The Horrid Uni Network!

[renegadeandy]

Hello chaps! I just moved into University at St Andrews - Scotland. They give a nice network in our rooms named RESNET. This is a decent system, 3-4 megs per second download of a standard ftp or http server.

Problem is there is a hefty rank old firewall blocking everysingle online game i have ever had.

This makes me very

However, a spark of genius hit me, is it possible for game servers to be hosted upon ports which would be open, such as 21 - ftp, 80 - http, 110 - pop3 etc al these ports or can servers not be hosted on these ports? If yes, surely i could connect to any server using those ports no?

The admins have already specificed that asking them to unlock ports for gaming is never going to happen, so i need to find another way. LAN gaming within the network itself works a charm having played several Command and Conquer Generals matches with a few lads around the university - its gaming outside of RESNET which is causing difficulty.

Do you guys have any ideas on how to help me, or maybe even a method of using a central server at home, which would do the connections and then it would forward the packets to me at ST Andrews on a port i know is open?

Let me know ladies!

Thanks in advance for all your help,

Andy Armstrong

"Renegade"

[technobeast]

You can try and launch some kind of proxy server at your home that would forward the game server ports to another ports of yours (Forwarding proxy....or kind of). However if you connect to the Internet @UNI via a university proxy I've no idea how would the idea "Proxy over proxy" be released. Not sure if anything is possible in the second case. However lets see if anyone else can help

[renegadeandy]

Ok i shall look into that however i dont feel it would work exactly for that reason! Apparantly a VPN would work...

[technobeast]

VPN sounds great...

[renegadeandy]

Do you know what ports vpn uses and if it truly works though?

[killer_cow]

Originally Posted by renegadeandy

Do you know what ports vpn uses and if it truly works though?

Im pretty sure VPNs can work through whatever ports you want them to, although if the network has a good enough firewall it will filter certain types of data packets that dont correspond, for example to HTTP and graphics data on port 80. I know that on the network Im on it filters out video and a lot of other specific bandwidth sucking types of downloads, I assume by looking at the packets (I tried renaming extension and it still caught me )

If you get a solution going, Im well up for trying it anyhoo!

Good luck mate!

[renegadeandy]

Yeah im getting really quite close to hacking it with SSH Tunneling - im pretty sure this will work, similar to vpn but should be able to get past whatever i want and VPN using windows you cannot configure the port. hmm.

[killer_cow]

Originally Posted by renegadeandy

Yeah im getting really quite close to hacking it with SSH Tunneling - im pretty sure this will work, similar to vpn but should be able to get past whatever i want and VPN using windows you cannot configure the port. hmm.

Just a thought... have u tried setting the public port to something like 21 and then just forward that to the standard VPN port within your LAN to the standard VPN server. (I cant recall the port number but a simple google search will find it)

When you run the connect to VPN dialogue you can tell it to connect through a custom port by adding a colon after IP (just like in CS). So something like 123.123.123.123:21 (for port 21).

Let me know if that works!

[renegadeandy]

hmmm good idea i never knew that - vpn didnt work however on standard ports neither did ssh port tunelling - how do you set the vpn servers port - you never get that option - its only when you connect you could possibly choose a port and the vpn wouldnt be listeningon that specific port would it?

[killer_cow]

No no, on the vpn SERVER the port would be default, but on the ROUTER you would set port forwarding to go from say port 21 (on the WAN) to the default VPN port on the server (on the LAN).

[renegadeandy]

oooo crazy complicated and doubtfull!

[killer_cow]

I wouldn't say its very complicated... it just depends if your router can do it. On my USRobotics router I can tell it I want the public port to be one number and the private port to be another... not too difficult at all.