LAN + internet gaming?

[AA-ron]

Hey all,

Ive been playing Minecraft with some friends lately on my LAN, havin a great time. Now I want to have some other friends join the game, who cannot physically be at my place connected to my LAN.

The simple answer would be for us all to join an internet server, but the game type, other people, cost, etc etc make it unappealing. So, we're looking for a way to play just a LAN type game, but with some friends connecting via the internet.

Ive heard this is where tunneling and VPNs come into play, which is why Im posting here. Is it possible for someone to connect to my LAN from the outside?
One of the Minecraft tutorials (which always seems to leave out pertinent details) says to use LogMeIn's Hamachi VPN for multiplayer games. I am confused how these VPNs work..is it creating an isolated virtual LAN that we all connect to or is it simply a tunnel for someone to use to connect to my LAN from the outside?

I feel Im missing some key info on how this stuff works. Any info/help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks.

 

[carnageX]

Hey all,

Ive been playing Minecraft with some friends lately on my LAN, havin a great time. Now I want to have some other friends join the game, who cannot physically be at my place connected to my LAN.

The simple answer would be for us all to join an internet server, but the game type, other people, cost, etc etc make it unappealing. So, we're looking for a way to play just a LAN type game, but with some friends connecting via the internet.

How many people? You can just host the server yourself on your own machine, forward the port for the server on your router, and then give them your public IP. All that can be done for free... I've had about 5 or 6 people online at a time on my old Pentium 4 based server that has 4gig RAM, and it would lag a little, but only occasionally (also had poor upload speed, so I think that may have been part of it as well).

Ive heard this is where tunneling and VPNs come into play, which is why Im posting here. Is it possible for someone to connect to my LAN from the outside?
One of the Minecraft tutorials (which always seems to leave out pertinent details) says to use LogMeIn's Hamachi VPN for multiplayer games. I am confused how these VPNs work..is it creating an isolated virtual LAN that we all connect to or is it simply a tunnel for someone to use to connect to my LAN from the outside?

I feel Im missing some key info on how this stuff works. Any info/help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks.

IIRC, it's allowing them to connect to the LAN network you create, usually.

 

[XGC Forsakend]

I'd recommend just hosting your own as well. I ran a server and had two friends play by connecting to it from Georgia (im from illinois) and we had fun. The hosting machine was old and can barely run minecraft, but as long as it wasn't doing anything but hosting it.. we were good.

You can also Whitelist it so only people with the specific screen names can join.

Exmaple: If my minecraft Account name was XGCForsakend13, you can add that name on the whitelist in the server options. Whenever I try to connect via the public IP, I go in no problem.

If I wasn't on the whitelist, I would get an error and be denied access.

EDIT:
This is the video that I used on learning how to host my own server.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYSvASCoyC0