Last month we talked somewhat
generically about setting up
private game servers for you and
your friends and family. This
month we thought we might put it
into practice, and walk through
the process of setting up a private
Minecraft server where you and
your kids and their friends can
play together, unbothered by the
great unwashed public.Preppingthenetwork
Over the past three months we
have published short guides on
individual aspects of preparing
your home network for running a
game server, so we won’t repeat
those lessons in full here. But
briefly, follow these steps:1
SETTING UP DDNS
Full guide:TechLifeJanuary
2020 Home Networking column.
This step is optional, but setting
up DDNS for your home network
will make it much easier for
players outside of your home
network to connect. Instead of
having to keep track of a
continually updating IP address,
they can connect to your network
using a fixed URL – something
like joesminecraftserver.ddns.net.
We’d recommend heading to
no-ip (noip.com), which offers
free DDNS, and signing up to
create your own personal URL.
You’ll then have to either log into
the administration console of
your router and find the DDNS
settings (assuming it supports
no-ip); or install the no-ip agent
software on the PC you plan to run
the Minecraft server on.
Note that with no-ip free URLs
expire in 30 days, so you’ll have to
log back in every month to
recreate the URL.2
FIXING THE LOCAL IP
ADDRESS OF THE SERVER
Full guide:TechLifeFebruary 2020
Home Networking column.should be 24. (On older Windows
versions, this would be called a
subnet mask and be 255.255.255.0.)- The Gateway is the private IP
address of your router, the one you
use to log into the router admin
console (commonly 192.168.0.1,
192.168.1.1 or 10.1.1.1). - You can use Google’s DNS at
8.8.8.8 (primary) and 8.8.4.4
(secondar y).
3
FORWARDING THE PORT
Full guide:TechLifeMarch
2020 Privacy and Security column
(orportforward.com).
Finally, you’ll have to forward
the port on your router so that
people connecting to your server
from outside your home network
will not be rejected by your
router’s firewall.
In your router’s administration
console, find the port forwarding
settings, usually around the
firewall settings or under the
‘apps and gaming’ header. Then
create a new rule that forwards
TCP port 25565 to the local IP
address of the server computer
(established in step 2 above). After
that, you should be good to go.Theserversoftware
Now for theMinecraftserver
software itself. On Windows,
follow these steps:Building a Minecraft Server
Nathan Taylor is here to help you become the coolest parent/aunt/uncle there is.
H E LP STATION
Home NetworkingDDNS set up on
a Linksys router.Set up a port
forwarding rule
on your router,
sending traffic
on port 25565 to
the server.Create a fixed IP
address for your
server.The second task is technically
optional as well, but creating a
fixed local IP address for your
Minecraft server will mean that
you don’t have to change the port
forwarding and Minecraft client
settings every time you reboot
your server. It gives the router a
fixed target for port forwarding
and local clients a fixed IP to
connect to.
In Windows, go to Settings >
Network & Internet and click on
Change connection properties.
Click on the network name, find IP
settings and click edit to change
them to Manual. Then enter the
details:- The IP address is the IP
address that will be permanently
assigned this server. The first
three numbers have to be the
same as your gateway/router
address, and the fourth has to be
different and between 0 and 255.
So, if your router’s IP address was
192.168.0.1, then you could set the
IP address to 192.168.0.10. - The subnet prefix length