Hosting games across my router?

[TheJkWhoSaysNi]

I cant seem to host internet games across my router... Nobody can connect to my game.

I tried Quake2 and Jedi Knight with my friend. He entered my IP directly but could not see the game.

My router is a Linksys BEFSR41. How can I host internet games on my computer?

Really I want to be able to host games on both the LAN and the internet at the same time so one of my friends can play from here and other can join across the net.

How can I make my computer work as a game server? Works beautifully over the LAN by the way.

Thanks for any help.

 

[Xavier]

All you need to do is open the port used by the game at the router, and redirect it to the IP of the machine running the game server.

I think Quake2 uses 27910 as default, so connect to your routers webadmin, and direct the port number as TCP to the internal IP of your games server - which needs to be on a static IP unless you want to set up the redirect every time the machine gets a new IP lease.

Xav

 

[TheJkWhoSaysNi]

Thanks That's it for q2 and I found the ports for Jedi Knight by looking up directplay on microsoft.com but what's the easiest way to find out what ports a game uses?

Also, is it safe to leave my router set like that or should I disable the forwarding when i'm not hosting games?

Thanks.

 

[MYstIC G]

Most games allow you to specify a port these days.

 

[Xavier]

Wherever possible though try to use a standard port, and consider getting a dyndns.org address so that your friends can use the same url each time - one less thing for them to get wrong and one less thing for you to spend ten minutes explaining to them one by one