How to Port Forward Left 4 Dead

Left 4 Dead is a First-Person, Shooter, Survival, and Action game published by Valve, Electronic Arts released in 2008.

The network ports for Left 4 Dead are as follows:

Left 4 Dead - Steam

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

Left 4 Dead - Xbox 360

• TCP: 3074
• UDP: 88, 3074

If you want to follow guides that are custom tailored to your exact router and Left 4 Dead simply follow one of these links:

• Left 4 Dead - Steam
• Left 4 Dead - Xbox 360

Left 4 Dead offers 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.
• Shooter games are fast paced action games that are based on testing the players reaction time. They usually involve the player holding a weapon in front of them and attempting to shoot other players or characters. Some shooters are short lived arcade style, but most have both a single player mission series and some have a large multiplayer following. Common shooters include Call of Duty and Battlefield.
• Survival games are usually focused on resource management, such as ammo and health, and occasionally include elements of stealth. They tend to be based on either supernatural enemies, have horror themes, or be post-apocalyptic. The primary gameplay mechanic is to simply stay alive.
• Action games are fast paced and tend to put the player in the middle of the action, requiring you to jump over obstacles, climb ladders, and shoot things.

When you are playing Left 4 Dead 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 intermittently 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:

• The IP address of your network router.
• 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 locate 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 normal process for forwarding a port is:

• Login to your router.
• Locate your routers port forwarding section.
• Put the IP address of your computer or gaming console in the proper box in your router.
• Put the TCP and UDP ports for your game in the matching boxes in your router.
• On occasion you have to reboot your router for the changes to take effect.

After that your ports should be open. Check out our full game and application list for more port forwarding guides.