server.

For server and client, I reccomend the full range and letting Freelancer decide exactly what port it wants to use.

Note: You can actually use whatever ports you wish. You are not limeted to the Freelancer defaults, but 2300 to 2400 will gurantee the best connections because they are pretty much used only by Freelancer.

Thanks for the answer man...but Im still a bit curious here.

You say "the best gaming excperience". In my experience it either works or doesn't. To connect or not to connect...
Is the whole 2300-2400 like a "PASV mode port range" for the game instead of ftp?
So if I only NAT port 2302, only ppl with direct inet connections (not behind a router) will be able to connect.
But if I NAT the whole 2300-2400 range, everyone will be able to connect regardless of routers etc.?

I know I should prolly setup and see for myself, but my new PoS router can only address 12 ports and I run services on all of them allready...hence the questions.

MoHAA only needs one port to work like a charm for everyone...Im hoping this is the same deal...god Im hoping...

hm, i dont see why ppl should use another port than 2302 for freelancer.

and i dont see why you should open 2300-2400 at all.

See, this is what im taking about....argh, the confusion of running a game server Seems a lot of ppl have success just by NAT'ing 2302. So why do ppl say 2300-2400...must be a reason somebody KNOWS, and not just THINKS somewhere.

Stuff like this should be outlined in BIG letters in the Readme. Developers are getting better, but not good at informing about this stuff.

What are you going to do if the server only allows connections through port 2365 when you're trying to connect on 2302? You're not going to be logging on to that server.

yeah, but he wants to host a server.

and i can connect to any server so far no matter what port it uses at home with a router although i only mapped port 2302...

Edited by - sp00n on 25-04-2003 09:07:23

Thanks guys. Sounds like Ill only need to use 2302 to host then. Maybe my PoS router can handle it afterall

Maybe if you would actually *gasp* read the README file *gasp*. You would know.

You can choose the port you want FLServer to use. But I'm not telling you here. Read the damn flserver readme. It's in your extras folder on the cd.

Well since you TRIED checking the readme. You might have read the freelancer readme and not the flserver readme. You only need to add a -pXXXX after the flserver command line. What I do is "C:\.....flserver.exe" -p2400 and on my router/firewall I set up port forwarding to the server on port 2400.

I also have to disagree with a previous poster. You're not going to come across any problems or performance degradation using ports outside of Freelancer's normal range.

I think some of the confusion is due to DirectPlay games, such as FreeLancer, using the same port numbers for both inbound and outbound traffic and people not being clear on the distinction between client and server traffic.

When you start a DirectPlay server it assigns itself a UDP port number between 2302-2400, defaulting to 2302 if it is available. Therefore MOST servers run on 2302 but occasionally use a different port, either because there are multiple DirectPlay servers running on the same IP address (either the same machine or the same NATed network) or the port is being used by something else. There's also another very good reason for a sysadmin deliberately moving it from 2302 and assigning a "fixed" port number, which I'll come on to later.

The opening of ports to run the CLIENT (play the game) is needed if you're running a behind a firewall/router which blocks all traffic by default, unless configured otherwise. Most company firewalls filter traffic in this way. DirectPlay servers can *potentially* be anywhere in the 2300-2400 range (although they usually run on 2302) and 2300 is used for the global server. It's unlikely anything else is likely to use this range so it's best to open (ie "allow through) the entire range if you only want to play the game, although 2300 and 2302 will allow you to play on most FreeLancer servers. HOWEVER, for most gamers playing from home this isn't needed as most domestic NAT routers will dynamically open inbound ports if the "dialogue" was started by a client from within the LAN and create a dynamic route back to the client, allowing packets to flow between the client and server hosts. If you only ever play from a single machine behind your router you might find a marginal improvement in network latency by forwarding the ports to the "internal" IP address as this will mean the route becomes "static" and may negate some processing overhead incurred by the router software but, in practice, most network firmware is designed specifically for efficient packet handling and can do so much quicker than any network so any difference in performance is, at best, likely to be negligable.

If you're running a SERVER and wish to allow Internet players to connect you will almost certainly have to open *and* forward the DirectPlay ports to your server machine, otherwise anyone trying to connect will get blocked by your router. Even with the port open the router will probably drop the inbound packets as it won't know what to do with them. Port-forwarding "tells" the router that it needs to accept packets on a given port (or range) and forward them to another machine within your network (your server). Again, it's likely your server will be running on port 2302 if you run with defaults so forwarding this port alone will often work, but the 2300-2400 range will cover all eventualities. Therefore if you run the client and server on the SAME MACHINE you'll want to configure the router to open and forward all traffic to these ports to the IP address of your game machine.

The real fun starts if you want to run a the client and server on DIFFERENT machines behind a NAT router, such as running a dedicated server while playing from another machine(s) within your LAN. If you forward the DirectPlay ports to your server your clients won't be able to play online because inbound packets from Internet servers, instead of coming back to the client machine on which you're playing, will be "intercepted" and forwarded to your own server. If the router is configured to forward 2300-2400 players on the Internet will be able to join your server but you'll only ever be able to play on your own LAN server. Instead you'd want to forward *only* the port on which your server is running. This brings us back to why you'd want to use a port other than 2302 - if you allow your server to run on the default port of 2302 and configure the router to forward it to your server, you won't be able to connect to other servers running on 2302 - ie MOST DirectPlay servers! Instead you'd probably want to use the /P parameter (read the documentation on the CD-ROM!!) to force the server to run on a different port, preferably one which is not used by the Internet servers you wish to play on, and configure the router to forward this port to your server machine. In theory you could choose any "valid" UDP port number but most other gamesplayers behind routers are likely to have configured them to allow DirectPlay traffic between 2300-2400 so it's best to confine your server to a port within that range.

--

>bRydeR<

Required Network Ports for a Multiplayer Freelancer Game
The information in this article applies to:
Microsoft Freelancer

SUMMARYThis article describes the ports that you must have to play and host a Freelancer 1.0 multiplayer game through a firewall, a proxy server, a router, Network Address Translation (NAT), or Internet Connection Sharing.
MORE INFORMATIONTo make sure that these ports are open or to open these ports, contact your network administrator or Internet service provider (ISP). If you are the administrator of the network, view the documentation that is provided with your networking software to determine how to open these ports. Freelancer Server requires that the following ports be open to host multiplayer games:
2302-2304 UDP

Freelancer requires that the following ports be open to play a multiplayer game:
2300-2400 UDP

Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - 814550

For more info goto http://support.microsoft.com

Skones