Multiplayer Games in College Residence

[『Hrothed Gar』]

Hiya, just yesterday I moved into campus residence for the college that I've started going to, and I'm having issues connecting to online games. The games I've been having issues with are specifically Payday 2 and Team Fortress 2. Payday 2 I'm able to see lobbies but I'm always stuck on "Waiting for server to respond" and for TF2 I cannot find a server at all with people playing when using the Quick Play menu. I'm just wondering if there's anything I can do to get this working again, because it worked fine before I left home yesterday. Thanks.

[Saufkaiser]

maybe the game uses some ports, that are closed in your college? the same happend in my school ... i cant find any server in teeworlds xD

[Saufkaiser]

resolution: use a proxy server ;-) but if you do that, perhaps you get some very high pings -.-

[『Hrothed Gar』]

There's got to be another way to fix the issue I'm having. Is it possible that the firewall could be causing an issue for Steam? I can log into Steam and everything but it seems that when I want to play a game online, I'm unable to connect.

[76561198146323638]

fix

[Salvata]

You could always use an VPN connection, there are a lot available. Using a VPN connection you will access the internet over the connected VPN Wan connection, so if there is a firewall that is blocking ports for gaming, you will not have to bother with that.

[『Hrothed Gar』]

I guess I'm going to have to. I took a walk over to the IT department here just to have the guy basically tell me that if the guy managing the firewall says no, there's nothing I can do other than get my own internet connection. No clue why they're blocking the ports needed.
I'm pretty upset by this.

[eram]

Many university networks and proxies block required ports for Steam operation - please consult your network administrator to ensure the required ports are open if you are using a university network or a proxy. Ports required for Steam can not be re-mapped to HTTP or reconfigured to a custom port range.

Your network must be configured to allow Steam access to the following ports (in order from highest to lowest priority for QoS users):
Steam Client
UDP 27000 to 27015 inclusive (Game client traffic)
UDP 27015 to 27030 inclusive (Typically Matchmaking and HLTV)
TCP 27014 to 27050 inclusive (Steam downloads)
UDP 27031 and 27036 (incoming, for In-Home Streaming)
TCP 27036 and 27037 (incoming, for In-Home Streaming)
UDP 4380

Dedicated or Listen Servers
TCP 27015 (SRCDS Rcon port)

Steamworks P2P Networking and Steam Voice Chat
UDP 3478 (Outbound)
UDP 4379 (Outbound)
UDP 4380 (Outbound)

[Kickin' Chicken]

Originally posted by Admirable Apollo:

No clue why they're blocking the ports needed.

Think it might be because they don't want their bandwidth wasted on games?