What route to take?

[RazielDemon]

Ok, it has come to my attention that I have a router between my ADSL connection and my PC.

This is apparently a problem, cause it's stopping me from playing a game, namely Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries, online.

I'm told there are such things as 'ports' that can be opened. The question is, how? I'm pretty sure that's what I need to do, but, as I said, I have no clue how.


My router is called Speed Touch, made by Alcatel.

I run win XP professional edition, if you want I can put up my DirectX diag file, if that'll help.

[Bentusi]

you need to figure out a list of the ports you need to open and configure your router to do it.

Step by step (though I don't know your router so I can't get specifics):
1) Access Router
2) Find the port opening program on the router
3) Input the ports you want open, don't forget to specificy to YOUR computers IP address.
4) Apply

Do that and it should work.

[Wicksy]

Alcatel Speed Touch is an ADSL modem as far as I'm aware. It's not a router.

Demon, you'll need to post to tell us exactly what equipment is plugged in to what.

If I'm guessing right, you have a little device plugged into the phone socket. That's the ADSL modem. It has only 1 other cable coming out of it that either plugs directly into the PC or into another little box.

If you have another little box, or the modem has several ports in it (and not just a single cable), then you have a router. If not then you have just an ADSL modem plugged straight into PC.

If you have a router, I'd need to know what make/model it is before I can help.

Do you have a firewall running on your PC (Zonealarm/Norton Internet Firewall/something else) ?


EDIT: my apologies Demon. It seems you can get Speedtouch routers.
Documentation for all models is here (http://www.speedtouchdsl.com/support.htm)

[RazielDemon]

Yeah you're right Wicksy, that's the modem, not the router. It's got multiple connections to the different PC's, so supposedly it's a router/modem combination.

Thanks for the linky, but the information they make available is rather limited.

I have the Zonealarm firewall, but it seems to time out my connection after a certain ammount of time for some reason, it just stops all internet traffic dead in its tracks, so I usualy turn it off.

My problem is finding the port opening program, I can find the router home page thingy in IE, but the only thing that comes close is the NAPT 'Network Acces and Port Translation' page in it. That will let me add something with an 'inside IP', 'Outside IP', 'Inside port' and 'Outside port'. That's the sole thing with ports I can find, and that might be what I need, but I don't know.


Also, my mother is scared to death that opening a port is going to make her PC a hacker magnet, as she apparently has strictly confidential documents on it or something (yeah right), and she's on the same connection. Any ideas as to if there are any dangers of allowing external users acces to your PC by opening ports or is she just suffering from openportophobia?


Anyways, I'm Raziel btw, Demon is my clan tag :)

There is a fella on the board called just Demon though, but that isn't me ;)

[Wicksy]

Yeah you're right Wicksy, that's the modem, not the router. It's got multiple connections to the different PC's, so supposedly it's a router/modem combination.
Correct, it's a modem/router/NAPT (network address & port translation) device. The NAPT allows you to use the single "public" IP address given to you by your ISP to connect several PC's, which are using the "private" address ranges 192.168.x.x or 10.0.x.x . Effectively you are connecting multiple PC's to the Internet using only a single (ISP-assigned) IP address.

I have the Zonealarm firewall, but it seems to time out my connection after a certain ammount of time for some reason, it just stops all internet traffic dead in its tracks, so I usualy turn it off.
That's weird. You could try uninstalling/reinstalling the latest version of Zonealarm. Also make sure you've disabled the crappy Windows firewall.

Technically, the NAPT also acts as a firewall as it stops incoming packets reaching your PC unless you explicitly tell it to by setting up the port forwarding in the router's web interface. However this doesn't tell you when nasties on your PC are trying to send packets out, which Zonealarm does. Personally I'm behind a NAPT and I don't use a firewall on my PC's. I've never had a problem but that doesn't mean I won't. I'd still recommend leaving Zonealarm on the PC's if you can.

If you're a bit unsure what I'm talking about, here's a good plain-english article about what a NAPT is and what it does:
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/nat.htm


I can find the router home page thingy in IE, but the only thing that comes close is the NAPT 'Network Acces and Port Translation' page in it. That will let me add something with an 'inside IP', 'Outside IP', 'Inside port' and 'Outside port'. That's the sole thing with ports I can find, and that might be what I need, but I don't know.
That's exactly what you're looking for :)
I'm not familiar with the specifics of that particular web interface, but what you need to do is forward:

Outside IP: ALL (ie. packets coming from anyone on the external Internet)
Outside port: X (ie. packets destined for port X)
to
Inside IP: your PC's IP address (get this by typing IPCONFIG at the command prompt. It'll be 192.168.x.x or 10.0.x.x)
Inside port: X

Where X is the port number you need to forward to make Mechwarrior work.
You should be able to set up multiple forwards, so if MW uses say 3 ports to work properly, you can set up rules similar to the above for all 3 ports (just replace X with Y or Z).

Also, my mother is scared to death that opening a port is going to make her PC a hacker magnet, as she apparently has strictly confidential documents on it or something (yeah right), and she's on the same connection. Any ideas as to if there are any dangers of allowing external users acces to your PC by opening ports or is she just suffering from openportophobia?
"Forwarding" the port to YOUR PC means that incoming packets for that port will be routed to your PC only. They won't affect your mum's PC at all.
Bear in mind though that you are exposing YOUR PC directly to the Internet (on those ports that you open) without firewall protection. That can be a threat - the level of threat depending on which ports you've forwarded and which applications you run that may use that port. Generally port numbers above 1024 are reasonably safe, but again, its better to use Zonealarm to be on the safe side.

Anyways, I'm Raziel btw, Demon is my clan tag :)
Ah, ok. Soz :)


Hope that helps! If you have any more q's then just ask!

[Wicksy]

I've just had a thought.

I'm assuming that your PC's use DHCP to get private IP addresses from the router. In which case whenever you turn your PC on, you could end up with a different private IP address each time (although that's unlikely if you use your PC every day, since the router will 'remember' which IP address it gave your PC within the last 24 hours. If it sees your PC again within 24 hours it'll give it the same IP address as it did the last time).

But there is a chance that the PC's IP addresses can change. What this means is that you should give all PC's on your network static IP addresses - including your mum's.

First let's make sure you're getting your IP address by DHCP. Go to command prompt, type IPCONFIG /ALL
You'll get something like:

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . :

Physical Address. . . . . . . . . :
Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.254
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.254

The bold bit ... does yours say Yes or No?

[RazielDemon]

Thank you thank you :)

Your info has been realy realy helpfull so far, I'll burn the DHCP bridge when I come to it, but I'm pretty sure I've got a static IP ;)



So... what're ya doin here anyways? Want to join TLSC or just ramblin around the forum?

I'm happy you're here in any case, but I'm just curious :)

[RazielDemon]

Ok, now the problem of opening a range of ports, say 2300 to 2400, would I have to fill in the entire sequence of separate ports or is there any way to open 2300 through 2400 in one go? just typing 2300-2400 in inside and outside port doesn't work