Router sharing out a single IP

[fandango]

Okay, the answer to my question is probably in this forum somewhere but I either didn't see it or didn't understand it.

I have a single IP provided to me by my cable ISP that is shared throughout the apartment using a wireless router. The router divvies out IPs based on a 192.164.x.x convention.

What I'm facing is when my roommate and I try to play games online we cannot connect to the remote servers (and friends from the internet cannot connect to our servers). We can play locally with each other but not over the 'net. I'm afraid that I don't know what else to say. Does anyone know what I need to do/set in order to be able to do so? Please keep in mind that I'm in the process of learning all of this stuff, so I have a simple vocabluary :-)

Cheers,

Dave

[YeOldeStonecat]

If you wish to run a server at your home, and have others from the "outside" world be able to see it and log on, then you need to find out which ports your game uses, and forward those ports to the IP address of the machine that is your server. For example, Quake III uses port 27,960 I believe, so in the web admin of your router, forward 27960 to the IP address of your "server". It helps to manually specify the IP address of your server, such as 192.168.1.11, instead of using the DHCP of your router, because depending on what order you're booting up your machines, you can get a different IP address...and when you forward a port, it's tough to hit a moving target. Also specifing the gateway (192.168.1.1), and DNS in your IP properties can help things run better when manually specifying IP.

Also, some older games (such as Quake 2) do not support multiple clients playing from the same IP address. Your router obtains a single IP address from your ISP...that's the IP public gaming servers see. So if you hop on one maching behind your router...log onto some public gaming server...a buddy comes over and plugs his maching into your router...logs onto the same server...both your pings will skyrocked until you're booted. Yet most newer games (Quake 3) support concurrent clients from same IP.

[BlackSword]

What games are you trying to play?

What wireless router do you have?