goertzenator

I've got it all figured out. I was going to add the content below to the wiki (https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma_Reforger:Server_Hosting), but I see the wiki is not allowing new registrations. Could somebody with wiki access add this? ------ Firewall, Port Forwarding and local Direct Connect The game port (default is 2001) is the only inbound port and may require firewall configuration and port forward setup. The other steam ports are outbound only and do not require any special setup. The dedicated server requires you to specify `gameHostRegisterBindAddress`, which indicates where game clients are to connect to play on your server. If you are behind a NAT firewall, this value should be the external IP address of your router and then your firewall needs to forward the game port to the internal LAN address. Game clients can only connect to the server through this address; you cannot Direct Connect through the LAN address because this is not the address that was registered and it will not be found on the server browser. For example, if you registered your server on external address 65.40.30.10, your server sits at LAN address 192.68.1.50, and your game client is at 192.168.1.100, you will NOT be able to direct connect to 192.168.1.50. A local client must connect to the external address (65.40.30.10 in this example), and the firewall must be configured such that the connection passes through both port forwarding(DNAT) and masquerading(SNAT) machinery. For example, this is what both machines must see: game server perspective: 192.168.1.50 (game server) <--> 65.40.30.10 (game client) game client perspective: 192.168.1.100 (game client) <--> 65.40.30.10 (game server) The game server will produce "I'm a teapot" errors if DNAT is triggering but SNAT is not. In this scenario the traffic flow looks like this: game server perspective: 192.168.1.50 (game server) <--> 192.168.1.100 (game client) game client perspective: 192.168.1.100 (game client) --> 65.40.30.10 (game server) 192.168.1.100 (game client) <-- 192.168.1.50 (game server) unknown address, traffic dropped!

I am observing similar problems trying to locally access a dedicated server (same subnet, inside NAT router). When I have the dedicated server registered with the external IP address, I cannot direct connect through its local, internal address. I get a "server not found" error, and a packet trace on the dedicated server shows that my computer is not even making an attempt to connect there. I have to conclude that even for direct connect the address first gets looked on Bohemia's server browser. Since my server was registered with the external address, the internal address lookup fails and it gives up instantly. It is too bad direct connect is still coupled to the browser in this way. In my mind the whole point of direct connect is to avoid server browser problems. Anyway, I am going to try monkeying with my router to allow my client connections to the external address to get properly DNATed to the dedicated server.