Making my server say available instead of LAN? How do I do that?

[PhantomOp]

Hi,
I thought I fixed my ark server manager, and made it to where it would be available, and not LAN. Would somebody be able to help me fix this? Please, and thank you!

[zerassar]

Your server, for you, on your home network, will always appear in the LAN menu. Because, you're on the same LAN. That is expected.

For it to be available outside your network you must do port forwarding for all the network ports you're using at your router level. Refer to your routers documentation/manual on that.

[Zac's Dad]

Zerassar is spot-on. I have nothing to add. That will do it.

[PhantomOp]

I have done the port forwarding. It's still only showing up as LAN. Not sure why? My router isn't that old either. It's a year to less than a year old. It's one of the newer ones. When I was with my ex we had it working. But last time I spoke to him, his wasn't even on available anymore either.

[Cpared2]

I had to change the ports (server,peer, and query)in the server manager because i had other games that had used them through steam and other server managers and it was causing issues.

[PhantomOp]

Originally posted by Cpared2:

I had to change the ports (server,peer, and query)in the server manager because i had other games that had used them through steam and other server managers and it was causing issues.

How did you do that? I know I've gone back into my router, n added my new Ip address to it.

[Cpared2]

If you use Ark Sever Manager program its right under where you name your server and put in the password in the administration tab. i usually go up a few numbers on the port number it auto fills in. also as said above make sure you also port forward on your router any of the ports that you have changed.

[Ǥɾᴧᴤʆᴧᵯᴧ]

You have set the ports you forward to UDP? because TCP is wrong
example:

Name : type : IPv : Port : (Port Range)
ARK 27016 : UDP : IPv4 : 27016 (27016)
ARK 7667 : UDP : IPv4 : 7667 (7667 - 7668)

[PhantomOp]

Originally posted by Ǥɾᴧᴤʆᴧᵯᴧ:

You have set the ports you forward to UDP? because TCP is wrong
example:

Name : type : IPv : Port : (Port Range)
ARK 27016 : UDP : IPv4 : 27016 (27016)
ARK 7667 : UDP : IPv4 : 7667 (7667 - 7668)

Yes I have this in my port forwarding

[PhantomOp]

Originally posted by zerassar:

Your server, for you, on your home network, will always appear in the LAN menu. Because, you're on the same LAN. That is expected.

For it to be available outside your network you must do port forwarding for all the network ports you're using at your router level. Refer to your routers documentation/manual on that.

I have done all the port forwarding for each server. I'm not sure why nobody is understanding this?

[zerassar]

Originally posted by PhantomOp:

Originally posted by zerassar:

Your server, for you, on your home network, will always appear in the LAN menu. Because, you're on the same LAN. That is expected.

For it to be available outside your network you must do port forwarding for all the network ports you're using at your router level. Refer to your routers documentation/manual on that.

I have done all the port forwarding for each server. I'm not sure why nobody is understanding this?

Dont know why you're @'ing me a month later.
The symptoms you describe match what I commented.
Somewhere... in your network... be that locally on your LAN, the PC, or your ISP level... Your ports are not routing.

Also it "saying" available doesnt matter. What matters is whether people can connect to it or not whilst on the internet. Not an arbitrary label in ASM.

[PhantomOp]

It actually does seem to matter in the Ark Server Manager. B/c if it says Lan... or Lan only you wont find that server. My friend and I have tried that already. You can't find a Lan server on an official, or unofficial server.

[PhantomOp]

Originally posted by zerassar:

Originally posted by PhantomOp:

I have done all the port forwarding for each server. I'm not sure why nobody is understanding this?

Dont know why you're @'ing me a month later.
The symptoms you describe match what I commented.
Somewhere... in your network... be that locally on your LAN, the PC, or your ISP level... Your ports are not routing.

Also it "saying" available doesnt matter. What matters is whether people can connect to it or not whilst on the internet. Not an arbitrary label in ASM.

A month later... b/c people get sick, or have lives to live, n a job to pay bills.
It actually does seem to matter in the Ark Server Manager. B/c if it says Lan... or Lan only you wont find that server. My friend and I have tried that already. You can't find a Lan server on an official, or unofficial server.

[zerassar]

Originally posted by PhantomOp:

Originally posted by zerassar:

Dont know why you're @'ing me a month later.
The symptoms you describe match what I commented.
Somewhere... in your network... be that locally on your LAN, the PC, or your ISP level... Your ports are not routing.

Also it "saying" available doesnt matter. What matters is whether people can connect to it or not whilst on the internet. Not an arbitrary label in ASM.

A month later... b/c people get sick, or have lives to live, n a job to pay bills.
It actually does seem to matter in the Ark Server Manager. B/c if it says Lan... or Lan only you wont find that server. My friend and I have tried that already. You can't find a Lan server on an official, or unofficial server.

And yet you replied to others before thinking to dig my comment up out of the grave? If others are ignoring you quote them. I was the first response at which point you'd said nothing about your ports.

