Port Forwarding on Your Router for Ark: Survival Evolved (2024)

Ark: Survival Evolved is an Action, Adventure, Survival, Role-Playing, MMO, and Open-World game published by Studio Wildcard, Snail Games released in 2017.

Ark: Survival Evolved has the following styles of play.

• Games that are considered action are all about centering the player in the middle of an evolving situation.
• An adventure game is where the player is usually the protagonist and plays through an evolving story. The storyline is the driving part of an adventure game.
• In a survival game you simply need to stay alive. Some have waves of enemies that get harder with each wave. Many are horror based, supernatural, or post-apocalyptic. They generally focus on conserving resources such as ammo and health, and sometimes employ elements of stealth.
• Role-Playing Games give you hours on end of game play where you can explore a new world through the eyes of your own character. They tend to be the longest style of game with the most immersive story lines. Popular RPG titles include Skyrim, World of Warcraft, and Fallout.
• MMO stands for Massively Multiplayer Online game. MMO's are huge open worlds where large numbers of people play at the same time. The focus highly on character development and progression, as well as loot collection and grouping together.
• Open world style games are usually not on rails, meaning that the player gets to go anywhere and solve problems in the order that they choose. The player is usually allowed to roam freely through a normally massive environment.

When you are playing Ark: Survival Evolved 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:

• Your VPN provider should have a no-logs policy. This means that they do not keep any logs of any kind.
• Make sure that your VPN provider has lots of exit nodes all around the world.
• Check that your VPN will not affect your speed.
• Verify that your VPN provider uses WireGuard as the underlying protocol.
• Many people prefer a VPN provider that is not based in the United States.

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.

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

• The IP address of your network router.
• Your gaming machine's IP address.
• The TCP and UDP ports to forward.

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.

Most people use our Network Utilities software package to forward ports. It's the easiest way to forward ports when you need them and then close them when you do not. You can also do it by hand.

The usual process for forwarding a port is:

• Login to your router.
• Locate your routers port forwarding section.
• Put the IP address of your computer or gaming console in the applicable box in your router.
• Put the TCP and UDP ports for your game in the matching boxes in your router.
• On occasion you have to reboot your router for the changes to take effect.

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The ports that need to be forwarded for Ark: Survival Evolved are as follows:

Ark: Survival Evolved - Steam

• TCP: 25147, 27015, 27036
• UDP: 7777-7778, 25147, 27015, 27031-27036

Ark: Survival Evolved - PC

• TCP: 25147, 27015
• UDP: 7777-7778, 25147, 27015

Ark: Survival Evolved - Playstation 4

• TCP: 3478-3480, 25147
• UDP: 3074, 3478-3479, 7777-7778, 25147, 27015

Ark: Survival Evolved - Xbox One

• TCP: 3074, 25147
• UDP: 88, 500, 3074, 3544, 4500, 7777-7778, 25147, 27015

Ark: Survival Evolved - Switch

• TCP: 6667, 12400, 25147, 28910, 29900-29901, 29920
• UDP: 1024-65535

Ark: Survival Evolved - Xbox Series X

• TCP: 3074, 25147
• UDP: 88, 500, 3074, 3544, 4500, 7777-7778, 25147, 27015

If you want to follow guides that are custom tailored to your exact router and Ark: Survival Evolved simply follow one of these links:

• Ark: Survival Evolved - Steam
• Ark: Survival Evolved - PC
• Ark: Survival Evolved - Playstation 4
• Ark: Survival Evolved - Xbox One
• Ark: Survival Evolved - Switch
• Ark: Survival Evolved - Xbox Series X

That should do it; your ports are now forwarded. Need something else forwarded? Check out our list of games and programs.