As an online game, connection and ensuring that data flow between your computer and the game servers is as quick and clean as possible is of paramount importance, but in reality there are any number of things along the way that can prevent that. One of the first steps a player should do upon experiencing connection trouble is to ensure that their home network and Internet Service Provider (ISP) are functioning properly.
Should an ISP be having network troubles there's not much that can be done on the player's end but wait. Home network problems on the other hand are something that players can investigate and troubleshoot themselves. One of the ways to ensure that a home network is properly configured for a given activity is to do something called "port forwarding".
RSI and Star Citizen Ports
No, not like Port Olisar...ports on your router! To make certain that data is flowing properly, the ports that need to be opened for your computer to properly communicate with RSI's servers are:
- Ports 8000-8020 for TCP
- Ports 64090-64110 for UDP
If you begin to experience connection troubles, crashes, and other similar symptoms with errors suggesting or noting connection or data loss, try creating a network rule to allow these ports to be "open".
So how do I do this?
For those not technically inclined, there is a helpful article that goes much deeper into explaining what all this means and some basic steps to do it on How to Geek.
As mentioned in the article, unfortunately the steps to do this depend entirely on the hardware (i.e. your router and its specific model) you are using within your home network, so it is impossible for us to cover all possible variations of the instructions here. Thus, you will need to locate instructions for this based on the manufacturer for your specific router model.
If it was provided by your ISP, you might need to contact them for assistance.