Neverwinter Nights 2 Server

11:44pm June 17, 2007

I finally bought a new game this weekend. Neverwinter Nights 1 captured my attention all through college. My roommates and I would stay up until dawn playing on our network with a Cat5 cable run across the porch into our neighbors house so he could play on our network. I was a poor college student back then and couldn't afford to run a stand-alone NWN server. This meant that someone's box was taking a performance hit as it was hosting the game as well as playing it.

Fortunately, I was lucky to get my hands on an "old" Dell PowerEdge 2400. The RAID card is bad, but I popped it out, and she fired right up. I also was excepted to beta test MS's new Home Server. However, my new PowerEdge server doesn't have a DVD drive, and I can't seem to local a SCSI DVD drive. So I ended up installing Windows Server 2003 Standard.

This article will walk you through setting up a stand-alone NWN2 server, setting up port forwarding (pinholes) on a Netopia 3347NWG, and getting your server squared away.

Anyone that can't get this setup, or just doesn't want to bother hosting their own thing is welcome to use my server. I can host as many different modules as needed.

Configuring the Server

The first step in getting a Neverwinter Nights 2 Stand-alone server running is to make sure the network connection is configured correctly. You will need to change the way your computer gets an IP address. Most home networks allow a router to assign IP addresses to computers using DHCP. This means that you computer could be x.x.x.10 today and x.x.x.11 tomorrow. This won't work if you are trying to run a server, so we will change the server's IP to static.

Start -> Control Panel -> Network Connections

Now right click the connection that says "Local Area Connection". If you computer has more than one network card, you will need to determine which one is used for external traffic. Right click on the network connection you are going to use and click "Properties". Hit OK.

Under the "General" tab, double click "Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)". If your server is already configured with a static IP, then continue to Server Firewall. If your server doesn't have a static IP address, then click the "User the following IP address" radio button and the "Use the following DNS server addresses". Input the static IP address that you want to use, the subnet mask is generally 255.255.255.0 and the default gateway will be the IP of your router. In the DNS area, put the IP of your router into the "Preferred DNS server". This is generally 192.168.1.254. Usually I configure static IP's between x.x.x.101 and x.x.x.110

Server Firewall

Now, I am not recommending any course of action here, but it is easiest to get a NWN2 server up and running by shutting down all firewalls. This of course leaves your box wide open, so make sure you come back and configure the software firewall.

Click the "Advanced" tab and then "Settings". This is where you will disable the Windows Firewall.

That completes the server configuration piece.

Configuring the Netopia 3347

Open Firefox. In the address bar type 192.168.1.254 (no http://www). This will bring you to the router configuration interface. Click "Expert Mode" on the left navigation, at the bottom. Then click "Yes". Then "Configure" at the top. And finally, "Advanced".

DHCP

The first thing we need to do is remove our server's static IP from the DHCP range. Click "DHCP Server" and set the starting and ending IP address so that your server's falls outside the range. If you are following my convention, then you would set the starting to something over x.x.x.110. Click "Submit" once you are complete. Then hit "Advanced" on the breadcrumb navigation at the top left.

Opening Pinholes

Now we need to do what is more commonly known as Port Forwarding. With Netopia, they have renamed this concept to Pinholes. So click "Pinholes". You will use this interface to at the 5121 UDP & TCP, and the 27900 UDP & TCP ports. These are currently the only ones that you need to have if you are going to hand out your server's address. If you want your server listed on GameSpy you might need to open more ports, like 6500 6667 and 28900.