I have been noticing lately some people have been trying to port forward their Minecraft servers, but without much luck, or are just plain fed up with Hamachi's 5-a-group limit to the free edition. So, I have made a tutorial on how to set up a Tunngle server.
Tunngle is a secure, virus-free (honest) LAN setup program, and it can be found
here. The reason I use Tunngle is because it's far more reliable and secure than Hamachi. It also shows the highest rated gaming vids of the week on the home startup screen, something I find useful when I want to learn how to play games effectively (or just want to see some trolling
). So, when you have downloaded it, grab an account, authenticate it (Tunngle will send a verification email to your email adress, so make sure you click the link it gives you) and let's get going! But first I'm going to show you the features of Tunngle you are (probably) going to use the most. The interface seems a little daunting, but is in fact really user-friendly when you have played about with it a little.
Ok, so here we have the main Tunngle screen, the homepage. I have highlighted some areas of the screen, so we can go trough each one and understand how they work.
Red Box The red box highlights some of the more useful features of Tunngle. The icons in order from left to right are:
- Start Page
So, the start page just takes you back to the screen you see here. That's all, so it's not really important.
- Private Networks
This is the actual private LAN tool. Here you can make and join private networks, provided you authenticate one first. We'll also be using this later, so remember this icon.
- Forums
The forums icon is just a simple one-click link to the forums, where you can ask questions, advertise servers or check out interesting events.
- Event Planner
The event planner is useful for checking out noticeable events. Just take a peek and you can see some pre-planned games that you can watch on the day they are set.
- Tunngle Lobby
This is the Tunngle chat lobby, where you can converse with other players. In the systems tab (orange box) you can change your preferred language. Doing so will change which chat forum you join.
- Bookmarks
This just takes you to your bookmarks page. Here you can quick-jump to pages you use often (and have, of course, bookmarked).
Orange Box So these are the Four Tabs Of Tunngle. These are used to configure Tunngle, enter chat lobbies, get help for the application etc. The tabs are as follows:
- Home
Here you can access the start page, the latest Tunngle News and download the newest version.
- Community
The community tab is where you can interact with the rest of the Tunngle community. You join networks here, both private and public, and you can also get a new skin for Tunngle. Don't like Black and Red? Get the HUGE skinpack file with over 190 skins for you to choose from! There are instructions on where to extract the files to on the download page, so scroll down and look for them.
- System
Quite limited at the moment, but here you change the language Tunngle is in, set up auto port forwarding etc. You can also alter the skinpack Tunngle uses here as well.
- Help
Quite simply, the help tab. Get answers to your questions here!
Blue Box I included this just for the sake of semi-completeness. This is just a network browsing area, so use it if you want to have a peek trough the masses of networks Tunngle offers to join.
Ok, now to the server part.
So, presumably you will have activated your account, and you have the server files ready for use. If not, do it now. Make sure you have Tunngle closed.
Now open your Windows Control Panel and go to Windows Firewall. Then click on "allow a program through Windows Firewall". Scroll down until you fin the Tunngle (client) and Tunngle (server) programs. Check both boxes, in both public and private networks.
This is imperative. If you do not do this, the server WILL NOT WORK. Now close the control panel.
Open Tunngle. Join any network and it should show your
Tunngle Virtual IP right in the bottom left corner. This will be your server IP. So open your server.properties file (which should be a notepad file) and look for
server -ip. After this, type in your Tunngle Virtual IP. This is very important, so make sure you do this. In the
server -port line type in 25565 after it. This is the default minecraft server port, and is required for the server to bind to the Tunngle port. Make sure you set the
online-mode to false.
So now go back into Tunngle and open the system tab. Click options. There you will find several things, but focus on the third box of options down. Tick the "forwarded port" box and the "UPnP portforward" boxes. Change the numbers in the box (which should be 11155) and change it to 25565, the default minecraft port. Now the server is working, but won't let anyone on. So, let's fix that!
Exit the systems tab. It should ask you to restart Tunngle to apply changes. Do so. Now close your Tunngle, and open your control panel. Go back into your Windows firewall, but this time click on "Advanced settings". This should open up a another window. On the left hand side of this window there should be a tab called "inbound rules". Click on it. Now, on the right hand side, click "new rule". This should open up a window that gives you 4 options. Click the one that says port, then click on next. In the "specific local ports" box, type in 25565. Make sure you have the TCP box selected. Click next to continue to the connections. Make sure "allow the connection" is ticked, then next again. Now it will ask you on what networks you want this rule to apply. DISABLE the public networks. This is for safety reasons, but afterwards make sure your Tunngle network is set to a home network. You can do this by going into your network and sharing centre and clicking on the identification tag under "Network 2", then changing it to a home network. It's secure, don't worry. Now finally, give the rule a name. I called mine Minecraft 25565 Server Port, for easy recognition.
Your server is working! Congratulations! But do you want to make it private? Then let's get you a private network! So, close down everything, besides this of course, and reopen you Tunngle service. Make sure in the system options your port is 25565, Tunngle has forwarded the port and is using UPnP to do so. Is it? Great! So now click on the private networks icon. One of the boxes given will be titled: "Manage your own network". This is the one you want. So type in your network name, password, and give the network a decent description. Click "Create - Update". Then it should ask you to authenticate your network. Click ok, and it will take you to the authentication page. Simply click authenticate, then wait until you get the message "authentication was successful!", or something along those lines.
If you want your network public, then just join one of the several public minecraft networks, flog your virtual IP to the masses (add :25565 after it!) and watch people flood into your server! If no-one is able to join, then try making a private network, shown above.
Voila! Your own server is now up and functioning. Enjoy, and have fun!
Finally, If you want to put up your private networks or IP addresses on this topic, please do so. Thank you!
