Getting games to work through the router....

[Joshie the CK]

Just wondering how I can set up the router so that I can play games on my windows box, over DSL. :-)
(Specifically, Half-Life, and Total Annihilation.)

Just curious if it's possible (it must be!) and how to do it..

Still trying to understand this ipchains bit... For some reason it makes an unusually low ammount of sense to me... :-\

[neffu]

Assumming you're using linux with IPCHAINS as your router, you have two options:
1.)Place your windows gaming box outside your protected network in a separate DMZ (demilitarized zone) network that is connected directly to the internet.
2.)Find out the port used to game over the network and open up that port on your router and forward the packets to your windows gaming box.

Here is a site that explains how to do the second option using IPCHAINS and PORTFORWARDING: http://www.fandelem.com/nhf-5.html#ss5.3

[Joshie the CK]

Hmm...
Well a seperate network is out of the question.. :(
Well phooey then... Guess I'll go hunt down port numbers...

[Joshie the CK]

Well since nobody I've been able to find really knows an easy way to do this, I guess I'll just have to hack up a script that actually sets the firewall/router to allow/forward everything, so I can turn that on while I'm playing, and then back off when I'm done...
SHOULD work, right?

Or wait, no... Because packets coming back STILL wouldn't know to get forwarded to my windows box, would they?
::sighs::

I gotta get me a book on this whole router concept... It's one of the few things I just don't understand well...
Anybody know any good ones? :D

[sfam]

Originally posted by Joshie the CK:
...packets coming back STILL wouldn't know to get forwarded to my windows box, would they?


Yes, they would. It is very unsecure and should not be done if you care at all about security, but you could write a script with just a few commands in it to set up the masquerading and set all the policies to allow all traffic for gaming and then run your real script when you're done playing to bring the firewall back up.

If you wanted to do this the commands could be as simple as the following:

/sbin/ipchains -F
/sbin/ipchains -X
/sbin/ipchains -P input ACCEPT
/sbin/ipchains -P output ACCEPT
/sbin/ipchains -P forward ACCEPT
/sbin/ipchains -a forward -i eth0 -s 192.168.0.0/24 -d 0/0 -j MASQ

This assumes that your outside interface is the first NIC in the system, and your internal addresses are in the 192.168.0 network with a netmask of 255.255.255.0

This really is a bad idea, though, as it leaves your box open to any and everything. But if you just can't wait to play your games till you can learn to set up a proper firewall then it will work this way.

A good book on the subject would be "Linux Firewalls" by Robert L. Ziegler. Anything by O'Reilley Press is always a good choice as well.

Hope this helps you.

[Joshie the CK]

Yeah, I didn't really want to bring the whole firewall down...
But since nobody's quite sure about the ports a couple of the games I play use... :\

Oh well... School starts again anyway, who has time for games anymore.... Guess I'll grab some books so I can figure it out for summer...
heh

[sfam]

Originally posted by Joshie the CK:
...since nobody's quite sure about the ports a couple of the games I play use... :\


Well, if you mean that no one knows the ports simply because they haven't posted them to this thread then I think you expect too much of others. If you mean that you can't find the information anywhere then I think you need to start using a different search engine.

Half-life 27005:27015
TA 9110:9113

I'm not going to guarantee either of those will work, as I don't play either of those games, they are just ports I found on the net. I also found lots of mentions of trouble getting TA to work behind a masq'd machine, but you shouldn't let that discourage you. Just don't be surprised if it doesn't work right off.

Last note, those ports above are udp ports, not tcp ones.

Good luck

[Joshie the CK]

::grins::
No, I wasn't expecting everyone here to know off the top of their head... I've been asking around on a couple other forums as well. Forums FOR the games...