Hosting an SRCDS Server (No Port-Forwarding)

A guide to setting up your SRCDS server without having to port-forward.

For a detailed guide to quick, in-game server setup (plugins not possible), refer to this guide.

What does -enablefakeip do?

When set as a launch option to your SRCDS executable, it will tell the server to use the Steam Datagram Relay (SDR), which is Valve's "virtual private gaming network."

Valve describes SDR's advantages: "Using our APIs, you can not only carry your game traffic over the Valve backbone that is dedicated for game content, you also gain access to our network of relays. Relaying the traffic protects your servers and players from DoS attack, because IP addresses are never revealed. All traffic you receive is authenticated, encrypted, and rate-limited. Furthermore, for a surprisingly high number of players, we can also find a faster route through our network, which actually improves player ping times. This relay network can be used for both peer-to-peer traffic and dedicated servers."

Using -enablefakeip to host your SRCDS server.

By now, you should have your server. You can find a guide for setting up your server here, if you do not already have one setup.

See that start.bat? That's where we will tell the server to use the SDR.

Open your start.bat.

Launch options with - as their prefix must come before options with a + as their prefix. "-port 27015" is (most likely) not required for servers using SDR. All you have to do for your server to show up to others in the browser is add -enablefakeip somewhere between +sv_pure 1 (or whatever your first + launch option is) and -console. After -enablefakeip has been added to your start.bat, you should be able to start up the server, get your friends in (if you have any), and have randoms join.

ATTENTION: You will have to use the SRCDS console/RCON to change the map using "map [mapname]" to get the server to finally show up on the list/be joinable.

ANOTHER DISCLAIMER: Recent versions of Sourcemod are detected by many antiviruses on Virustotal. Looks to be a false positive, but you can replace the infected .dll file with the same file from an older version that isn't detected if you want to be completely sure.

What does this mean?

It means we have #savedtf2!!!!!!

No longer will people complain about community servers (which TF2 was originally dependent upon--no matchmaking) being 24/7 2fort/having 1000 plugins! We can create our own servers now instead of relying upon casual!!! I fully expect the wonderful TF2 community to take the knowledge given to them by me and use it to their advantage!

[steeg]

Could you please elaborate "launch options with - as their prefix must come before options with a + as their prefix"? I host a L4D2 dedicated, mixing them up like "+xxx -xxx +xxx" don't give any issues. Plus for certain launch option such as IP, you could either use +ip or -ip, it will give the same result.

[kirta]

god bless you

[fourth dimensional plane]

yippee