Port forwarding
From AssaultCube
Port forwarding, sometimes referred to as port mapping, is the act of forwarding a network port from one network node to another. This technique can allow an external user to reach a port on a private IP address (inside a LAN) from the outside via a router.
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Purpose and description of the problem
At first view it sounds totally easy and logical: Every AssaultCube gaming server needs a free access to the world area network (WAN) to get in communication with the Master Server and the AssaultCube clients. In fact, this is probably the most underestimated problem in creating (or better: registering) a server. Many people who are trying to make their own server don't know or have forgotten that their local area network (LAN), which is established between the user's computer and the router, is working like a sandbox: The router has normally no idea, which (incoming) data from the WAN has to pass to which local computer. As a result a new created server isn't able to register to the Master Server, which looks like this:
Without access to the Master Server the new server won't appear at the serverlist at any client, cause this list is just another interpretation of the Master Server's content. Probably the new server is accessible from the own client with the menu option "Join a LAN server". If so, then this shows that the basic server settings might be correct, but the server itself is bound to the LAN.
To solve this you have to tell the router which of his ports have to become open and to which ports on which local client computer he has reroute the incoming data (of course this depends to the outgoing data also). This is absolutely necessary if it is planned to run multiple servers on one or different machines which each server has a different port.
Forwarding the ports
To forward a port you have to find out three things:
- the IP-address of the machine on which the server is running,
- this is not the external IP address, which you are getting from your internet service provider! It's the IP address of the particular computer in the LAN (given via DHCP by the router or manually set to a static IP address by the user).
- the first port number on which game data will be interchanged,
- this is port 28763 by default.
- the second port number on which additional information will be interchanged,
- this is port 28764 by default.
The next step is to get into the router configuration which is accessible in the most cases by entering the router's IP address or by using a factory defined domain name (e.g. fritz.box for all routers of the Fritz!-corporation) in a normal webbrowser. Cause the router configuration menus are differing from one model/manufacturer to another model/manufacturer it's not possible to give detailed step-by-step-help here. It might be interesting to look at www.portforward.com where several models and their menus are described.
Once the settings for port forwarding in the own router configuration menu has been found, the next step includes to add a new entry for UDP transport. The User Datagram Protocol is used for sending and receiving game data and for pinging a server (and not the TCP/IP). This entry should have a description (e.g. "My AC server"), the used protocol (here: UDP), the ports to forward at the router (by default 28763-28764), the target machine (its IP) and the ports on which the router ports have to be forwarded (by default 28763-28764 also). After entering and activating these values in the router, it is recommended to do a test run. If everything has been done in the right way, the registering of the own AC server should be successfull. The screen looks then like this:
See also
External links
- Article about port forwarding at Wikipedia
- More router and OS specific tutorials at www.portforward.com
