hi, i recently installed a router so that i could share one internet connection between a desktop PC and a laptop PC. this desktop PC is acting as the server for my online RPG. everything installed OK, and the internet works on both machines.. the problem is i cant seem to connect to the server anymore. i know the IP has changed since i changed the router (which brings problems of its own, since everyone whos downloaded the game has my old IP.. but thats another story), however im not sure why i cant connect. i notice that whatismyip.com tells me that both machines have the same IP address, however i cant even join a game when the server is run on either machine and the client is run on the other. i can however start the server and a client on the same machine and it will work. i have to put 127.0.0.1 though, for some strange reason putting my IP address doesnt work.. anyway, i know this connection thing has to do with the router, i hope it wont be a huge problem though.. thanks for any help.

You need to set the router to forward the appropriate incoming ports to your server. Right now the router's recieving connections and dropping them because it has nowhere to send them.

hey Ra,

i figured that was part of it after i googled, and i found the "port forwarding" part to my router. there are two things here, "application triggered port forwarding" and "persistant port forwarding". the former will open the port when the program needs it, the latter will keep it permanently open. so i clicked on the latter and then it gives me some options to open a new port, and 4 of these options are:

inbound port, type, private IP address (starting with "192.168.2."), private port.

anyway, i put 50000, UDP for the first two (the server listens in port 50000, but i dont understand the last two.. there were actually two already set up here, they looked like this:

(description, inbound port, type, private ip, private port
msmsgs (192.168.2.35:12972) 10224 UDP 35 12972
msmsgs (192.168.2.35:13563) 28918 TCP 35 13563

so i just put the same for "private IP" as was already used in those two, and for private port i just put 50009.. however, still, i have no luck...

i also tried using the "application triggered port forwarding", and this had some different options.. it looked like this:

outbound port, trigger type (TCP or UDP), inpound port(s), and public type (TCP or UDP).

now, for the inbound port i can set to 50000, however as for outbound port, i don't know what to do for this. i am using RakNet, which lets me set "0" as the port clients are set as, which just picks a port at random for me.. so if RakNet does this randomly, how could i possibly set the port here?

im using a Microsoft brand wireless router, however the second PC is connected through a wire, not a wireless card. thanks for any help.

Alright, this will only work if you have the computers connected to your router set to static IP addresses.

Inbound port is the port the rest of the world will use to connect to your computer. Type is the protocol, either TCP or UDP. Private IP address is the internal static IP addresss of the computer that's hosting the service (starting with "192.168.2."). Private port is the port the service is hosted on on the internal computer.

I'm not sure about "application-triggered port forwarding" because it seems to be broken on my router, so I haven't had a chance to experiment with it.

nice, i figured it out.. turns out i was putting the wrong IP address for the "private IP address". everything seems to be working now.. thanks again.

now that everyone has a bad version of my IP in their config file, i was thinking i should prevent this from happening again. what i should do is download a text file off the internet which gave me the IP of the server(s). this could be pretty much like a shard selection screen.. i didnt think i would need one since i only have one shard, but things like this shouldnt happen. does this scheme seem like a good idea? i can see i would be screwed if i ever forgot to pay the web site bill.. i actually do want to switch providers though.

You might want to look at DynDNS or No-IP.com and register a subdomain with them. They allow you to keep the same URL but dynamically update the IP it points to. Dynamic DNS services are very useful for hosting sites from non-static IPs.

Quote:

what i should do is download a text file off the internet which gave me the IP of the server(s)

I know that www.synthetic-reality.com does this for his stuff.

However, wasn't this the exact problem that DNS was invented for? Get a domain, and make sure you have access to the domain servers for this domain. Then make "login1.yourdomain.com" map to the login server for your game. If you change your IP sometime later, you just update the DNS record, and through magic, everyone gets the new location (with the customary DNS cache expiration latency).

wow, i actually didnt think that was possible... and... *gasp*.. its working!! you can now connect to my game using the IP ftaserver.donkeypunchproductions.net [grin].

theres one thing though, maybe it is a good idea to make some sort of "shard selection screen" anyway? how exactly do commercial MMORPG's handle this? my bet is they have one machine dedicated as a "master server", clients connect to it, and then that machine tells the client "there are X servers available. their IP's are blahblahblah..". another advantage to doing it would be instead of just getting a "cannot connect. server must be down" message when the server goes down, instead players see a shard selection screen wihch says "FTA main server --- down".

That sounds about right.