A server CAN both appear in Lan and official lists. Because on account of the port forwarding the server can be connected to by BOTH a public and private static IP address.

Unofficial server lists are known to be inaccurate and buggy. Try to add it to the steam server viewer favourites in the format publicIP:query port.

ASM labels can also be inaccurate. Having managed a cluster for 7+ years I've seen that first hand.

The ports quoted in the earlier comments... Sure you forwarded those... But are those even the ports that you configured the server to use in ASM?

Is your sever on a static IP?

Are you on a mobile network?

Is your network double NAT'd?

Is your public IP address IPv6?

Is there any other complications in your network topography that isn't typical?

[PhantomOp]

Originally posted by zerassar:

Originally posted by PhantomOp:

A month later... b/c people get sick, or have lives to live, n a job to pay bills.
It actually does seem to matter in the Ark Server Manager. B/c if it says Lan... or Lan only you wont find that server. My friend and I have tried that already. You can't find a Lan server on an official, or unofficial server.

And yet you replied to others before thinking to dig my comment up out of the grave? If others are ignoring you quote them. I was the first response at which point you'd said nothing about your ports.

A server CAN both appear in Lan and official lists. Because on account of the port forwarding the server can be connected to by BOTH a public and private static IP address.

Unofficial server lists are known to be inaccurate and buggy. Try to add it to the steam server viewer favourites in the format publicIP:query port.

ASM labels can also be inaccurate. Having managed a cluster for 7+ years I've seen that first hand.

The ports quoted in the earlier comments... Sure you forwarded those... But are those even the ports that you configured the server to use in ASM?

Is your sever on a static IP?

Are you on a mobile network?

Is your network double NAT'd?

Is your public IP address IPv6?

Is there any other complications in your network topography that isn't typical?

I have responded to others. I don't need whatever attitude ur giving me on that. How about sticking to the ark topic, instead of talking to people like that?
No, i'm not on a mobile network..
I Have stated i'm on a PC
Idk on the double NAT'd
Idk if it's IPv6 or not?
Network seems to be fine otherwise.

[zerassar]

The attitude was just me responding to what I felt you were dishing out coming for me. But I agree, let's chalk up to a misunderstanding and move on.

"I Have stated i'm on a PC" I don't recall asking? Are you referring to my query about your servers static IP address? A "server" is any device that provides a "service". If ASM is running on your PC, then in this context your PC is the server.

Re IPV6... Your public IP address is a long string of numbers and letters. If your public IP address is IPV4 then it's 4 octets of numbers only. e.g. a typical routers private IP address is 192.168.0.1. But people connect to your public IP address not the private IP. Hence why forwarding is required. It forwards connections on ports received at your router to a specific IP address in your network.

Thus why your server needs to be on a static IP address.

If you still don't know what your public address is, this site will tell you. https://www.ipchicken.com/ You can then figure out if its IPv6/4 from there. You may also want to contact your ISP and confirm that they are not doing anything on their side to block inbound connections on the specific ports you are trying to use.

I ask re IPv6 as I had heard that issues with making servers publicly reachable were common for German players because their ISP's were all using IPv6 and the game wasnt working properly with it.

Double NAT'ing would be involved if say you had dual routers. In which case you'd need to port forward at both hops in the network. Double NAT'ing is also an issue for those on integrated building networks or mobile networks where you dont get a public IP address assigned to your connection and instead you share a single IP with all other users of the network.

You need to have a public IP, preferably static, and control to add the routing rules at all layers/hops of your LAN between the ISP and your local server. Otherwise if there are multiple hops along the way, you may well be doing the port forwarding at one hop... But because that hasnt been applied to all hops along the path, the overall port routing is not occurring and it is being stopped/blocked at a hop along the way.

Client side connections from your network to external services will typically be fine. Networks are generally designed to allow outbound connections with little scrutiny. It is the inbound connections that are blocked by default.

Have you ever run any game servers, for any other game, on your network before?


Another thing to confirm is whether or not those ports are actually in use already by another service on your server... and whether the Ark server is correctly binding to those port addresses.

In cmd prompt, the command "netstat -o" will list all open connections and the process ID (PID) of the process that is bound to that connection and port. You can then filter by PID with "tasklist |findstr <pid>" or searching manually in Task Manager.

Before starting your Ark server do the above... Confirm there is nothing using those ports. If there is something using those ports then you need to pick other ports and reconfigure your server in ASM. Generally speaking, you shouldnt pick ports willy nilly and should confirm they are available before jumping the gun and selecting them.

After starting the Ark server you can do it again to confirm that the port is now registered and the Ark server process is listening on it.

There are tools like port scanners that can help you check if a service is running on a port and responding. This can help you, and external mates, confirm its up and listening. That said though neither the game, nor query ports will respond to a port scanner and so will appear as being down.

If you were using a port scanner to check for connectivity, you could do so by opening the rcon port. rcon does respond to port scanners... But in general I would not recommend leaving that open on the interest lest it provide a tempting target for trolls to try to brute force your admin password and mess with you.