How To Open Ports in Your Router for Dota 2

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Port Forward Staff
September 19, 2018 (Last Updated: ) | Reading Time: 2 minutes

Dota 2 is Valve's Real-Time, Action, and Strategy game released in 2013.

Dota 2 game artwork featuring a team of heroes
Dota 2 game artwork featuring a team of heroes

Dota 2 has the following styles of play.

How to Port Forward Dota 2

When you are playing Dota 2 you might need to forward some ports in your router. Forwarding ports is a useful trick in gaming because it can really help to make your network connection most stable and on occasion even faster. Routers were not designed to allow incoming network requests and some games can play tremendously better if an incoming connection is forwarded through the router to the game.

Use a VPN Instead

Have you considered using a VPN instead of forwarding a port? For most users, a VPN is a much simpler and more secure choice than forwarding a port.

We use and recommend NordVPN because not only is it the fastest VPN, it includes a new feature called Meshnet that makes forwarding a port no longer necessary for most applications. With NordVPN Meshnet, you can connect to your devices from anywhere in the world, completely secure, over a highly encrypted VPN tunnel.

When shopping for a VPN, make sure that they meet the following criteria:

This is the list of requirements that we used when we were shopping around for a VPN provider. There are lots of free, shady VPN providers out there that we looked at and dismissed.

Based in Panama, using diskless servers, and with over 6,100 servers in 61 countries, we can safely say that NordVPN satisfies all of these requirements.

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Once you've set up your NordVPN account on multiple computers and enabled Meshnet, you can seamlessly access all of your devices as if they were on the same network. You don't even have to log in to your router. It's very simple.

Every time you click on one of our affiliate links, such as NordVPN, we get a little kickback for introducing you to the service. Think of us as your VPN wingman.

Before You Forward a Port

Before you can forward a port you need to know the following things:

How to find your router's IP Address

The easiest way to locate your router's IP address is to run our free Router Detector utility. It's a part of the Network Utilities suite of tools and it's completely free to use.

How To Forward Ports

To easily and quickly get your ports forwarded use the Network Utilities software. Network Utilities allows you to forward ports only when you need them, and then close them again when you are done. This makes keeping your network more secure much easier. You can also do it by hand.

The general process for forwarding a port is:

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Ports To Forward for Dota 2

The network ports for Dota 2 are as follows:

Dota 2 - Steam

  • TCP: 27015, 27036
  • UDP: 27005, 27015-28999

We have guides that are custom tailored for Dota 2 that will show you the required incoming ports.

When you are done following those steps your ports will be forwarded. Be sure to check out our full list of games and programs that can be forwarded.

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