Feanor

I seem to have this problem which Wyzcrak suggests might be caused by my D@MN LAN firewall (which I cannot do anything about)
Apparently it blocks connections to port.. 27015 (HL port)
I can only connect to servers that use other ports (like 27020 and such)
However, this means that I cannot connect to TG
Anyone got any ideas.. ip trace or something.. any help is appreciated
--> I can run perfectly normal games on the servers I CAN get to.. if that helps

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Pokerface

Are there software solutions that can port-forward ala a router?

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Feanor

No router.. it's not my firewall.. it's the campus one d@mn it..
anyone know how to prove/disprove that it's the firewall.. if it's something else *hopes* then it might be fixable

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TheAdj`

He meant most routers can port forward, and was asking if anyone knew of a program that did the same. Reading comprehension ftw.

Feanor

*opps* never heard if anything like that.. help .. ?
I thought he meant like opening a port or something.. ergh

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CaveDog

I don't think this would work for him. Basicly, the school (assuming that this theory is correct) is not allowing ANY traffic on port 27015 to go from inside their network to the outside (the internet), so unless he has an offsite server running said port forwarding software/hardware, he will never be able to connect.

In theory it would work like this:


The problem in software, these are rather slow, so I don't think it would meet your needs. The hardware is expensive, of course, and the chances of you have this server/hardware are rather slim. If you did, you probably would be asking . Also, if you had this box on the outside, it figures that you would just play on it.

Someone more "in the know" might come up with something more doable, but this is all I've ever come up with in the past. It is barely passable for web browsing.

So unless Wyz wants to change the port to something less "well known", you are most likely out of luck for TG NS. At least at school.

gg viso ftw

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Feanor

Not like that I LIVE here because my Mom is a professor here.. so no choice .. you MUST have a server to do this? Are there any other ways.. ?
Yeah.. I understand what you wrote and I wish I had a server outside this *kick* LAN connection.. and I can hardly bother with people changing ports *that's just dumb*

Any other ideas .. ? Can anything be done? Curses on this LAN thing..

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Pokerface

But if the school is blocking 27015, why wouldn't forcing HL's outgoing connection to be on port 30003 bypass that problem? I thought that ports didn't need to match -- they may for HL (I don't know, but if that's the case you're plenty screwed), but in everyday usage, I thought that I could talk out of one port and have you listen from another.

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NS Game Officer. TF2 Admin. BF2 Admin / Scripter. PM with issues.
Tempus: Pokerface is nailing it right on the head. Everyone who is arguing against him is simply arguing against reality.
<anmuzi> it is not permitted to have privacy or anonymity
<LazyEye> yeah when I play on TG the server digs though my trash
Arm yourself with knowledge: TG NS TF2 BF2

Wyzcrak

If the server's on 27015, he's going to have to be on 27015 at some point for some duration of time. If his campus is blocking 27015 in either direction at all times, that shoots him down.

I'm curious to see if I can setup a VPN for him to the outside world, and I'm curious, if I *can*, to see what sort of performance expense that workaround costs him.

I'm still out of town with a broken car (damn ice), but I'll be working on this more next weekend (work will keep me busy all week once I return).

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Darkilla: In short, NS is pretty much really fast chess. With guns. Apophis: I haven't seen anyone say that SM's are better than non-SMs. Nordbomber: This is THE first server I've seen where either side can comeback from out of seemingly nowhere with the right teamwork. en4rcment: I have NEVER experienced the type of gameplay that I have found here. Nightly I am amazed at the personalities and gaming talent. Root: Welcome to TG. Feel free to punctuate your sentences correctly. Monkerz: Its gonna take all my skills to beat those boys off in the future.

Pokerface

Can the above statement be explained in fairly simple terms? Because to me, it would seem like two people holding a conversation where one person is writing and the other is speaking, or each person is speaking a language in which both are fluent, but not the same one. The "ports" are different, but the net effect is the same.

If it can't be explained simply, I'll accept that, but it confuses me that I can't just make an arbitrary socket on my computer speak.

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NS Game Officer. TF2 Admin. BF2 Admin / Scripter. PM with issues.
Tempus: Pokerface is nailing it right on the head. Everyone who is arguing against him is simply arguing against reality.
<anmuzi> it is not permitted to have privacy or anonymity
<LazyEye> yeah when I play on TG the server digs though my trash
Arm yourself with knowledge: TG NS TF2 BF2

zibalatz

If Wyz set up a tunnel on the tgns server that mirrored traffic from a non-standard HL port to the normal port, wouldn't this work? Wouldn't something like netcat serve this function?

