Hello, I've been fooling around making a chat program for my friends and I and it works alright except for timeouts and the fact that - my main problem - I can not figure out how to get a client over the internet to connect to the server. The program works correctly over a private network using private network addresses like.. 192.168. or 10... etc. However I am not sure what I need to do for a client to connect to my computer from their computer at home. at the moment in my code I use INADDR_ANY, which Im not entirely sure the meaning of. I have also tried using my external address ( the one you find if you ask for your ip on google ), There is probably some knowlege I am lacking so any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!!

use v5.14;
use Socket;
use IO::Socket;
require('server_lib.pl');
flush_system();

socket(SERVER,PF_INET,SOCK_STREAM,getprotobyname('tcp'));
setsockopt(SERVER,SOL_SOCKET,SO_REUSEADDR,1);
my $my_addr = sockaddr_in(5555,INADDR_ANY);
bind(SERVER,$my_addr) or die "cant bind";
listen(SERVER,SOMAXCONN);

REQUEST:
while(accept(CLIENT,SERVER)){   
   if (my $pid = fork){
     next REQUEST;
   }
   else{ #child     
      close SERVER;
      my $ip = get_ip(*CLIENT);
      my $user_name;
      
      if(recv(CLIENT,$user_name,1024,0)){
        if( user_exists($user_name) || ip_exists($ip) ){
           send_to_ip($ip,"User name exists (please restart);\n");
           say "Attempt to duplicate name '$user_name' from IP: $ip";
           next REQUEST;
        }
        else{
           cache($user_name,$ip);
        }
        my $conn_msg = "{$user_name Connected}";  
        say "$conn_msg: $ip";    
        global_send($conn_msg);
        
        while(recv(CLIENT,my $data,1024,0)){
            last if !ip_exists($ip); 
            my $msg = "[$user_name] $data";   
            say $msg;            
            unless( special_command($msg) ){
                global_send($msg); 
            }        
        }
      }
      my $disconn_msg = "{$user_name Disconnected}";
      say $disconn_msg;
      global_send($disconn_msg);
      remove_user($user_name);
      exit;
  }
}
continue{
   close(CLIENT);
}

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In reply to multi-client server by Rudolf

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