Opening your server to the public

Whether you're looking to just open your server to let your friends play, or you want to have a serious project and you want players to come on your server, you will need to know how to make it public.

Your two choices of making your server public are either buying a host and setting your server up on the virtual machine, or port forwarding. The best option to choose depends on what you're looking for, if you want a serious project you should buy a host, since hosts can protect your server from DDoS, and the host may be able to provide help in setting up your server. However, if you are looking to open it for a few friends, your best choice is port forwarding (unless you would like to pay for a host).

Choosing a host

TODO

Port forwarding

OT servers use port 7171 and 7172, which players use to connect to your server as long as they're open. Port 7171 is for logging in, and 7172 is the game port. Another port that we will be using is port 80, which allows access to websites, which we will be setting up soon.

If you do not wish to open your server to the public just yet, you may skip this section, since you do not need it to connect locally.

To port forward (aka open these ports), you need admin access to your router or modem. Log in to your router and find "Port Forward" or "Virtual Servers" (or something along the lines of those), port forwarding options are usually found under the firewall tab in your router/modem's settings.

If your router/modem gives you text boxes straight forward or gives you an "add" button, this should be the same. Set one of the boxes descriptions as whatever name you choose. After that, enter 7171/7171 for inbound/local ports. Click TCP/UDP for the type (if you do not have a TCP/UDP option, forward it twice, once with TCP and another with UDP).

Once this is done, it's time to find your IPv4 address, open command prompt and type in ipconfig, it should give you a list of a bunch of different things, but for now we only need the IPv4 address, which should be in the format of 192.168.x.xxxx. Once you have your IPv4 address, go back to your router/modem and enter your IPv4 address as the "Private IP Address", this should be the final box you need to fill out. Do the same process but with port 7172 and port 80.

Your ports should now be forwarded, to test if your ports are open, you can use this port checker.

We're not fully done yet, we still need to edit the hosts file.

To access your hosts file, open your text editor in administrator mode first (close it and reopen it in administrator if you already have it open). Once you have your text editor open, go to file->open file and redirect your path at the top to C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc, open the "hosts" file by double clicking it. Now that we have the hosts file open, all you have to do at the bottom is add:

127.0.0.1    Your IP here

Of course, you will have to change "Your IP here" to what your actual IP address is (you can find your IP address by going to ipchicken)

After that, the file should look like this (using a sample ip)

# Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
#      102.54.94.97     rhino.acme.com          # source server
#       38.25.63.10     x.acme.com              # x client host

# localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.
#    127.0.0.1       localhost
#    ::1             localhost

127.0.0.1    174.284.27.5

Once done, save the file and close it, we should be done with port forwarding now.