Black Ops 4 internet Optimization

What are ports, and what is port forwarding?

Ports are simply virtual pipelines that allow computers and devices to communicate and send information back and forth on the Internet. See more about ports used for Call of Duty games.

Port forwarding – or creating a port forward – is a common process in gaming that makes your gaming console or PC more accessible to other gaming consoles or PCs on the Internet. Port forwarding can improve connection speed, lobby wait times, and overall gameplay, particularly for a host.

What about NAT?

NAT (Network Address Translation) is a networking concept that allows your router to share a single IP (Internet Protocol) address across multiple devices on your network. Instead of your ISP (Internet Service Provider) assigning an IP address to every device that connects to the Internet, NAT allows your ISP to assign a single IP address to your router. The router then manages a set of IP addresses for all devices on your home network.

There are three main NAT types depending on your platform: Open, Moderate, and Strict on Microsoft or PC, and Type 1, Type 2, and Type 3 on Sony. Moderate/Type 2 and Strict/Type 3 NAT types limit the connections your gaming console or PC can make to other gaming consoles or PCs. For example, Moderate/Type 2 NATs can only connect with gaming consoles or PCs using Moderate/Type 2 or Open/Type 1 NAT, and Strict/Type 3 NATs can only connect with gaming consoles or PCs using Open/Type 1 NAT. Ultimately, an Open/Type 1 NAT will provide the best connection quality.

How to set up port Forwarding on the PS4

How to Port Forward Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII

When you are playing Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII 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 sometimes 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.

Before You Forward a Port

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.
A list of TCP and UDP ports that need to be forwarded.

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

Don't have time? Pay for Portforward.com's Network Utilities software.

Or you can do it manually if you want.

The general process for forwarding a port is:

Open a web browser and navigate to your router's IP address.
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 corresponding boxes in your router.
On occasion you have to reboot your router for the changes to take effect.

Ports To Forward for Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII

The exact ports for Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII are as follows:

Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII - PC

TCP: 3074,27014-27050
UDP: 3478,4379-4380,27000-27031,27036

Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII - Playstation 4

TCP: 80, 443, 1935, 3478-3479
UDP: ,3478-3480

Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII - Xbox One

TCP: 3074
UDP: 88,500,3074-3075,3544,4500

Several factors can negatively affect your performance while playing games online. Often collectively described as lag, these factors can lead to a host of in-game performance issues, including:

Rubber banding – Your character is running toward a destination and then jumps back to where it was a few seconds prior.
Stuttering – An effect that makes your character appear to freeze and skip ahead while moving.
Hit marker delays – When it appears you have landed several shots on an enemy, yet the enemy is able to kill you with fewer shots fired back.

Lag can also result in your getting booted from a match or from the multiplayer lobby while matchmaking.

If you're simply having trouble connecting to the game, check out Connecting to a Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Game.

Here are a few things that can contribute to lag along with tips to reduce it.

Latency/Ping

Latency, also referred to simply as ping, is the amount of time it takes for data to travel between locations, measured in milliseconds.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many things you can do to improve your ping, as it is mainly dependent upon the quality and scope of your Internet Service Provider and your geographic location in relation to servers.

See more about Internet Service Providers below.

Call of Duty matchmaking attempts to put you in matches with other nearby players to help offset the effects of ping. However, if there aren’t enough players close to you geographically, or if your ISP’s ping rate is high, you might experience some of the performance issues listed above.

Learn more about Port Forwarding and NAT settings.

You may, however, consider hardware improvements. Some routers specialize in reducing lag, while Linux-based models incorporate more up-to-date network drivers.

You can check your internet connection’s ping at www.speedtest.net.

Network quality and connection

From time to time, even the best internet connections can suffer from data loss, also known as packet loss. While you can’t anticipate packet loss or prevent it from happening once data is sent from your network, you can tighten up your connection to help reduce the potential for loss of data.

Some of these tips will require you to log in to your router. If you're not sure how to do this, please consult your router's manual for instructions. If you do not have your router’s login credentials, you will need to contact your Internet Service Provider.

Play on a wired connection – While convenient, Wi-Fi connections have a wide variance in reliability and bandwidth and can dramatically affect the quality of online gameplay. Wired Ethernet connections will maintain the minimum bandwidth connection that is required for online gaming.
Enable QoS – Some routers come with a Quality of Service (QoS) feature. When enabled, QoS allows you to set traffic priorities to the devices on your network, as well as traffic types.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth is commonly thought of as speed, but it is really the number of bytes that can be transferred between locations over a set period, usually measured in megabits per second (Mbps). Most online games do not require a great amount of bandwidth, even when you are hosting a match. However, your available bandwidth can also be consumed by other sources, leaving you with less overall bandwidth for online gameplay and affecting in-game performance:

Sharing an internet connection – Other users and devices accessing the internet on your network will invariably require some of your overall bandwidth.
Streaming music or video – Both use a significant amount of bandwidth to function, and should be avoided whenever playing online.
Streaming your gameplay – Essentially the opposite of streaming music or video, as you are sending data (uploading) rather than receiving it (downloading). Most providers dedicate less bandwidth to uploading compared to downloading.

Find out your internet connection’s download and upload bandwidth at www.speedtest.net.

Internet Service Providers

The latency experienced on an ISP is dependent upon the range and comprehensiveness of its overall network. When data packets travel between locations, the fewer points of exchange, the better. Direct routes will reduce latency and minimize potential instances of packet loss.

It is also worth noting that, depending on the scope of your ISP’s network, you may be more susceptible to packet loss when internet use is at its heaviest.

If you experience recurring latency issues while playing online, you may want to consider finding the ISP with the best connectivity options available in your area.