If you are hosting a server on your LAN, want other people to be able to access it over the internet, and find renting a VPS non-economical, you will need to configure port forwarding in your router, which this guide will explain in detail.

Understand the Risks

Opening up ports on your router and giving your IP address to untrusted individuals opens you up to security threats such as denial-of-service attacks which could cut off your internet access. Changing your IP address in such a case might be as simple as restarting your router, but can also require contacting your ISP's support.

Accessing Your Router's UI

1. Find the LAN IP of your router. Typically, this address looks like 192.168.x.1.
   • On Windows, run ipconfig and check for "Default Gateway"
   • On Linux, run ip r | grep "default via"
2. Navigate to your router's LAN IP in a web browser.
3. Check the underside of your physical router for the password.

Setting Up Port Forwarding

In a classical residential connection setup, you are assigned a unique IP address which your ISP routes to your router/gateway. Now, if any traffic comes in that's not a response to a request you sent, it will be rejected for obvious security reasons but also because in a multi-device network, it actually doesn't know where to send the traffic to. With port forwarding, you can tell your router which device to direct specific traffic to (based on protocol and port).

• This feature may have a wildly different name in your router, such as "Permit Access", "Port Sharing" or "Virtual Servers".
• If your router does not provide a device list and instead asks for an IP address, provide the LAN IP of the device hosting your servers.
  • On Windows, run ipconfig and check for "IPv4 Address"
  • On Linux, run ip r | grep "src"

For Warframe specifically, there are a few protocol-port pairs you'll want to create rules for:

• Web: TCP/80, TCP/443
• IRC/Chat (>= U15): TCP/6695, TCP/6696, TCP/6697, TCP/6698, TCP/6699
• IRC/Chat (< U15): TCP/6665, TCP/6666, TCP/6667, TCP/6668, TCP/6669
• HUB: UDP/6952

Verification

To verify your services are reachable externally, you can use a port forwarding tester. If you're getting a "closed" result:

• Check that the respective software is running.
• Check that you have created a rule in your router with the correct protocol, port, and device/LAN IP.
• Consider that port forwarding may not be an option for you; look into VPS rental or VPN solutions that allow you to forward arbitrary ports (Mullvad and Proton VPN do not).

Inviting Your Friends

1. Obtain your public IP address, e.g. from the port forwarding tester above or here.
2. Tell your friend(s) to follow only the client setup guide and then give them your IP address which they will have to put under server_host in the OpenWF/Client Config.json.

Dynamic DNS

It is possible that your IP address changes on a regular basis (e.g. daily), in which case you may wish to sign up for a dynamic DNS service (of which Cloudflare is not one) and configure it in your router. Then you'll just have to tell your friend(s) the hostname you have claimed for them to use as a server_host.