Installation and tutorials all good - Porting an issue

[Grags]

OK. As an old guy who's a bit of a technophobe I was quite pleased when installation and pootling around with the software itself seemed ok, albeit a struggle on my laptop as small screen. Got characters sorted, resized tokens, played around with packages, dummy combats....all good.

Then I looked into the hosting and porting and got hellishly confused. I don't use a router as I use my phone hotspot - does that count?
The step by step made sense up to the point of finding your make/model of router then don't know where to go from there

[Zacchaeus]

Hi Grags, welcome to FG.

You will not be likely to host with a mobile hotspot since you won’t be able to access the router to set port forwarding - a necessary step to enable you to host a game. You will have to use a VPN. More details here.

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?43607-Port-Forward-Alternatives

[Grags]

Dude, great easy to follow video. If only every one with tech advice was as careful as to make it idiot proof for old duffers like me. Got son coming over on Thursday so hopefully will get him on as a test. If it works sound will get whole playgroup on when we meet in weekend, so we can play remotely from then on. thanks

[Trenloe]

Got son coming over on Thursday so hopefully will get him on as a test. If it works sound will get whole playgroup on when we meet in weekend, so we can play remotely from then on.
Connecting locally on the same network (i.e. not over the Internet) is different (you don’t need port forwarding). So before you plan to play, make sure you’ve tested people connecting to your FG campaign remotely.

[Nylanfs]

It looks like he is using a VPN, which I'm not sure how that will work. Won't his son have to use the external IP since they won't be on the same network even though in the same house?

[Trenloe]

It looks like he is using a VPN, which I'm not sure how that will work. Won't his son have to use the external IP since they won't be on the same network even though in the same house?
Nope. Even with a VPN, FG will listen on port 1802 on the local IP address - so people in the same house should use the local IP address. Hence my comment about having someone local connect won't be the same as connecting over the Internet, even when using a VPN.

[Nylanfs]

?? Shouldn't the VPN be completely firewalled from the local network

[Andraax]

?? Shouldn't the VPN be completely firewalled from the local network

Depends on how the VPN software is configured.

[Trenloe]

?? Shouldn't the VPN be completely firewalled from the local network
As Andraax says, it depends on how your VPN is configured. Most VPNs usually don't disable your local network, that's why I said "even with a VPN, FG will listen on port 1802 on the local IP address". FG will listen on port 1802 on all of your active IPv4 enabled network interfaces.

[LordEntrails]

Depends on how the VPN software is configured.
I'll second this. VPNs I use usually allow local traffic. But I have computers right now that part of the VPN setup even blocks other local devices like my printer etc. Just depends on how secure/paranoid the VPN configuration is :)

[Grags]

though my son will be in same house at time, we're going to try with him using own i-net dongle so we can see if will work for others in group. will let everyone know how it went after tomorrow. fingers crossed.
if good will get rest of party sorted after, though one of group less technically minded than me (if humanly possible) hence waiting till all together to talk through process