Introductory Guide to Hamachi

So whats this hamachi?

Well if you are reading (or planning) on reading any article on this page, you'd better know (and have) it. Basically, HAMACHI IS KING. Alrite?

If you need technical information specifically on how it works or why it does it, don't look here. Check out the wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamachi or the official page at https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi/vpn.asp for more of that info.

All you need to know is what hamachi does:
1. It is free ^.^

2. By using some clever technical stuff it creates a 'LAN" involving any computers which are assigned under the hamachi network

3. This means you can create your own Local Area Network with any other (friends') computers across the earth, and the games (or other apps) will be tricked into thinking they are all running in a LAN, thus granting you the associated multiplayer privileges.

4. It does exactly what it says it does, and does it well.

5. So simple, if you can't use it don't bother with the other articles, they'll be too hard for you. Sorry.


So how do we use this hamachi?

Underneath you have a screen shot of the user interface. Yes, thats it. (Told you it was simple)

The big dots are the networks, and the smaller dots are the computers connected to the network.
So underneath we have 2 hamachi networks, 'LalyNet' and 'Ryazan'.
Each of these networks have listed all the computers connected to them.

A green dot means that computer is online (and gaming) and connected to hamachi. Obviously grey means it is offline.

At the bottom there are three buttons. At the far left we have the power button, next is the network button and last of all on the right we have the settings button.

Power: Turns on/off hamachi (really??)

Network: Choose to create or join a new network. THE most important of the three. To join a network, you need the name and the password (if any). Once joined, it will appear in the space above. To create, simply fill in the boxes and click 'ok'. Note that the number you can join or create appear to be unlimited.

Settings: Not really important if all you want to do is LAN. Maybe you would go to preferences to change your name of the computer from time to time (eg. from "1337 H4X0r" to "sUpR3m3 0v3rL0rD")

All you need to be able to successfully use hamachi is to have you computer appear as a green dot, and all the other computers that you want to lan with also appear as a green dot, and hopefully all under the same network.

Thats the hamachi intro guide! Yay -- game time ^.^

EXTRA BONUS:
For those wanting to know more, the complete official (and boring) start-up guide is available here.