Hi guys,
I need to port forward a range of ports to access an online game. Two PCs are accessing this at once - but ofc, you can't forward the same ports to both from my Belkin router. Does anyone know of any hardware that might let me do this (long shot, I know...) or have any work around?
I have considered hooking the second PC up though the Windows 'Shared Networking', but I'm not convinced that will work.
Any ideas appreciated...

My friend and I play Diablo II online frequently. Generally, I "host" the game and he connects to me. I have a port forward setup to allow him to connect to the game I'm hosting.

Before my son moved out, he used to play with us too occasionally. Because he was on the LAN behind my SOHO router, no port forwarding was necessary. He just typed in the LAN IP address of my PC.

Here's what I'm talking about:

My PC:
LAN IP: 192.168.1.100

My son's PC:
LAN IP: 192.168.1.101

My SOHO Router:

External IP: Generated by DHCP from ISP.
I looked this up at http://whatsmyip.org/ and told my friend over the phone what is is:

Port Forward on game port number (or range if need be) points to my PC's IP: 192.168.1.100

With the game running as host on my PC, my son connects to a "local network game" using 192.168.1.100 for the IP to connect to.

My friend connects to my external IP and is port forwarded to my PC and connects automatically to the game running on my PC.

I suspect your setup should work the same.

Knowing which game you're talking about might help some in helping you figure out how to get everything working properly for you.

Thanks for the response Curt, but the server isn't me :(
For the record I'm trying to connect to LotRO (which doesn't seem to be happy with just NAT functionality - so I guess those ports really *do* need forwarding...)

I think I'm maybe a little confused.

You have two PC's on your LAN (behind the SOHO router) that you wish to have access an online game.........is this correct?

Your router should be able to NAT this properly without any forwarding as it's supposed to keep track of all outgoing traffic and ensure the return traffic goes back to the orginal sender. It may be your router isn't robust enough to handle it and freaks out on the two connections to the same server.....but that doesn't make sense.....it should be able to handle it.

If you know someone that has a different brand of SOHO router who would be willing to help you troubleshoot this problem, get them to bring it over and get your LAN and internet working with it and then try to connect both to the online game and see if it doesn't work properly then.

If it does, your router is the problem.

If it doesn't, well, I'm at a loss as to what to say since theoretically, having two LAN clients connect to the same online game server is really no different than having the same two PC's connect to the same web page at the same time.

I can't imagine a cheap soho router that won't let you nat/pat. Might look to spending $14 and get a new router. I see them free after rebates.

I read it wrong and answer it wrong too. So get off my case you goober.

If something truly needs Port Forwarding, it is next to impossible to forward traffic to two internal hosts on the same port.

Port forwarding is a rule that says, "forward all traffic on this port to this IP if the connection is unsolicited".

Multiple computers can use the same application at the same time if the app connections originate from within your LAN because usually the source ports used to originate the connection are random, and therefore unique on both computers. Your SOHO router keeps track of which computer is using which source port, and when traffic comes back in, it knows by the different destination port which traffic goes to which computer.

For example, both my wife and I are currently using MSN Messenger at the same time. We're connected to the same server at the same destination port. Her SOURCE port is 61871, but my source port is 2210. That's how her IM's go to her, and mine go to me.

However, the port on our end is the same as a destination port on an incoming connection request, which is what port forwarding is used for.

IE, if both my wife and I wanted to host a web server at the same time on port 80, how on earth could the router know which IP it should send each incoming request.

Even more complicated - what if traffic is coming from the same IP for both our web servers? How would the router know which internal machine to send the traffic to?

This last scenario is essentially what you're faced with. Rest assured, there is nothing affordable that can do this for you, and I doubt there's even anything available to do that with LOTR.

Now, if you had multiple public IP addresses, that's a whole other ballgame, and it's relatively easy to do with the right equipment...

TECH-NO-LOGICAL ROMANCE!

http://www.homestarrunner.com/tgs12.html

Did you check all of this?
http://forums.lotro.com/showthread....

See link to port forwarding site for your router and game.

As above it might be that the game can't support two players behind a router.

I read it wrong and answer it wrong too. So get off my case you goober.

Hi guys - thanks for the responses. You are exactly right, Curt, and yes, I would expect the NAT to handle it, but the Codemaster guys have different ideas it seems...

I think we are periodically trying to receive on the same port - then we get massive packet loss! - as you'd expect. Why this should happen is beyond me, but there ya go :/

Thx Hero - a solution I'll look into, I guess some business ISPs will provide such a service - I'll check into it.

.. and I'm afraid that's where all the problems with port forwarding started, Jefro... I guess I could try a different router in case this one's NAT table is borked (it's worth a shot!)