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I am a college student on a small campus. The school's network is set up like so: one single router with a bunch of different subnets connected to it. A friend and I would like to play Minecraft, and he's on a different subnet than I.

I've seen this set of instructions.

However, since he and I are connected via the same router, is it possible to play minecraft without going to the internet and, therefore, don't have to make a server and go through all that mess? (I'm not sure if the minecraft software even allows this atm?)

Earlier this year we tried to connect via wireless, and I could see his game but I could not connect to it. I have yet to try using a hardline to see if that fixes the problem.

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5 Answers 5

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The solution is incredibly simple. Both of you should install Hamachi which is a free software VPN that will allow you to add users to your VPN network and they can communicate with your PC directly via this connection. Hamachi will either work via direct connection between clients, or if this is impossible, it will relay the connections (very similar to how skype works).

https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi/

Just use the free version (which I think limits you to 10 clients on your VPN network, but this should be enough for just you and a couple buddies).

It will assign a new IP address for your "Hamachi Network Adapter" and this is the IP address you will use to connect your minecraft.

With this setup, you could be in the next room from each other, or half-way around the world. Hamachi doesn't care and your PC's will appear to be on the same network (virtual private network), and can communicate with no problems. It does not require any ports to be opened on the schools firewalls neither, so no worries there. It just works. And it's free. Hard to beat that.

EDIT: I think you'll want to use the "Mesh Network" type when you set things up. This will allow all clients on your VPN to see eachother.

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  • I'm reading over some of the reviews, and it doesn't look too great. "Speeds aren't that impressive for gaming" "Subscription is cheap, but in order not to lose the connection they'll convince you to keep upgrading your internet speed." I'll keep looking through it, though. Thank you for the reference!
    – Becca
    Commented Mar 13, 2013 at 19:26
  • not sure what you are reading... It is free, no subscription required. Speeds are as fast as your cable can carry it.
    – SnakeDoc
    Commented Mar 13, 2013 at 19:45
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    I used to run a private minecraft server for about 5 friends including myself and we all used hamachi - i had minecraft running from a windows machine (server) and everyone used that hamachi ip address to connect. Never a problem. Hamachi has nothing to do with your local internet speed nor will they say "upgrade your speed". It doesn't make sense in this scenario.
    – SnakeDoc
    Commented Mar 13, 2013 at 19:47
  • Over a local network you should be fine, it gets worse when all traffic goes through internet.
    – mveroone
    Commented Aug 24, 2013 at 11:17
  • @Kwaio all internet traffic is slower than a local network, unless you are lucky and have a gigabit internet uplink (unlikely). Hamachi does/will not slow down your speed, all it is doing is encrypting and tunneling your traffic. If anything, there will be a smidget of CPU processing overhead, but this is so minimal it's unnoticeable on any "modern" system (modern meaning anything with more than 1 cpu core). Hamachi is the correct way to accomplish exactly what the OP wanted... unless you want to setup your own VPN, but this would require a VPN server or router, plus additional configs.
    – SnakeDoc
    Commented Aug 28, 2013 at 20:29
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I'm assuming that you were able to see each other when you both were on wireless because wireless is probably using the same subnet. You can check this by connecting to the wireless network, and running ipconifg from command prompt (Windows) or ifconifg from terminal (Linux) to see your current IP and subnet mask.

In the router (which you probably don't have access to I'm guessing), there is probably a firewall. If you allow the port you are playing Minecraft on, which I believe is 25565, bidirectionally between your IP address/network and their IP address/network, it should work just fine.

The DMZ set by the router/firewall will most likely not allow traffic between private networks, unless specified.

