Currently I am working on the debut game, The Ire Sequence, from my new development team, Integral Studios. This is a action-packed top-down 3d multiplayer space shooter. Up to 32 players can battle it out with a myriad of ships, races, weapons and plenty of game-types. Anyway, I recently have run in the problem of Firewalls and NAT tables. I cannot seem to figure out how to receive data from a server or client when I or another client is behind a firewall. I know some games get past this, but I am unaware of the method. I know that one way would be static addressing on the actual live server, but that is way too inefficient for gaming. There''s got to be a simple solution around this. I would greatly a appreciate some help with this one, as it is the last piece of the puzzle for the networking infrastructure before I throw it in a library. Thanks ~David M. Byttow www.integralstudios.com

If your game uses a port that is not any of the following
80,23,43,443
Then its either up to the routing device to open the port or you to allow a connection on one of those ports.

Or your proxy game must know how to request data though it the device. Typically proxy settings are up to the admin of the network. and its up to the user to know how to set it to work correctly.

Of course port 80 is http
443 is HTTPS
23 is ftp
43 is SMTP
6777 is IRC

but its up to the receiving process to handle that correctly. If you have a mail or webserver on the end of the IP then, it will not work correctly.

Usually it is common to use a very obscure port. something between 6778 - 28000. And up to the admin of the network to allow communication though that port. if it truely is a Firewall ,software or hardware implementation most have a http interface for the admin to make changes.

if its a proxy then most likely the use must know what the settings are to allow a request to get though it and back.

I thought 21 was FTP.

But yeah, it is a client issue. They''ll have to talk to whoever set up the firewall or NAT to figure out how to get through it.

Ben
http://therabbithole.redback.inficad.com

Well. What I am doing is giving the server port 4000(arbitrary) to listen on and 4001 as the foreign port (or clients listen port). Therefore I''m setting the reverse for the client.

Anyway, I figure that when I''m connected to a network (at work where I''m developing the game) which has a firewall setup and a NAT system, that when I send out data, the router automatically uses an open arbitrary port like, 7540 to actually send the data, so when the client gets it, he sees 7540 and sends it back to my xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:7540. Now, when the router gets this, the router is not gonna know what to do with that packet (without static addressing) so he kills it and I (behind the router) never see the packet. That''s the crazyness that I''m trying to solve. And I know there''s a way because when I am on the same computer behind the same firewall playing a game like Quake3 or Rune or something, I can connect to other people''s servers and play all day long (without setting any proxy settings or anything). So there''s gotta be something that I''m missing here.



~David M. Byttow
www.integralstudios.com