Does hosting for all PC games require portforwarding?

[Turin]

I have tried hosting games on Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead before, and it could not seem to work. Friends could not find the match, and upon inviting them via Steam, they recieved the message "could not connect to server" or something like that.
We spent hours on google reading about things like portforwarding and a bunch of people having similar problems. It was all really confusing, as we have not even heard of the word before looking up the problem.
Something similar happened when I tried making a match on Battlefield 1942, and it would not show up for my friend.
I have checked under my nose, of course. All the match settings are set to Internet and made to where it is public and all that obvious stuff, but it still does not seem to work.

I have thought "well maybe they're victims of their age, especially since they once used gamespy", so I figured it might work for other games. Only thing is, I don't have any other games which I can host my own match, and so I would need to buy new ones, like say "Take on Mars" or "Arma 3" (which are games I hope to have one day), just to test this out.

I have no idea what portforwarding is, how it works, or how to use it. All I know is that for some online games, it is essential to host matches. Is it a basic foundation in the PC gaming world? Is it arbitrary necessary for all online games?
If this is the case, could someone explain what it is and how to do it? Or direct me to a page which does explain it?
Keep in mind, I know nothing about this, so I am kind of an idiot with this subject.
Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

[Creep]

I just read the title.
not if you connect your computer directly to a modem with no router.
if that is not an option you need to learn to poke holes in the router or let somebody else host.

or rent a server.

[Cathulhu]

Most more recent games do not require it anymore.
If you want to know it for specific games, you should ask in discussion hub of the game.
ARMA 3 still requires port forwarding.

2302 (Arma3 Game port)
2303 (Server reporting)
2305 (Von)
8766 (Steam port)
27016 (Steam query port)

http://steamcommunity.com/app/107410/discussions/1/648817378050000286/

Take on Mars does not require port forwarding anymore:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/244030/discussions/0/35219681538879478/#c616189742776164684

[Muppet among Puppets]

Many games dont need to allow unrequested ingoing traffic to create games (for example if they have a lobby).
But if games need you to create a "server", its required that it can receive unrequested ingoing traffic, aka joining.

Best is to ask for the game in question which ports need to listen.

[Akato]

Bro like the man sayed most more recent games do not require it anymore.

[StreetFrame]

оравоаоллаипдл.оыаводл.рп

[Turin]

Originally posted by Cathulhu:

Most more recent games do not require it anymore.
If you want to know it for specific games, you should ask in discussion hub of the game.
ARMA 3 still requires port forwarding.

2302 (Arma3 Game port)
2303 (Server reporting)
2305 (Von)
8766 (Steam port)
27016 (Steam query port)

http://steamcommunity.com/app/107410/discussions/1/648817378050000286/

Take on Mars does not require port forwarding anymore:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/244030/discussions/0/35219681538879478/#c616189742776164684

Originally posted by lucaspike2:

Bro like the man sayed most more recent games do not require it anymore.

That is quite relieving.
With games which do not require portforwarding, does the player simply create the new match and it works just like that? Or are there other processes?

[Muppet among Puppets]

Originally posted by TotenKommando:

With games which do not require portforwarding, does the player simply create the new match and it works just like that? Or are there other processes?

It will just work with the interface.

[aiusepsi]

I'll try to explain what's going on. IP addresses are relatively scarce, so your ISP will usually only allocate you a single one. Because you probably want to use more than one computer on your internet connection, typically that single IP address is used for a router, or more specifically a Network Address Translation (NAT) device.

Each computer on your internal network is given a non-public IP address, and the NAT device does the job of letting all those devices use a single public IP address. When you connect outwards to a server on the public internet, the NAT device makes an association between the port that was used to initiate the request on your machine, with a port on the NAT's public-facing interface.

For the sake of argument, say that you're trying to the Google homepage, http://google.com.

Your computer picks a random port to send the request from, say, 34567, and it directs it to port 80 (the HTTP port) of google.com. The NAT device picks this up, and sends out the request on its public port, say, 45678. google.com gets your request, and sends back the page, to the public IP address, and port 45678. The NAT device remembers that it sent out data that came from your computer's port 34567 out on port 45678, so it sends replies to 45678 to your computer's port 34567. So you can see http://google.com

Now if you're hosting a service on a port, for example, port 2302 on your computer, if the NAT device gets an incoming signal on port 2302, it won't know which computer to send it to. That's why you need to set up port forwarding; to set up the mappings between the external public ports of the NAT device and the internal private ports of your computer.

The ultimate fix for this sort of nonsense is the roll-out of IPv6, which has IP addresses available in abundance, so every computer on your own home network will be able to have a real publicly routable IP address, so no port forwarding nonsense will be required.

[[AU] Tabris:DarkPeace]

Routers (NAT/PAT) add security though, so don't expect IPv6 to magically make Port forwarding go away.