[ENet-discuss] A few polishing points

[Bjørn Lindeijer]

(warning: another old cow, but well, apparently unanswered)

On 6/14/08, Ben Johnson <bencelot at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey all, I'm almost finished with my networking now.. and I'm loving it!
>
> I have a few questions though:

Unfortunately I can only answer one.

> 3) I can connect to my computer, and other computers in my house via LAN..
> but not to my friend's computer over the net. Is this because I'm using a
> router? Also, how do I find out what IP to search for if I want to play with
> my friend online?

That's more likely to be because your friend is using a router, or
when he's not, maybe he has a firewall enabled (a smart thing to do
when not behind a router). In either case he'd have to configure his
router to forward UDP packets on the port you're using to his
computer, or tell his firewall to allow these packets to pass through.

There isn't really any way of finding out what IP your friend has
(some people even go to great length to make sure this is completely
impossible), unless your friend tells you his public (WAN) IP address.
If he doesn't know what his IP address is, he can ask one of the many
webservers that will report this for you, like http://whatismyip.org/

Regards,
Bjørn