Feanor would connect to the port on which netcat or some other program is running. This program would redirect all incoming and outgoing traffic to/from the port where the TGNS server is actually listening.

Note: I'm not super-skilled with networks and so on so maybe I've oversimplified the problem.

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zibalatz

My understanding of the problem is as follows:

- Machines on a network such as "The Internet" have an IP.
- Servers are programs that run on these machines and listen for and/or send traffic on specific ports. For example, web servers listen for requests from web surfers (i.e.: you, while browsing the web) and when they receive such requests they respond by sending back a webpage to you, the websurfer. You, the websurfer, connect to port 80 (the default port for HTTP) on the machine that the web server is running on. It is possible to run webservers on non-standard ports but you have to instruct your browser specifically to connect to said non-standard port. When you punch in, say, http://www.tacticalgamer.com/, to your browser, this means you are making a connection to port 80 on the machine running the web server software that hosts the www.tacticalgamer.com website. Note that machines can, of course, run multiple servers at once.
- TGNS is a HL mod server that runs on the standard port for HL, which is 27015.
- Feanor has an internet connection provided by a university. His university employs a firewall to be able to lock down traffic on certain ports and thus control the network traffic that enters the university's local network from the outside world.
- In particular, Feanor's university firewall blocks (at least) inbound traffic to port 27015, in an attempt to stop people from using the campus bandwidth for HL. They may also be blocking outbound traffic on port 27015 so as to prevent people at Feanor's university from running HL servers off of their network. So, although feanor can connect to the machine on which the HL server is running, he cannot connect to the specific port on which the server is listening, since it is listening on port 27015, which is the default port for HL servers.
- Feanor is able to connect to HL servers that are not running on the default port of 27015 since his university's firewall does not block traffic to/from that port.
- As a result, the suggestions provided thus far involve either changing the port that the TGNS servers runs on (not something I'd recommend) or providing a server running on a different, non-blocked port that redirects network traffic to the actual TGNS server. This second server would be connected to the internet outside of the reaches of Feanor's university firewall. My suggestion was to run this second server on the same machine that TGNS is running (since this already qualifies as a machine connected to the internet outside of the reaches of Feanor's university firewall). A port-redirector or tunnel program is generally very light, CPU-wise and would hardly contribute to the server's load.

Does that help explain things at all?

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ImAWuss

The VPN solution will definately work. I've done it here with a LAN HL server. I had 4 people on at one time. 1 was vpn, 2 were internet, and I was local. Works well, but it's just another process running on the box.

If I were you, Feanor, I would inquire as to why this port (Outgoing 27015) is blocked. Email your helpdesk, or IT Department. It might have been unintentionaly blocked by systems admins trying to block servers inside the network. Just a suggestion.

Feanor

I'm sure they blocked it intentionally. I'll vouch that there used to be many CS games on the LAN which are all gone now. In fact, there was an announcement at the time - about last year - not to use these kind of games. Used to have nice CS games like .. the max limit .. 16v16 games. Really cool, but annoyed the admins to no end

I thought someone said it would slow down things but if it just slows my (personal) connection to the server (usually I'm at 200-300 pingwise) then I certainly wouldn't mind as long as the game isn't slower - you wouldn't want that too

Just to clarify; the port I would then use to connect would not be 27015 .. but then something else, but a program switches the port and then connects to the game?

Interesting. I don't know if I could RUN a server, but on a PC it's useless anyway. Still..

Running a program on the TG server? That sounds fine to me
Just seems like a lot of work for one person. (Not objecting though, if you don't mind)

Damn system admins. Main thing they do is turn off the LAN servers and make things worse (slower) or cut off access outright during *maintanence* idiots.

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Wyzcrak

Feanor, what version of Windows is running on the workstation on which you play Natural Selection?

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Darkilla: In short, NS is pretty much really fast chess. With guns. Apophis: I haven't seen anyone say that SM's are better than non-SMs. Nordbomber: This is THE first server I've seen where either side can comeback from out of seemingly nowhere with the right teamwork. en4rcment: I have NEVER experienced the type of gameplay that I have found here. Nightly I am amazed at the personalities and gaming talent. Root: Welcome to TG. Feel free to punctuate your sentences correctly. Monkerz: Its gonna take all my skills to beat those boys off in the future.