Dummies, Wireless

Chapter 11: Gaming Over a Wireless Home Network
You need to assign an IP address that isn’t in the range of your router’s IP
address pool but is within the same subnet. In other words, if your router
assigns IP addresses in the 192.168.0.xxx range, you need to use an IP address
beginning with 192.168.0 for your game console. For example, if your router
uses the range of 192.168.0.0 to 192.168.0.32 for computers connected to the
network, you want to choose an IP address such as 192.168.0.34 for your console.
Every router’s configuration program is different, but you typically see a
box that reads something like DHCP Server Start IP Address (with an IP
address next to it) and another box that reads something like DHCP Server
Finish IP Address with another box containing an IP address. (Some routers
may just list the start address, followed by a count, which means that the
finish address is the last number in the start address plus the count number.)
The key thing to remember is that you have to come up with only the last
number in the IP address, the number after the third period in the IP address.
The first three (which are usually 192.168.0) don’t change. All you need to do
to assign this IP address is to choose a number between 1 and 254 that is not
in the range your router uses for DHCP. (Most routers use the .1 address, so
you should use a number between 2 and 254.)
Dealing with port forwarding
After you have assigned an IP address to your gaming PC or game console
and are connected to the Internet, you may well be ready to start playing
games. Our advice: Give it a try and see what happens. Depending on the
games you play, any additional steps may not be needed.
The steps we’re about to discuss shouldn’t be required for a game console.
And, although we haven’t checked out every single game out there, we haven’t
run into any incidences where you need to get involved with the port forwarding,
which we’re about to discuss, with a game console. If you have an
older router that doesn’t work well with console games, you may consider
putting your console on the router’s DMZ, as we discuss in the upcoming
section “Setting Up a Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).”
If, however, your games don’t work, you may need to get involved in configuring
the firewall and Network Address Translation (NAT). As we discuss in
Chapter 5, home network routers use a system called NAT to connect multiple
devices to a single Internet connection. Basically, NAT translates between
public Internet IP addresses and internal IP addresses on your home’s network.
When a computer or other device is connected to your home network
(wirelessly or even a wired network), the router assigns it an internal IP
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