The Nordhagen

If you play Call Of Duty 4 on PlayStation 3 (like me), chances are you’ve spent some time waiting to be connected to an online game. Infinity Ward who created the game blame your internet router for not having the correct ports opened. While this post says that you will need to open ports 3074 and 3075 on you router, maybe you don’t even know what a port is, not to mention how to open them?

To be honest I don’t know too much about this stuff either, but this I do know: the term “opening a port” is somewhat misleading. It took me some time to discover that it’s actually the same as “forwarding a port” or “port forwarding” as it is called in the AirPort Admin Utility for Mac. You cannot just open a port, you have to tell the router which computer on your network should receive network traffic directed to that port. That computer is identified by an IP-address, but that means entering that IP address manually, and most home networks are configured handle this automatically (by means of DHCP) and that’s likely to be the most practical solution anyway.

How do we solve this? Enter DHCP Client ID… ok, an introduction should probably end with a far sexier name than “DCHP Client ID”, but here it goes, watch:

These screenshots are in Norwegian, but the layout is the same, and I will attempt to translate.

Step 1: Open AirPort Amin Utility and select “Internet” and “DHCP”

NOTE: This requires that your AriPort is set to share a public IP address. That setting is located in the first tab under “Internet”.

At the bottom you will se something called DHCP reservations, and the list is likely to be empty, unlike mine. Below the list a +-button. Click that and this sheet appears:

Step 2: Enter a name and method for the new reserved IP address.

I chose to name it PS3, bu that’s not important. What is is that you specify DHCP Client ID as the method and click continue.

Step 3: Enter a client ID and the IP address you wish

The Client ID is important because you have to enter the same on your PlayStation. May I suggest “PS3″ for that. Next you enter an IP address. The three first numbers have been entered for you, and you have to select a number between 2 and 256. I chose 94, and if that’s not manually assigned to any other computer on your network it will work for you as well. Click “Done”.

Step 4: opening/forwarding the ports

Select “Advanced” and “Port Forwarding” and you will see something like this. Again, click the +-button below the list and this sheet appears:

Fill out the fields exactly like the screenshot, or if you chose a different IP address to be reserved for your PS3 in step 3, enter that address instead. Click “Continue”.

Here you select a name for the configuration. Again, this has no technical meaning, it’s just a description so I entered “COD4″ as an abbreviation for “Call Of Duty 4″. Pretend like the rest of the sheet isn’t there and click “Done”.

Step 5: Restart the AirPort

Restart your AirPort by clicking the “Apply”/”Update”/”Restart” (don’t know it’s actual name in English) in AirPort Admin Utility.

Step 6: Configure your PlayStation network settings

You can configure the network settings for your PS3 almost like you already have. You need to choose manual setup, but you can still use automatic detection for all settings except you DHCP Client ID, which, obviously, has to be whatever you chose in step 3. Remember my suggestion was “PS3″. After that Bob’s your father’s brother!