Windrose Port Configuration
Which ports a Windrose server uses on GameGrid, which of them face the internet, and why none of them are yours to change.
How ports are allocated
Every server on this platform is given its own block of 100 consecutive ports on the host it runs on, taken from the 28000-39000 range. The first free block is used, so base ports land on 28000, 28100, 28200 and so on.
Ports are allocated by the platform and are not customer-editable. There is no port field in the Settings tab and none in ServerDescription.json that you should touch — the platform writes your allocated port into R5/ServerDescription.json before every start.
Two Windrose servers on this platform never share a port, and the block means the ports a server uses can never collide with its neighbour’s.
The ports a Windrose server uses
Base + 0 — the game port, UDP, open to the internet. Players connect on it when Use Direct Connection is on. With invite codes instead, the server goes through the game’s own relay service and nothing listens on this port, which is not a fault.
Base + 1 — the query port, UDP, open to the internet. This is the A2S query socket, and like the game port it is only in use with Use Direct Connection on. Windrose takes no port arguments on its command line at all: the platform writes the allocated port into R5/ServerDescription.json before every start, and the query port follows it as base + 1.
Base + 80 — the Windrose Plus dashboard, TCP. GameGrid installs Windrose Plus on every Windrose server, so every Windrose server has it. This one is NOT open to the internet: the firewall rule the platform creates for it accepts connections from the machine itself and nothing else.
A Windrose server on base port 28100 with Use Direct Connection on therefore answers on 28100 and 28101 from the internet, and on 28180 (Windrose Plus) only internally.
There is no separate remote-console port. Windrose has no RCON of its own, and the game port and the query port are the only two it declares; base + 80 belongs to Windrose Plus. The panel sends console commands over the Windrose Plus dashboard port at base + 80 — which is why the Console tab has nothing to send down while Windrose Plus is still being installed on a new server.
The address to give your players
Open the server panel and look at the Connect card on the Overview tab. It gives you the Game Port on its own line and the Server Address as the host’s public IP and your allocated port together, for example 203.0.113.50:28100.
Hand players that whole address. Copy it from the panel rather than assembling it yourself, and do not assume the port is a Windrose default: it is not.
The same address appears on the server card on the Dashboard and in the status bar at the top of every tab of the server panel.
The Windrose Plus dashboard
Windrose Plus, which GameGrid installs on every Windrose server, has an HTTP port at your base port + 80, and the platform opens that port to the machine itself only. You do not reach it by typing an address and port into a browser.
Instead, the Windrose Plus tab shows a "Open Dashboard" link with "(port N, TLS-proxied)" beside it. That button asks GameGrid, which checks that you are signed in and that this server is yours, for a one-time link, and opens the dashboard in a new tab on its own secure address, wpdash.wdcgamegrid.com, which then relays to the dashboard. The dashboard’s plain-HTTP port is never exposed to the internet, which is the point.
One consequence worth knowing: the Windrose Plus "public map" cannot currently be shared with people who are not signed in to your GameGrid account, because the only route to the dashboard is that authenticated proxy. See Windrose Plus Live Map.
Port forwarding and firewall rules
There is nothing to forward and nothing to open. The host’s firewall rules for your server are created when it is provisioned and removed when it is deleted. The Windrose Plus dashboard rule, which lets only the game host itself reach the dashboard’s port, is created when GameGrid installs Windrose Plus and removed with your server.
If you were running Windrose on your own hardware you would forward the game port on TCP and UDP and the query port on UDP. On GameGrid that is done for you.
When players cannot connect
Check the badge in the status bar reads "Online". A server that is Offline, Starting or Failed has nothing listening on any port.
Check the address. Take it from the Connect card on the Overview tab, host and port together, and have the player paste it rather than retype it.
Check whether your server is set up for direct connections at all. The "Use Direct Connection" setting on the Settings tab decides whether players join with the address or with the invite code — with it off, the address will not work and the invite code is what they need.
If the address is right, the server is Online and it still does not answer, open a support ticket with your Service ID (bottom of the Connect card), the address, and a WinMTR report from an affected player.