Question Connecting computers to play games on lan. How the heck do I do this?

explosev

Honorable
May 9, 2017
12
0
10,510
Hi, this is the first time posting on here in a while, so sorry if this seems kinda spastic, but my problem is this,

Im trying to play a few games with a friend through lan who lives a few towns over (ill use minecraft as an example here)
with minecraft, you can host what i assume is a lan server so you can play with anyone on your network, and i want to know if theres a way to somehow connect his computer to my network so that we can play together. i read a thing about it a while ago, thats why i'm asking if its possible.

Any help with this is very appreciated and thanks for taking the time to read. I hope you have a good day.
 

QwerkyPengwen

Splendid
Ambassador
yes it's possible.
One of the best services was Tunngle, however, they are no longer operational.

The way it worked was you and other people connected to the Tunngle service and through the service your PC treated the connection as if everyone in there was also on your local network.
All you had to do was create or join a server room and connect to each other and play games in LAN mode while not having to be on the same network physically.

But now that the service is gone, you'll have to look at the alternatives and find one that works best for you.

Just google for Tunngle alternatives.
 
Each game is a little different and you need to search for how to host each server type. The main thing you are looking for is port forwarding rules you need to setup in your router. Some games (mostly console games) try to take care of this for you with a feature called UPnP. You just turn that on in your router.

The key to any form of hosting is that you have a public IP address. Your friends need to know what IP to connect to to reach your server. Some ISP only give people private IP and you would have to contact the ISP to see what your option are. At that point it tends to be simpler to rent space and put your server in a hosting center than trying to get a public IP using say VPN or other methods.
 
if you use a vpn or anything encrypted it will add latency. some firewalls will allow inbound only for specific source ip. this would make it difficult for anyone else to connect or find it.
even if neither of you have statics you can just exchange ips each time it doesn't work. it might not change very often.