Unmasking An IP Address
 

Greetings All,
This is a gaming question at heart but really a computer question. I can't play games like UT 2004 and Counter Strike because my IP address is masked by a router. My house is wireless and we each have a USB network adapter that we use to connect to the internet. Is there a way to unmask my IP address so that I can access servers for games like BF 1942 and the like? (I just played some UT 2004 at a friends house and now I am hooked). Thanks and cheers

You don't need to "unmask" your IP address to play BF 1942 or CS. Trust me, I play all the time, no problems. It sounds almost like the TCP/IP ports are blocked on your router, so you can't make the connection from your machine to the server. Do you have access to the router configuration? Can you check & see if there are any blocked ports?

Johnny is right. You need to find out the port needed for the games you want to play. Most of the tech support people for the gaming companies can tell you which ports need to be unblocked. After you know which ports that need to be opened, you just go into your router configuration and open them up. I had to do this to play EQ a few years ago. A friend of mine had to do it to play Battlefield 1942 at all. My family just bought a new router, and I seriously need to configure it once I go home if I'm gonna want to play games this summer.

-Lasereth

if its a linksys, you can set your self as "DMZ" and you should have access as if you had no router. understanding of cource that the router is no longer protecting you.

Question: If I unmasked my IP, could I be able to host games on BF1942? Or what should I do so I can host games with a router?

not if you unmask it. you can do ip re-directs on your router config to point to your computer's lan ip address when the wan ip address is accessed. then all you need is your wan address and you should be able to host games.

if you do indeed do as elpha says and place yourself as the DMZ host, then you would just need your wan address.

**note: wan - wide area network; lan - local area network

the wan address is the ip address that your isp gave your account. if it's static, then it should be in your paperwork. if it's dynamic, you'd have to run to sites such as http://www.dslreports.com/whois to find your wan ip address. note also, that this bein dynamic, it has the potential to change.

the lan address is the 192.168.xxx.xxx number your computer has that was given it by the router. to find that, you could do the following:

if running win9x, Start > Run > "winipcfg" ; in the drop down box, highlight your network card and your info should be there.

if running win2k or winxp, Start > Run > "cmd" ; once in the command prompt, type 'ipconfig' hit enter and it should be listed there too.

but realize also that your router is set to give you a lan ip address dynamically and can change as well. to be on the safe side, manually assign an ip address to your computer, making sure it's in the same subnet as your network, ie. if the other computers are 192.168.1.100 and the subnet mask on your router is 255.255.255.0, then only change the last 3 digits, keeping the previous 3 sets the same 192.168.1.xxx.

sorry if this is alot. but good luck