Additonal UDP ports for Direct Connect?

[Pancho]

I have been playing over 20 years and have always had the standard ports forwarded in my router for Links. It seems portforward.com has come up with a whole series of additional ports they say should be forwarded for our legacy game. When buying certain new routers, when you tell it to forward ports for Links, it forwards the usual ports plus UDP ports 59331, 7480, 59338, 33171, 31552, 60329, 60443 and 64185 (the additional ports listed on portforward.com). When I try to connect to a host who has those additional ports forwarded, I find their game easily enough, but sometimes the host asks me to go out and come back in again because he doesn't have a lit Start Game button. When I host a game, some of those who have forwarded those additional ports (especially Canadians for some reason) might take 2 or 3 attempts before I get a lit Start Game button. Do you know anything about this? I don't want to forward any more ports than necessary, and I have yet to find anything on LinksCorner saying these ports are required for online Direct IP play. There hasn't been any changes to the game requiring additional ports, and I doubt either Windows or ISPs have any say in what ports need be forwarded for the game to work over Direct IP connection.

[Daniel]

Not sure if this will help you but I do not use Port Forward I use Port Triggers.You have to make sure you do not have both Port Forward and Port Tiggers running together. I took out all my Port Forward Ports and just used the Port Triggers with the known Ports that we all usually use to play Links 2003 . May be this could be a solution for you, if not you can always go back to the Port Forward.

[Adelade]

I forgot to reply to this earlier, I dont know whether the below applies in this situation, but it is what is written in this site's FAQ anyway:

"There are two common problems that affect online play.

Firstly you must ensure that any Firewall software you have running is allowing Links to listen for connections. Most firewalls ask if Links should be allowed to access the internet when you try and play online but sometimes this has to be set up manually.

If you connect to the Internet via a router you may have to 'open' some ports. The method varies from router to router and full details are outside the scope of this FAQ. However, the ports required for Links 2003 are as follows:-

2300 to 2400
6073
47624
"

[Daniel]

Pancho you have a PM on opening Port Triggers. Pancho do not forget you can not have port forward open at the same time as Port Triggers it is either one or the other