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September 13th, 2004 01:00
network
hi,im not to good with computers,my son does all the brain work,but hes in the navy and not here.i just got another computer,and i got a router for the intrernet.they both connect to the internet ok,but when i was hosting a game.the other person could not connect to me,although i could connect to them if they hosted.i checked the ip on the game,it has 1ip address,then i checked in my control panel under internet connections,and it still has my old ip address as the one in use..how do i get the correct ip address to work.helppppp.my email is ldj1@zoominternet.net.
thanks,
larry
NemesisDB
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September 13th, 2004 03:00
First, turn off any software firewall you have running.
Natural Address Translation (NAT) routers, which is probably what you have, are extremely useful devices if you need to share a single internet connection (and single IP address) between multiple home computers. As you may have noticed, the router gets the "real" IP address from your internet service provider. The router in turn provides any home computers on the network with a "fake" IP address. Computers on the local network can find other computers at your house with this address but computers on the internet will not be able to.
Consider this: Let's say your service provider is giving you connection a single address: 216.239.41.99 . Your router will assume this address. Let's further say the router gives computer A in your house an address of 192.168.2.1 and computer B an address of 192.168.2.2 . This works fine if computer A wants to talk to computer B, however, these 192.168.x.x addresses have no real meaning on the internet (as all home routers give them to home network computers and millions of people are using the same 'fake'/private addresses). This will prevent your friend from initiating a connection.
There are solutions, however. Your router most likely has the ability to forward ports. You need to find out what ports your game uses and tell the router to forward such traffic to 'computer A.' How to do this will vary somewhat by router but it's usually not too hard. If you absolutely can't get it to work this way, look for something called DMZ. This function will forward all ports to the computer running your game. This is not recommended for security reasons, however. NAT firewalls are wonderful for security because internet machines do not know your machines actual IP address (only the routers) -- if you place your computer in the DMZ area of your router you increase your vulnerability significantly.