routers and winsock

[kingofgames999]

ok simple question if it can't be done which seems to be the case let me know. i have created a semi popular (around 250 users) online game. this game requires someone to "host" and someone to connect. so the host is the server the other is the client. the problem i'm having is people have firewalls and routers and they can not host games. I know they could set up port forwarding and such on the router but frankly the average user is to stupid to do this and i'm not walking 200 people through it. so my question is is their anyway at all to have winsock be a server through a router with having the user do anything on their router?

Also is their a way through code to get and display a users public IP address and not their internal one.

[Pino]

ok simple question if it can't be done which seems to be the case let me know. i have created a semi popular (around 250 users) online game. this game requires someone to "host" and someone to connect. so the host is the server the other is the client. the problem i'm having is people have firewalls and routers and they can not host games. I know they could set up port forwarding and such on the router but frankly the average user is to stupid to do this and i'm not walking 200 people through it. so my question is is their anyway at all to have winsock be a server through a router with having the user do anything on their router?

Also is their a way through code to get and display a users public IP address and not their internal one.

As far as I am aware no, they need to set up port forwarding when behind a router, when behind a firewall all they need to do is unblock the port you use.

As for getting external IP address for those behind a router have a look here

http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?p=1919485

I hope that helps, also do you have a copy of your game? Maybe yo could post it in our Games - Demo section and we can have a try

Pino

[Dave Sell]

ok simple question

not really.

is their anyway at all to have winsock be a server through a router with having the user do anything on their router?

Only if the router supports UPnP.

Also is their a way through code to get and display a users public IP address and not their internal one.

Possibly... There are web pages you can load from behind a NAT and the web page will spit out your true IP add.

[Evgeni]

I'm sure there is a way to unblock your port in code. Commercial games do it. I think?

[dglienna]

I don't think they unblock ports. What they do is find open ones, and adjust accordingly.