In-Home Streaming Ports?

[Jay And Problems]

What ports does the Streaming use? I've got a bit of a complex home-network and I'd like to know which ones I should forward. It'd also be cool if I could SSH the ports while on vacation so I can game using a laptop(although quality and performance will probably be terrible).

[JPerry5529]

27036

Originally posted by Support Article:

The computers don't see each other

Make sure they are on the same subnet and no other program is using port 27036, which is used for the initial discovery protocol. If another program has bound this port, please report which program it is on the community discussion group.
If they still don't see each other, make sure each computer only has one active network interface. VPN software and virtual machines can cause problems with the Steam client discovery process. This will be fixed in a future update.

source

[Jay And Problems]

Originally posted by The Better Man:

27036
source

Are you sure this is the only port? It says in that article that 27036 "is used for the initial discovery protocol." That implies that there might be more ports.

[Armagedon]

You can set your router to log events and see what port the host and client are requestinf to uPnP, or in windows use arp or netstats (don't remember what aplication) to see the conection active.

[JPerry5529]

Use this this monitor Steam.[technet.microsoft.com] If it requests anything else besides 27036 (it hasn't for me) you'll see it.

[Jay And Problems]

Originally posted by The Better Man:

Use this this monitor Steam.[technet.microsoft.com] If it requests anything else besides 27036 (it hasn't for me) you'll see it.

Hmmmm, Steam actually seems to be using port 27031 for the actual game streaming, and I don't see mention of port 27036 anywhere in my connection logs. Also whenever I start Steam on my client laptop my host PC shows a new port starting with 55***. Every time I close Steam on the client and open it again the old 55*** port disappears and is replaced by a new 55*** port on my host PC. I wonder what the 55*** port is used for. Only a few bytes are transmitted every second.

If this random port is important to the Streaming it'll complicate port forwarding on the router. I guess my best option would be to just use a Dynamic port in Putty and then use my proxy program to auto-forward Steam through the SSH connection to the other PC on the network. That should work remotely as well too. Not exactly the most elegant solution, but I'll take functionality over looks any day. Just wonder if Steam on the other PC will detect my Steam client through the proxy.

[Jay And Problems]

Ok, my investigation has led me to a discovery. Steam keeps randomly changing which ports it uses for In-Home Streaming whenever it is started. The only constant has been port 27036, which is where I observe the actual video/audio streaming going threw towards the client PC.

To get it to go through my SSH tunnel I had to forward all Local Network Connections through the proxy, not just targeting the Steam EXEs. Really odd. Although I can't be sure I've been 100% successful in getting all transfers to go over SSH since I'm currently sitting on the same network as the SSH server, just targeting my Public IP instead. I'll have to testdrive it tomorrow when I leave home.

[Cheeseness]

Originally posted by Jay And Problems:

Ok, my investigation has led me to a discovery. Steam keeps randomly changing which ports it uses for In-Home Streaming whenever it is started. The only constant has been port 27036, which is where I observe the actual video/audio streaming going threw towards the client PC.

This explains the trouble I've had in nailing down which ports it needs. I run a local firewall on my desktop and hadn't yet had time to do a proper dig through.

[Jay And Problems]

Originally posted by Cheeseness:

Originally posted by Jay And Problems:

Ok, my investigation has led me to a discovery. Steam keeps randomly changing which ports it uses for In-Home Streaming whenever it is started. The only constant has been port 27036, which is where I observe the actual video/audio streaming going threw towards the client PC.

This explains the trouble I've had in nailing down which ports it needs. I run a local firewall on my desktop and hadn't yet had time to do a proper dig through.

Yeah the random port changing is a nightmare for anybody needing to modify their firewall, or router. It's ironically easier to just SSH/VPN into the target machine, and forward all the ports to it. I personally use an app called Proxifier with the Putty SSH client setup with a Dynamic SOCKS port, to auto-proxy connections/ports through the SSH Tunnel. Not pretty, but it's very flexible.

[Jay And Problems]

Ok, I have failed to get In-Home Streaming working over SSH. I just couldn't seem to force Steam to use the proxy. I'll keep looking into it but it looks like for now you have to use a VPN to get it to work :(

[Bloodred]

I have never used a setup like what you're describing, but are you sure broadcast packets are going through your SSH tunnel/proxy? I assume Steam has to use something like that in order to auto-discover machines on the local network.

[Jay And Problems]

Originally posted by Bloodred:

I have never used a setup like what you're describing, but are you sure broadcast packets are going through your SSH tunnel/proxy? I assume Steam has to use something like that in order to auto-discover machines on the local network.

They should be, but I can't figure out a way to diagnose if they are or not. I know obviously that something isn't making it through but what that something is is currently a mystery.

[zman0900]

Something seems to have changed with today's update. I was able to stream from windows to linux before by just opening udp port 27036 on the linux firewall (everything seems automatic on windows firewall). Tried to stream linux to windows, but noticed that linux was blocking incoming upd conntections on port 27031, so I opened that. At this point, windows steam offered an update, so I accepted. Now when its restarted, the two can't see each other, and linux is seeing blocked incoming connections from windows on tcp port 41162. Opening that port allows connection again.

[Jay And Problems]

Originally posted by zman0900:

Something seems to have changed with today's update. I was able to stream from windows to linux before by just opening udp port 27036 on the linux firewall (everything seems automatic on windows firewall). Tried to stream linux to windows, but noticed that linux was blocking incoming upd conntections on port 27031, so I opened that. At this point, windows steam offered an update, so I accepted. Now when its restarted, the two can't see each other, and linux is seeing blocked incoming connections from windows on tcp port 41162. Opening that port allows connection again.

Ugg, Make up your mind Valve... At this rate even people that like to keep a tight firewall are gonna have headaches :\

[Cheeseness]

It's still in beta. This stuff's going to fluctuate.

[Jay And Problems]

Originally posted by Cheeseness:

It's still in beta. This stuff's going to fluctuate.

Yeah, but there's no need to have Steam change the ports every time it starts and updates...