Open RA noob having trouble setting up a multiplayer game

primarybuildingselected · Sun Oct 28, 2012 12:53 pm

HI ALL, just installed Open RA on my OSX Mac and it's ufcking brilliant. Amazing work to everyone involved.

Having trouble making a multiplayer game work with a friend though and need some help...

My friend and I are both running OSX and when one of us creates a game, the other can see it when they click "join game", however the connection always fails. I believe this is because the network/port forwarding stuff isn't set up correctly - is that right?

I tried to forward a port (on my TP-Link TD-W8960N router) (in Advanced Setup > NAT > Virtual Servers) and this is what I came up with: http://i.imgur.com/gLgEm.jpg - is this correct? (NB: in the Server IP Address I put my computer's IP address, not sure if that's correct)

Anyway, once the port is forwarded correctly should my friend be able to join the game without making any changes on his side???

SORRY FOR THE DUMB QUESTIONS, HELP WOULD BE APPRECIATED!

dn_ · Post by **dn_** » Sun Oct 28, 2012 6:25 pm

Why would you censor the picture? I don't understand.

In the field Server IP Address should be the computer hosting the game's IP address on your local area network. If it starts with 192, as is typical for a local IP address, there's a good chance that you've used the right IP address. Some routers need to be rebooted after adding port forwarding, have you tried that?

Post by **Sleipnir** » Sun Oct 28, 2012 10:06 pm

The OSX firewall may be blocking the connection.
You can an exception or disable it in System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Firewall.

primarybuildingselected · Mon Oct 29, 2012 12:15 am

dn_ wrote: ↑In the field Server IP Address should be the computer hosting the game's IP address on your local area network. If it starts with 192, as is typical for a local IP address, there's a good chance that you've used the right IP address. Some routers need to be rebooted after adding port forwarding, have you tried that?

Hmm, my IP address is 60.241.50.10 - does this look right/wrong? Will try rebooting the router too.

Sleipnir wrote: ↑ The OSX firewall may be blocking the connection.
You can an exception or disable it in System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Firewall.

Thanks, but already disabled. I have littlesnitch installed too but have created a rule allowing any connections for OpenRA.

primarybuildingselected · Mon Oct 29, 2012 10:18 am

Rebooted router - no change, when friend tries to connect it just waits for about a minute and then says it can't connect.

I have tried:

- uPnP enabled on router, port forwards deleted.
- Port forwarded on router (uPnP disabled), via create game screen
- Port forwarded on router, via direct connect (in both directions)

I've also tried all of this with a friend running Win7 - same result, with every combination of settings it just tries to connect for about a minute and then fails.

Any ideas????

Tirili · Post by **Tirili** » Mon Oct 29, 2012 11:20 pm

Hi

That ip address looks wrong.

It should be a "private one" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_network)
so it should be in one of the three ranges:

10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255
172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255
192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255

- most probably the last one.

I don't know anything about OSX, but this might help to find out your local address:

https://kb.wisc.edu/helpdesk/page.php?id=6526

I hope this works. - If not, feel free to ask more questions!

Imagine it like this:

The internet consists of a lot of networks. Different networks are connected by routers.
One of those networks is your network at home. It is connected to the network of your internet service provider, which is itself connected to other ones of the whole internet.
THE internet does not exist, because if this net of networks is divided into two parts, there would be 2 internets.

The point is that the internet is not centralized.
Every computer on the internet has its own global ip address. But here's the thing:
Your router (probably - most home-routers do so) disguises as one computer and receives packets for all computers in your network. Your router has a GLOBAL ip address (find it out using www.whatismyip.com).
Other openra players outside your homenetwork must specify your router's global ip address to connect to your server. The router now must know, on which ~real~ computer in your network the server is running. He must know its LOCAL ip address (private address). Find out the local ip address using https://kb.wisc.edu/helpdesk/page.php?id=6526 !

Good luck

primarybuildingselected · Wed Oct 31, 2012 4:44 pm

@Tirili

Firstly, thank you so much for the reply, you're a legend, that is hugely helpful.

The problem is definitely the IP - for some reason my IP when I go to www.whatismyip.com is completely different to my machine's IP when I go to my System Prefs.

In my system prefs the IP is 192.168.1.105, but when I go to whatismyip (or any other online IP detector) it gives me the address 60.241.50.10). Also this is def not the address of my router, that's just 192.168.1.1.

In OpenRA, when I create a game, it shows this second IP - 60.241.50.10 - not my actual (?) IP.

I've done a bit of digging and these IPs all appear to be from the same (my) ISP, is it possible they assign cloak IPs or something to all of their users? (Is that a thing?)

Thanks again!

primarybuildingselected · Wed Oct 31, 2012 4:47 pm

Or, is the 192.etc IP my machine's IP and the 60.etc IP my router's IP??

In any case - how am I able to have someone join my game when I've created it without it just timing out??

BaronOfStuff · Post by **BaronOfStuff** » Wed Oct 31, 2012 5:02 pm

Your internal IP (192.168.1.105) is the IP you should be using when forwarding ports on your router.

Anyone wishing to connect to your OpenRA server should be inputting your external IP (60.241.50.10) and whatever port you've opened.

Tirili · Post by **Tirili** » Wed Oct 31, 2012 5:58 pm

"Or, is the 192.etc IP my machine's IP and the 60.etc IP my router's IP?? ??"

That's right!

Masquerading or cloaking, as you call it, is a form of hiding your network behind your router.

Read my text from above again and watch out for the use of the words GLOBAL and LOCAL.

BaronOfStuff is right. He calls the GLOBAL address "EXTERN".

Computers in your home network have the addresses 192.168.1.x .
A router can be imagined as a computer with more than 1 network cards ("interfaces").
[Many home routers also have an integrated switch. Imagine it like this then: A computer with 2 network cards which of one is connected to directly to one port of a switch ( which is like a distributor )]
Routers connect different networks. In each network the router has an address.
Since your home router connects your home network with your isp's network, it also has two addresses. Namely 192.168.1.1 in your home network (and other computers on this network will send packets to it through this address) and 60.bla.bla.bla in your isp's network and computers from your isp's network and networks of the internet behind it will use this address to send packets to your router.
If your computer, which hosts the openra server has more than 1 network interface, it can also be considered being a router. Do you have a wlan adapter on it? Then there are at least two networks that your computer is connected to - namely your home ethernet (the local network from above) and the wlan. Your computer would have 2 addresses then. If you set up a routing-table on your computer, it will be able to pass packets from computers of your wlan in to your home ethernet and vice versa.

Look at this image from wikipedia to see how the internet consists of different networks (the colorful clouds) and how they are connected by routers:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... tables.png

If you want to learn more about it find out what these three things are:

routing - table
private address
masquerading ( as a special case of destination network address translation ("nat") and source nat)