As the title says, I am looking at setting up a small minecraft bukkit server (8-10 people) on my spare PC, we have tried it before with vanilla using hamachi but it wasn't very good and I am wondering how to set up a bukkit server and then the networking behind it so that my friends can connect.
So since you say you have set one up before, I will assume you know how to configure the server correctly and start it up. In that case, you need to port forward from your router to your PC. Go to your router configuration page - usually on 192.168.0.1 or the like, and log in. First, you need to configure your PC to have a static IP. It is possible to do this in a section called DHCP Reservation, which reserves an IP address for your PC. Alternatively, you need to configure your PC to use a true static IP address, then configure the DHCP server on your router to exclude a certain range of IPs. For example, if you set the DHCP range to 192.168.0.2 - 192.168.0.200, then you can use 192.168.0.201 through to 192.168.0.254 for your static IPs. This site can help you do the Windows configuration part Next, you need to find a section called port forwarding - it may be in the Firewall section. Forward port 25565 to your PC's IP address. It may be useful to use http://portforward.com/ as a guide to help you through the steps. Of course, there is another way. You can use a utility to automatically set up port forwarding without needing to go into your router configuration at all. HowToGeek do one such guide. However, you do need to do this every time you want to run the server, so it is much more temporary than the full configuration method.
In a slightly different way I believe I have now set it up correctly: What I have done is set up the PC which the server will run on through a switch therefore giving it a static internal ip, I have then added port forwarding on port number 25565 to my routers settings for said computer and I believe it now works. Is there anything I have missed?
After a fiddling with the network settings I have got it working as friends have been able to connect fairly easily.
If I were to add bukkit to the server I run for my friends what would be the recommended add ons? And is it a PITA or nice and easy to install? (Sorry for thread hijack)
Hmm, what do you mean you are running the server through a switch? If you mean the network hardware, then that in no way gives your PC a static IP. It can only get a static IP if it is either configured to use one, or the DHCP server (on the router) is configured to give out the same IP every time. Otherwise your PC might change IPs between restarts, and your port forwarding rules will become invalid.
I can't work out how to set up a static IP as the bt control panel has no settings for dhcp, but I have set the length of each ip status to be 21 days (the maximum) so that should mean it works for 3 weeks then I have to port forward again? I honestly don't know but there is one called essentials or spoutessentials which gives a load of commands like warping and stuff like that, mine is just running bukkit for the potential of plugins later on, all we have so far is a custom spawnpoint plugin and that is it!
Set a static IP on the host and it should just request it every time. I haven't set a static IP on my desktop and the IP hasn't changed in 2 years. So long as you don't have loads of hosts you should be good.
