Go into your library and right click on TF2











Go to properties and in the first tab general put in the advanced launch options.


Go ahead and launch TF2.

Now launch your server by whatever means you'd like to do that with.
If you use the "launch server" dialog, be warned it will set sv_lan to 1 right before launching the server which will give attempted connections an error, and changing sv_lan back to 0 does not take effect until a map reload. I always launch my server by typing "map mapname" in the console.


Once you're in the game, look in the console again. It should say something like this.



I think this has been fixed, so you don't need to double load. It is only left as this used to happen.

If you're in a real hurry to get your server up with items the fastest way to do it is type "connect d; disconnect; map mapname" or maybe have a config with those commands and just execute it.
All we really need to do for item servers is engage the connection more than once, which this bogus ip does.

Copy the IP after "FakeIP allocation succeeded:" with the port.
Send this IP to whoever you want to connect and they should be able to pop right in.
The command is connect <ip>

Alternatively you could put some unique tag in your sv_tags, and launch your server like that. Tell your friends to type your tag in the server browser tag search bar (it's the wide one on top).

Note that your server will not show up in the server browser until launched for the second time (map mapname will suffice but changelevel will not.) unless you're running the server from SRCDS.

Your friends won't be able to connect off of steam just by right clicking you. I don't know why, it just won't work. I've tried a lot to make it work and it doesn't seem to be possible.

All the times you try to connect to your friend's game and it fails after 4 retries is because your router is denying the entry into that port. Probably all ports. What's more, you leak your public IP to the whole internet whenever you host one.

-enablefakeip is a launch option that tells TF2 to use the Steam Datagram Relay (SDR). How it works is as far as I know similar to what a VPN does, and it's more documented on the Steamworks website. It's technically a security measure because of your IP being leaked whenever you host local games and have a steam profile with public game details (that join game button links to your IP, cause that's the IP the server is hosted on.)

The reason it's useful for launching our server is because it bypasses the normal need to port forward our public IP so others can connect. Not our IP, but valve's problem now. And theirs are port forwarded. A lot of us, simply put, are not the administrators of our own network or otherwise not capable of port forwarding. Since the server is running off of your own computer, it can be extensively configured exactly how you want, with sourcemod and whatever.
The launch option was added on the September 16, 2021 Patch
and since the x64 update, SRCDS servers now display in the server browser.

Note that, now that we've opened our server to the public, anyone who has the IP can join, and I have had A LOT OF instances where that means random people surfing the community server browser connected to my server. If you don't want this to happen, you should add hide_server 1 to your autoexec, or +hide_server 1 to your launch options. You could use sv_lan as well but without hide_server your server will still be listed on the master server list.