How to Port Forward Half-Life 2

Half-Life 2 is a First-Person, Action, Shooter, and Adventure game published by Sierra Entertainment, Valve released in 2004.

The necessary ports for Half-Life 2 are as follows:

Half-Life 2 - Steam

• TCP: 27015, 27036
• UDP: 27015, 27031-27036

If you want to follow guides that are custom tailored to your exact router and Half-Life 2 simply follow one of these links:

• Half-Life 2 - Steam

Half-Life 2 includes the following styles of play.

• In a first person style game the main viewpoint is from the player looking forward. This can be either a first person shooter or a first person driving game.
• Games that are considered action are all about centering the player in the middle of an evolving situation.
• In a shooter the player must have a very fast reaction time. Usually there i a weapon held out in front of the player that is used to target other players or enemies. They can be either single player or multiplayer. The single player versions usually have a short storyline with minor RPG elements. Call of Duty and Battlefield are some very popular examples.
• An adventure game is where the player is usually the protagonist and plays through an evolving story. The storyline is the driving part of an adventure game.

When you are playing Half-Life 2 you might need to forward some ports in your router. Forwarding ports is a useful trick in gaming because it can really help to make your network connection most stable and sometimes even faster. Routers were not designed to allow incoming network requests and some games can play tremendously better if an incoming connection is forwarded through the router to the game.

Before you can forward a port you need to know the following things:

• Your router's IP address.
• The IP address of the device that the game will play on: either your computer or your console.
• The TCP and UDP ports to forward.

The easiest way to find your router's IP address is to run our free Router Detector utility. It's a part of the Network Utilities suite of tools and it's completely free to use.

A smart way to forward your ports is to use Network Utilities. Since Network Utilities allows you to both forward and un-forward ports easily you can keep your network security maximized, and then forward ports only when you need them. Alternatively you can do it by hand.

The general process for forwarding a port is:

• Open a web browser and navigate to your router's IP address.
• Locate your routers port forwarding section.
• Put the IP address of your computer or gaming console in the correct box in your router.
• Put the TCP and UDP ports for your game in the corresponding boxes in your router.
• Sometimes you have to reboot your router for the changes to take effect.

That's all it takes to open your ports. Want to learn how to create more port forwards? Check out our list of games and applications.