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  • No, I don't have access to the router. I am halfway through my first networking class, and we just learned about TCP ports this past week. Would you mind explaining how to make the ports bidirectional between the two computers? We have yet to hit that subject (:
    – Becca
    Commented Mar 13, 2013 at 19:14
  • this is the hard way of doing this. see my answer for a fast and easy approach that i've used in real life (similar situation to yours).
    – SnakeDoc
    Commented Mar 13, 2013 at 19:16
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    @Becca, basically, a firewall blocks ports from entering and/or exiting the network. For you to be able to connect to another private network, it will have to pass through the router/firewall to get there. If the firewall is blocking that port, you will not be able to exit the private network to get the to other private network. You would just need to know the source IP/network, port, and detonation IP/network. I doubt that your school will allow you to edit the firewall or will edit it for you. When I say bidirectional, you will probably need two rules, or add the IPs to the source and dest.
    – David
    Commented Mar 13, 2013 at 20:13
  • And this is impossible since I can't plug in the source and destination TCP/IP into the router configuration in order to bypass the firewall?
    – Becca
    Commented Mar 13, 2013 at 22:39
  • @Becca, You would need access to the firewall/router so that you could add a rule as follows. Source: YourIP/FriendsIP, destination: YourIP/FriendsIP, port:25565. The IPs in that rule can be subed out for networks so you don't have to be pinned down to an IP. Also, the reason why your IP and your friends IP are both in source and destination are to make it bidirectional. I understand that this could be difficult for you since you most likely don't have access to the rule base, but this is how you could do it without third party software if you did have full control over your environment.
    – David
    Commented Mar 13, 2013 at 23:49
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There is also a good tool called connectivity and this enables you to host your own WI-FI connection through your PC, although you won't be able to go online you can still play minecraft together by using the "Open to LAN" button in a single-player world.

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Not having any control over your network, your best bet is to try to create your own server off-campus somewhere or buy some cheap hosting. I've used http://www.mpserv.net/ before, they're pretty cheap with a great control panel and lots of options. You could split the cost and invite friends. Just an idea.

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Being on different subnets does not necessarily prevent your friend from connecting to your computer, but it does require the router to forward the traffic appropriately, whereas you normally would be able to communicate directly. Clearly, you do not have access to the router configuration, so there is no way to ensure this, but the gateway is probably set up to do the required routing already. In that case, you will be able to join via 'Direct Connect' (provide LAN IP address), although the hosted game will not be detected automatically, since broadcast messages do not reach hosts on other subnets.

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  • most schools have subnets segmented so they cannot talk to each other. This will not likely be the best solution. See my answer regarding Hamachi below. Hamachi is the standard way to accomplish what the OP is requesting. Google "hamachi minecraft" and you will get tons of results listing tutorials on how to setup this exact config. The OP is not attempting to do anything "special" here, Hamachi is the accepted standard to "solve" this problem.
    – SnakeDoc
    Commented Mar 13, 2013 at 21:22
  • @SnakeDoc: There's nothing 'special' about this solution. You're right, it might not work, depending on the router configuration, but if it does, I would argue there is no problem to be solved here; you just connect.
    – Marcks Thomas
    Commented Mar 13, 2013 at 21:34
  • I was referring to the OP when saying there's nothing "special" they are trying to do... its a standard problem, one that has standard solutions. For gaming communities, Hamachi is that standard solution. The OP appears to have read some bad/inacurate information regarding Hamachi and therefore is not accepting answers. Hamachi is the standard solution here, its cut and dry. OP, please accept an answer so we can move on. Problem is solved.
    – SnakeDoc
    Commented Mar 13, 2013 at 21:36
  • I very strongly recommend against using Hamachi for this. It is certainly not the 'standard solution', but it is a very bad one in my opinion, as it is completely unnecessary and does not meet the question's requirements.
    – Marcks Thomas
    Commented Mar 13, 2013 at 21:45
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    I'm not sure I've met a girl named @Becca either, but the name does sound rather feminine. Apologies. :) Among the many reasons I honestly despise Hamachi, the biggest is this: it's 'zero-configuration'. As SnakeDoc has pointed out, that can be convenient and it often is, but if Hamachi doesn't work as expected and in my experience, it frequently does, diagnosing and fixing the problem can be a daunting task, even for the most seasoned network admins. By all means, give it a try, there's little harm in that, but should it not work right away, run like you've never run before.
    – Marcks Thomas
    Commented Mar 13, 2013 at 22:49

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