How we hand out ports and why you do not need a dedicated IP

Shared host name, ports in the 4000 range, and how to hide the port behind your own domain.

1 min readUpdated 2026-09-14Diese Anleitung auf Deutsch lesen →

All servers share our public IP behind node1.penguhost.com. What tells them apart is the port: each server gets one from a pool, so yours might be node1.penguhost.com:4207. Players enter address and port once and the game remembers them.

"But other hosts sell dedicated IPs"

A dedicated IP lets you use the default port (25565 for Minecraft) so players can type just the address. IPv4 addresses are scarce and cost money every month; we would rather put that into RAM. You get the same clean address for free with a domain and an SRV record: play.yourdomain.com then works without any port for Minecraft Java.

Bedrock, Rust and most Steam games always need a port anyway, so a dedicated IP would not change that.

More ports

Voice chat mods, Dynmap, query ports or a second game on the same server need extra ports. Add them under Modify server in the dashboard; they appear in the Network tab. See Extra ports.