Playing a Game with friends 100 miles away

I play with people online from all over the world (Australia, Turkey, US, Canada, UK and Ireland) so it is possible. You do have to have the computer running the server set up properly though. They need their ports forwarded so that you can access the game (You can find the port number somewhere on this site; portforward.com will also tell you how to forward a particular port). Once set up, you (the client computer) need to enter the external IP of the computer hosting the server (your friend's computer). If you don't know the external IP of the servers computer, then they can just type "my IP" in to google and it will tell them.

If it is all set up properly, then you should connect easily.

If you search around these forums, others have posted how to do it as well. They might be in more detail than my explanation above.

Also be aware that some business networks (including schools) will block outbound traffic in certain port ranges.

If you are using an IP address that starts "192.168" to connect to the remote server, you've got the wrong IP address. That "192.168" is standard for internal networks only and cannot be accessed externally. The servers should have a different external IP address that you would need to use, and can be found from the command line, using ipconfig.

i went to a few places and one thing i read is that i need a static IP address is that right, i really dont wanna call my ISP to do all that.

You do not need a static IP address--so long as you are connected, the IP address should remain the same. However, each time you reconnect to the internet, the IP address could change. Once you start the Artemis Server on a PC connected to the Internet, the IP address of the server should remain valid. However, if you reboot your PC, or drop the connection to the Internet and reconnect, you could likely end up with a different IP address. Not a big deal if you are in contact with your friends and can tell them what the new IP address is.

great thanks so much thats going to help alot.

Try this: Artemis Port Forwarding is a YouTube video I made demonstrating how to tell if you have your port forwarded correctly.

If you're looking for something a little bit more local, I'm in San Diego right here. I run www.SanDiegoLAN.net and we've outfitted my entire garage for LAN play. I'm doing DMX lights for the next Artemis play day too!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VemGj8cRmZE

Starting at the basics of networking, here's the typical home setup:

The house has u-verse/dsl/comcast for internet. It enters the home and connects to a Router.

The Router gets an external IP address from the ISP. It could be anything, but it will NOT be 192.168.x.y because that range is reserved for "private networks"

IP addresses don't change very often (u-verse keeps sending the same one after a refresh). So you don't need to worry about static IP addresses from the short term perspective of running a game session. Every computer on the network needs a unique IP Address.

A static IP address is one that will NEVER change, barring direct human intervention. A dynamic IP address is one where a DHCP server hands out something that nobody else is using, in order to simplify getting on the network. Servers in a server room tend to need static IP. Computers that humans sit at don't. DHCP is why you can just show up at my house, enter my wifi key or plug into my switch, and get online with no nerdy effort.

Behind the router, everybody's PC connects to it. The Router acts as a DHCP server, which means it hands out random IP addresses to all the PCs. Usually in the range of 192.168.x.y

Most routers nowadays use NAT (Natural Address Translation). I am not a NAT expert, but the gist is, it magially maps that single External IP your router got to all the individual PCs when they try to surf the internet.

As a result, from outside the house, you can't just target one of those PCs inside the house by its IP address.

The whole reason for this is because IP addresses are scarce (there's too many PCs in the world). Back in the day, every PC got its own IP address from the global pool of IP addresses. That was relatively expensive, but it meant your PC in your dorm room was actually directly connected. Nowadays, IT just sets up a NAT and buys a few public IP addresses, internally get to use the private ranges for a smorgasbord of free IP addresses.

So now that facility is using a NAT, it takes extra steps to connect to a machine from the outside. This is actually a free security side effect. IPv6 will extend the number of IP addresses by a ridiculous amount so we can go back to handing out individual "public" addresses, but IT experts ain't keen on that.

This is where Xavier's advice on how to forward the port the game uses (port 2010) on your router and to get the effective IP address that your friends in the house will tell you to use.

As a quick addendum, Ports are a channel number that a program is talking on inside the computer. So each computer gets its own IP address. Each program in the computer that uses the network, gets its own Port number. Ports are not random, so a web server talks on Port 80. Artemis talks on Port 2010.

Because Port numbers aren't random, firewalls are designed to block almost all port numbers, except for very standard ones (like Port 80 so your web browswer can talk to Google). This is because bad programs would be sending your credit card info on non-standard ports, so when its blocked, they are thwarted.

Now my info here isn't 100% correct, but it's close enough for a layman to get a sense of the terminology and what to google for more info. Hopefully with this background info, everybody else's advice will make more sense.

If your inside man has access to the server machine, and ports are forwarded correctly, the issue may be on your end. A decent solution to this would be to get a VPN client like Hamachi installed on both machines, as Hamachi can bypass any firewall restrictions your school has in place.

I feel like the community should build a networking flowchart for users who are new to Networked gaming and port forwarding. I've never made one myself, but I may try it out if I find the time. Anyone know of a good freeware/OSAlt to Visio?