How to Host

This section is just a quick guide to something that 'may' help you host a game over the internet for other humans to play. This section focuses on router issues when using the DAIDE Aiserver.

(Simply playing a game on someone elses server using AiMapper does not require any router configuration, nor playing a game locally between yourself and bots.)

I think several problems are encoutered when people try to host a game to the world by starting the Aiserver, but their computer is connected to a router.

1) Your router needs to be properly set up to direct inbound traffic to your specific computer on your local network (whether you have one or many computers in your home)

2) There are 3 important IP addresses to know. External, Router, Computer

3) The External IP is what you post on RTNow, and is the location where others should connect to your game.

You can see your IP address within the status of your router, shown below, or you can find it at the following link. Your IP Address.

4) The Router IP is where you need to access to change settings. It often has the IP 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1

anything that starts with 192.168 is typically a local area network. The router holds both this basic local address and the external one as your router is the gateway your computer uses to the outside world.

5) Your Computer IP which is only visible to your router, and not the outside world.

Your computer's local IP address can be determined by going to START>RUN and type in "CMD" this gets you to the command prompt. Then type "ipconfig". your computers IP address will be listed, but this is only valid within the confines of your house.

6) Settings need to be made to your router because you could have many Computer IPs within your house. These settings are to tell the router which Computer it should direct inbound DAIDE information to. This is called port forwarding, and the standard port that the Aiserver uses is 16713.

Here are examples of how to setup either a Linksys Router or a Netgear Router.

Hopefully that helps some people. If your router happens to be the same or similar to these it may have you up and running in no time. If not the same, you may have to dig in to your own router configuration. But the general idea is that you have to forward specific ports to your machine when 'hosting' a DAIDE game.