Servers and Hosting stuff

[LostRunza]

Greetings all,

I recently got ds 2.10 up and have had a good deal of fun building some test rooms and trying to tweak some of the coding. Now I would like to have some friends (5 friends at most) help me in my journey but there are then the issues of hosting the mud for my friends to be able to connect.  I have read about paid hosting and find that all fine and dandy but I would rather stay free if at all possible. This is after all just a learning hobby.

Paid hosting seems cheap with some sites offering $5/mo for basic packages. If I have to go that route then so be it, but I am more of a do it yourself person so thus some questions come about.

1. I have heard others speak of using cygwin but it appears to be for linux on windows. Not sure if I need that since I am using the windows version of dead souls?

2. If I am going to host from my computer I need plenty of resources. I have a Intel Dual Core 2.66 with 4 gig ram and 250 gig of free space. (Sounds like more than enough for 5 people I hope.)

3. I will also need my router to allow my port (5600) through to my computer. I think I have this done but I am not sure how to test it without coming in from the outside. Which leads to # 4

4. Now since I have Qwest DSL, my modem gets a new IP address ever so often (I think) so I need to have a static Ip address or I will have to tell my friends every time it changes and what the new number is. (Doesn't sound fun).   
In this article  http://www.mudbytes.net/index.php?a=topic&t=2048  Bojack mentions "no-ip.com" which sounds interesting but he then mentions a site name is needed to redirect and that confuses me. Why would I need a .com/.org/.whatever site to host a mud on my own computer? Sounds like that would defeat the purpose of hosting yourself. Could I get some clarification on that whole concept?

5. Is there anything else that might be a problem that I have not thought of?


I really appreciate any constructive help you might give.

Thank you.

   

[Raudhrskal]

1. Cygwin is a Linux-like environment running in Windows. It's used if you want to build your own driver instead of using our supplied copy.

2. To host a development mud a P2-400 with 128 MB RAM and 200MB of disk space would be enough. Now, I understand that you want to use your Windows machine normally while running the mud in the background... but on your hardware it shouldn't be any noticeable problem.

3. You're looking for "port forwarding" or "virtual servers". Set "public" port 5600, TCP (or TCP/UDP) to be forwarded to your machine's local ip (most probably 192.168.x.x) port 5600. Repeat for 5595 if you need to use the mud's webserver and CreWeb. Repeat for other port numbers if necessary. To test you can ask one of your friends or someone on the intermud chat (or the Dead Souls Dev MUD) to try to log in... simple as that.

4. no-ip.com, dyndns.org and many other sites like that are so called "Dynamic DNSes". They give you a name, like lostrunza.no-ip.com and a program that you install on your computer. Each time your DSL changes its IP address, the program notifies the no-ip (or dyndns) server to change the IP that name points to. Thus, your friends can always reach you as (example) lostrunza.no-ip.com. That's NOT like buying your own domain name.

5. Good luck.

[kylomylo]

I've tested many times my scripts and my sites on my own server , but trust me it's more calming if you choose a good hosting and use it , because it appears more problems than when you think for a long term. There are more advantages than disadvantages.
Good luck !