Problem hosting with Router

[Larry_OHF]

Last night, I tried for the first time since buying my router to be the host game for somebody. He could not get to my machine, and I am suspecting it was the router. This is what I did.

1. Turned off Zone ALarm
2. Turned off the Router Firewall
3. Gave him all the IPs, gateways, and subnet addresses that I had listed, hoping one of them was the right one.

Now, I do not even know if I have the router setup to work properly. I got it as a firewall and defense, which it obviously does well. Now..how do I get anybody to play games hosted from my PC?

Note: I used to be the server for a group about a year ago, so I have been successful in the past, but not with the router.

[andrewas]

The trouble is your machine does not have an internet IP, only the router does. And your router dosent know what to do with connections on that port, so it discards them like any other unknown data.

What you have to do is set up port forwarding on your router so that it knows that connections on port 5121 should be sent to the PC your using to serve the game. You should be able to (and thus should) leave your firewalls running.

Zonealarm will let NWN out, and if it dosent you can go into the programs tag and enable server access to the internet zone. Your hardware firewall will have to have the port opened, you'll probably do that when setting up the port forwarding anyway.

This thread:
http://www.ironworksforum.com/ubb/cg...;f=10;t=013188

Covers things in more detail.

[Larry_OHF]

Thanks! I will see if I can do it.

[Granamere]

Larry_OHF Also try this link http://nwn.bioware.com/support/techfaq.html#03.

It says

1.03: How can I play through a Firewall? (Back to Top)

If you are trying to play through a firewall of some sort, here is some information for you to help you get connected. Neverwinter Nights uses UDP, not TCP for its connections. If you think that your firewall is preventing you from connecting to the game servers, please make sure that the following ports are open:

Ports 5120 through 5300
Port 6500
Port 27900
Port 28900
In addition to opening the ports listed above, you may need to allow incoming connections on the port you are running your server on (5121 by default) and forward those connections to the computer running the server.

If you have multiple computers behind a firewall and you want to play multiplayer with 2 or more of them at the same time, you must ensure the Client Port setting for each computer is set to a different value. You will find this entry in the file nwnplayer.ini Simply double click on it to open it, and look for the Client Port= line in the [Profile] section. Change this from the default value of 5120 on each machine. You have to stay in a certain range, so use numbers like 5121, 5122, 5123, etc.

If your server does not appear on the GameSpy game list:

Verify that it is does not appear for other users. It may not be appearing for you because your game is published by your external IP address, this address may not be valid from inside your firewall.
Verify that the server is accessible from the Internet, have a friend Direct Connect using your external IP address (ie not 127.0.0.1 or 192.168.*.*, these are local addresses).
If you are starting your module from the command line of the Windows or Linux dedicated server, try starting it from within the application.
If your module is very large or contains very large areas, try breaking it up into smaller pieces.
If you are wanting to make sure that your NAT is set up to allow the game to play here are some details.

Outgoing packets

Source port: 5120-5129
Destination port: 5121-5300
Incoming packets

Source port: 5121-5300
Destination port: 5120-5129
On the Game Client side, here are some changes to make things go better. Go to your nwnplayer.ini file in your Neverwinter Nights install directory, and find the following section:

[Profile]
Client Port=XXXX

Our suggestion is to change XXXX to 5120.


I hope this helps,
Granamere

[Larry_OHF]

Thanks! I will let you know if I am still stuck.

[Larry_OHF]

Okay, with the help of a friend, I was able to get this screenshot for you. Please advise. I do not know how to get all those numbers in there like you have them listed above.



[ 08-08-2003, 11:16 PM: Message edited by: Larry_OHF ]

[Granamere]

http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/br.../port_fwd.aspx

To configure persistent port forwarding

Start the Base Station Management Tool.
Point to Security, click Port Forwarding, and then click Set up persistent port forwarding.
In the Description box, type a description of the server field. (This step is optional.)
In the Inbound port box, type the number of the inbound port to which data packets sent from the Internet to the server will be passed. The inbound port number can be a single port or a comma-separated list of ports or port ranges. For example, you could type 4-25, or 243, or 10, 24-50, 74. You are limited to 256 characters.
In the Type box, select the protocol — either User Datagram Protocol (UDP) or TCP — for the port.
In the Private IP address box, type the private IP address of the client computer that is hosting the server.
In the Private port boxes, type the private port number for the server that the data will be sent to. To identify the private port number, see the documentation for your server software.
To save your changes, click Apply.


You are in the wrong section to set it up. You are in the application-triggered port forwarding. You need to be in the persistent port forwarding listed above. Also you have to use multiply lines. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Line one should be
NWN1 5120-5300 UDP (IP address of your computer) 5120-5300

Line two
NWN2 6500 UDP (IP address of your computer 6500

Line three
NWN3 27900 UDP (IP address of your computer 27900

Line four
NWN4 28900 UDP (IP address of your computer 28900

If you are not sure of your IP address open a command prompt and type in ipconfig. That will give you you ip on 2000 or XP. If running 95, 98 or Mil. Click on start then run and type in winipcfg.

I hope this helps.

Granamere

[Larry_OHF]

But the one I am in says that it is the right choice for online gaming. I am so confused. Thanks for helping! It is too late for me to think anymore. I believe I will save this for tomorrow so I can concentrate.

[Granamere]

Application-triggered port forwarding for some games is the only way to go. But if you notice it does not have any place to put an IP address in. So like andrewas was saying; how would it know where to send the incoming ip traffic. Application-triggered port forwarding is for game that you are connecting out and they send ip traffic but not on the same port back to you. So when the firewall sees something coming back on a different port than what it expected it knows what to do with it.

If you read the link http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/br.../port_fwd.aspx you might ge an OK idea of this all. Think about it you are wanting to run a persistant NWN server. So persistent port forwarding is the way to go. [img]smile.gif[/img] OK yes I am playing on the word persistent. It is for hosting a server. Yes NWN server is a game but more to the point a server. I hope this helps. I agree yes sleep first. Hopefully it will all make more sense in the morning. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Granamere

One last thing. The IP address you should give him. To find that the easy thing I can tell you to do is go to http://www.visualware.com/personal/demo/index.html click on USA, Virgina. If you are running XP you will need some form of Java. But at the top of the screen you will see a place you can type in something. To the right of it should be a grey box with an ip address in it. That is the ip address you are giving to whoever is connecting to you. Remember some DSL providers have DHCP assinged ip's so they might change your ip in the middle of a game which would suck. You just see everyone drop off and do not know why. You might want to look into Dynamic DNS. for more info look here http://www.dyndns.org. Hey it is free. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ 08-09-2003, 01:29 AM: Message edited by: Granamere ]

[Larry_OHF]

You confound me with your wisdom! Lol! That all sounds really good, and I appreciate the time it is taking you to teach me. Sometimes, I go at things too fast without reading instructions. I usually learn better by hands-on...not by reading.