*BEFORE YOU DO ANY OF THIS, WRITE DOWN ALL THE SETTINGS FIRST SO YOU CAN GO BACK TO THEM IF THIS FAILS, THE SPHERE TEAM IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR BROKEN NETWORKS OR OFFLINE COMPUTERS. WRITE DOWN YOUR CURRENT SETTINGS!!!! IF VIEWING THIS FILE FROM A WEBPAGE, COPY THE ENTIRE THING BEFORE YOU BEGIN SO YOU CAN VIEW IT OFFLINE!!!!*
Please note this tutorial is based upon a Linksys router with RoadRunner cable, it may be different for your router and your ISP. It may not work for you. It might work exactly like this for you. Calling your router manufacturer's techsupport number and explaining in detail what you want to do quite possibly will get better results than following this step by step. Once again, this is NOT definitely going to work for everyone.
1) Understand the difference between LAN and WAN ips. LAN = Local Area Network, it's the 192.168.*.* ips your computers and router at your house have, and cannot be accessed from the internet. WAN = Wide Area Network, it's the real (external) ip assigned to you by your internet service provider (ISP), the one your players will need to connect to your shard.
2) Find out how you have your LAN configured. You're gonna want to have each computer connected to the router with it's own permanent LAN ip, not dynamic. If you have DHCP enabled on the router, your LAN ip on each comp will change on reboots/resets. Turn it off or you'll be editing it everytime your ip changes locally. Instructions for assigning a LAN ip are next.
3a) For Win9x/ME users go to Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Network. Look for a line that says TCP/IP YourNetworkCardName, then click Properties. Example might look like: TCP/IP -> NETGEAR FA310TX Fast Ethernet Adapter (NGRPCI)
3b) For Win2000/XP users go to My Computer -> Control Panel -> Network and Dialup Connections. Right click on the "Local Area Connection" icon, go to Properties, highlight Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and click the Properties button.
4) Click "Use the following ip address" and type in 192.168.1.2 (or whatever numbers you want, but make sure you don't use 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1 which is probably the router's default LAN ip). Click in any box for Subnet Mask and it should fill itself in with 255.255.255.0, leave these alone. Default gateway is the ip of your router, 192.168.1.1 by default for Linksys.
Repeat this step for every computer connected to the router, using a different ip (example 192.168.1.2, 192.168.1.3, 192.168.1.4, etc) for the first box for each computer. Subnet Mask and Gateway remain the same for all computers.
5) Click "Use the following DNS servers" and type in your primary and secondary DNS servers given to you by your isp. You'll have to know these numbers yourself or ask your isp for them. These numbers will be the same for each computer connected to the router.
6) Click ok and ok again, and let it reboot if it asks. On Win2000 you can usually just disable then enable the network connection to make new settings take effect.
7) Open internet explorer (or whatever browser you use) and type in http://192.168.1.1 (or whatever your router's LAN ip is). This should open a password screen for your router's config settings. Type in your password. The main screen on Linksys will give you the option of "Obtain an IP address automatically" or "Specify an IP address". This is up to you and/or your internet service provider. If you have RoadRunner cable like myself, it will probably work either way (dynamic cable), but to specify you have to know your current WAN ip. If you specify (that is: you know your ip and your ISP told you what ip to use) then type it in, type in your DNS servers, and 255.255.255.0 for subnet mask. Leave the rest of that page alone as defaults.
8) Click the ADVANCED button up top on Linksys. Click FORWARDING up top. On the left side you will see 2 boxes going down in a row. "Service Port Range". In the first two boxes type in 2593 for both. Select TCP for the protocol. IP Address will be the one you assigned your computer sphere runs on. Example 192.168.1.2. Click APPLY. You may have to enter these settings twice, my Linksys router makes me for some weird reason. Second time should save them though.
9) Close your browser and reboot computer, cable modem, and router
if needed until it lets you online. This is where any problems are going to occur and I can't fix ;) You may have to reboot it all a few times to get online, I usually do. After powering down your cable modem for a minute, rebooting your computer, and re-enabling your network (disable -> enable like from STEP 6), if you still cannot get online, you may have to go back to your original settings and forget everything you just read. Another alternative is to call your router manufacturer and ask for help, Linksys is pretty good for fixing broken networks. You could also call your ISP and ask them for help. Most ISPs do not support routers or local area networks however, and some don't allow them at all.
10) Ok you made it this far, you have the router and network configured, now open sphere.ini, and scroll down to the bottom...
[SERVERS]
Local
127.0.0.1
2593
ExternalName
your.WAN.ip.here
2593
The first entry should always be localhost (127.0.0.1). The second will be the one your players use to connect to. Place your WAN (internet) IP here.
11) If you have a dynamic WAN ip (one that changes when you reconnect or reboot) you may want to get a dynamic dns host. A good example is at www.dns2go.com. It's a small, free, resource friendly program you run in your system tray that gives you a hostname like myshard.dns2go.com and lets your players use it instead of keeping up with your changing "real" ip. If you choose to use this, bear in mind the entry for your WAN ip in sphere.ini may not work if you put the dns2go ip there instead of the actual WAN ip.
12) Give your players the following login to play on your shard:
LoginServer=your.WAN.ip,2593
OR
LoginServer=yourshard.dns2go.com,2593