Today we are taking a big step. We will open our network to allow others to access our OpenSim Grid.
Step 1
If you have followed along exactly then all your servers, and a couple sims are all set up on the same computer. This is where these ports need to be forwarded too. For my local network my servers are set up on 192.168.1.181.
The ports you need to forward are:
8001 to 8006 & 8895 TCP - These ports are used by the 5 Grid servers (asset, inventory, messaging, etc)
9000 TCP/UDP - This was the first sim you set up
You also need to forward any port number of the sims you made in Part 4.
When you get there click proceed. Then below where it says "You may select any service from among those listed above . . ." there is a windows form, type in the following "8001, 8002, 8003, 8004, 8006, 9000" and then click "Use specific custom ports probe". All these ports should report open. If one is closed, you might not have your OpenSim servers up and running, or you might have did something wrong in the port forwarding.
Step 2
Do you have a static IP address?
Note: A static IP means that the
IP address your internet service provider gives you does not change ever. A Dynamic DNS service would give you a domain that points to your IP address at home, and when that IP address changed, you could go to their site and change it, or some application running at home does it automatically. This allows you to give out the domain that in theory will always point to your home IP address.
If you have a static IP address I suggest you buy a domain at
www.GoDaddy.com 
. You can get a non .com domain for just a few bucks a year. After you buy that domain you need to point it to your static IP address by editing going to there Domain Manager, then to the
Total DNS Control.
After you have your domain all set up, try and ping your domain to ensure its pointing to your home IP Address.
Start/Run/cmd/ping YOURDOMAIN.com
If you are having troubles doing this try just pinging your external IP address to ensure it will return pings (some routers won't). If that does not help.. double check all your settings you did in step 2. If all fails then all I can suggest is you might wait a bit, the DNS services might need to propagate your IP to all the servers still, and its ok to move onto step 3.
Step 3
Internal network.
Now that we have the domain name pointing to our home IP address, and the router is forwarding all the ports, we need to make some small changes to our internal network.
On the box that runs the Opensim servers and sims go to the directory "C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc" in there is a file named host. Open it with notepad so we can edit it. If no changes have ever been made this this file, then you should see a line like this "127.0.0.1 localhost". Below that line you need to add your external IP address, and then the domain you set up in Step 2. For example, mine looks like this "98.100.106.10 grid.gridaverse.com".
Note: This step should not really be necessary, but I found I was having troubles, and this seemed to help. When you edit the host file, its like writing up your own DNS service for that computer. You could actually put any domain you want to point to any IP you want. Now if someone goes to grid.gridaverse.com on this local computer, they will go to that IP address.
Step 4
Go to your OpenSim production folder. In the past I have referred to that director as "c:\OpenSimProd".
Open the folder "Regions".
Depending on how many sims you set up in Part 4 there might be more than one file in here.
Each one of these files needs a couple small changes.
Open each up and change the following:
Changes:
internal_ip_address, this need to be changed to the ip address in your internal network. You can get this in windows with Start/run/cmd/ipconfig.. or linux ifconfig.
Example: internal_ip_address="192.168.1.181"
external_host_name, this needs to be the domain you set up in Step 2.
Example:external_host_name="grid.gridaverse.com"
Repeat this for each file in your "region" folder.
Step 5
Restart the OpenSim servers with the "quit" command and then start them back up.
Step 6
You need to change your login URL for your grid in your shortcuts, or if you have the hippo viewer in the grid preferences.
For hippo viewer it would look something like this, with your domain instead of mine:
Login URL: http://grid.Gridaverse.com:8002/
For a shortcut to the regular SL client it would look like this:
-loginuri http://192.168.1.181:8002/
Step 7
Test to see if you can log in.
Hopefully this is going well. If you find your having troubles with logging in on your internal network you could try step 3 on the computer your currently on, but you should not have to if everything is working right.
Step 8
Convince a friend to help out on this part. We need someone on the external network (not at your house) to try and login.
First you need to set up a user for him. Ask your friend what first name, last name, and password they would like. In the User server dos window type the following command:
create user firstname lastname
You will then be prompted for a password. Type that in as well.
Now instruct your friend on how to set up shortcut to your sim, or using the hippo viewer.
Ask them to login
If they make it... your good to go.. all finsihed..
Step 9
If all is well your done.. if not lets do some troubleshooting...
Double check your router port forwarding and make sure everything is correct.
When you get there click proceed. Then below where it says "You may select any service from among those listed above . . ." there is a windows form, type in the following "8001, 8002, 8003, 8004, 8006, 9000" and then click "Use specific custom ports probe". All these ports should report open. If one is closed, you might not have your OpenSim servers up and running, or you might have did something wrong in the port forwarding.
Ask your friend to ping the domain name you set up in step 2. If he can't reach it for some reason, you could ask him to make the same changes you made on step 3 for his local computer. This could help.
Finish up
This in my mind is the hardest part of setting up the grid. I had all kinds of trouble getting mine to work, but it was a problem with IP tables and rules I set up on my linux router. I ended up ditching my linux router and buying a new one just for this to work, and afterwards it worked great.
In the next part we will look at running additional sims on other computers in your network.