Give a reason to open SOD ports at my school

naoo

Dalayan Beginner
Ok, so I e-mailed the admin of my school to open the port thats used in SOD. Which are the following:

UDP 5997
UDP 9000
UDP 7770-7794, 7950-8091

The admin asked me for a my reason of this request. What should I tell him?

(so I'm asking is there any legit reason I can give?)
 
I used to carry my laptop since we have campus wide wireless, and that works. But It's a hassle to carry it all day long to class... Come on! work around ... =_=
I should've asked this before my last year of college, lol.
 
Not really. The only reason I can think of is that you video conference through an older H323 device like a TANDBERG. These basically require(d?) that ports 2500 - @10000 be open to work, but the likely hood of your needing such access is pretty slim. They were pretty expensive new and I've never seen one installed outside of DoD facilities.

However, there were some roll your own versions used by Universities like;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Gatekeeper

But these actually had a better port usage design implementation then TANDBERG, which I don't remember. TANDBERG was also bought by CISCO and port usage redesigned to be more rational. Though its still a big spread and almost impossible to firewall without a proxy.

Its interesting that they filter your dorm room but not the wireless network. Means they don't want you running torrents, since they don't care about wireless.
 
Tell them you do tech support for a biz your close friend or a parent runs, Tell them they have that port range set on vnc and that you need access to these ports so you can keep generating the little money they bring in


~~edit if they ask why theres multiple port tell them each computer in the biz runs vnc on a diffrent port

(Generate a fake list if you feel such a need)


~~~Solaom a frickin druid
 
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Do you work for the school or do you just attend it?

If you just attend it, ask why they block out those ports in the first place. You're paying for internet access as a student, aren't you? Why would a college limit students to selected ports?
 
if this does not work, is there a bypass that could work? Some of you seem really techy, hehe.
 
Well, you could ssh tunnel. However you'd need an intermediary, or an alternate way you could use like a socks or something like that, cuz you won't be able to make the connection yourself. Like say you connect your dorm pc to the one at home, that kind of deal. Create the ssh connection, then have that one connect to here. It'll be encrypted. So they could see a large amount of data going through, but won't be able to tell what it is.

This however can get you in alot of shit, in various ways. For the socks way, the owner of whatever server you use is going to be getting additional costs in bandwidth, this will probably not please them, so your chances of finding an open one for gaming are fucking sliiiiimmmm. For the ssh tunneling, IT departments tend to frown on that, even if they are willing to unblock them, because you were a dick and didnt just ask. I would suggest however calling from a public campus phone and not giving a name if possible when you're asking though. Just in case you decide to go the sneaky route later on. But its a bit late for that. Really I'd just say I play a game with friends of mine back home, and it's blocked here, and I would like to be able to play it. Simple as that, though I'd add in the friends back home part even if it weren't true. A little se never hurt anyone..much.
 
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VNC is a tcp connection, not udp, and very few people use it off the default ports 5900 (server) and 5901 (display)

ssh forwarding would work, but its not a recommendation I would make to anyone I didn't know. He will need to do some research and set up and my experience is: people are lazy.

However, if he just used it for SoD, I doubt the tech department would care. The game's client server connection is very latent. I average under 1k a sec with two clients running meaning they don't really check up with each other that much. Also regarding ssh, it's probably open already. He can check by running cmd then telnet 'some public ssh server' 22 and get a response that looks like this if successful;

telnet 0.0.0.0 22
Trying 0.0.0.0...
Connected to 0.0.0.0.
Escape character is '^]'.
"Some SSH version banner"

And a timeout or reject if blocked.
 
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any reasons behind opening any udp port wont due imo, to many things can happen though udp pings witch can lead to udp attack on an ip adress, torrent clients need udp to update information to server, and gaming. now gaming is the lesser of 3 evils as far as bandwidth is concerned like since mmo gaming i dont think has ever gone above 20kbps and sod's client is like 3-10kbps
 
most likely the IT guys are wow nerds anyway, you should just be honest and tell them you want to play an online game there. it would be really weird for you not to be able to play a game at a university you are paying to attend.

he's probably just asking to make sure you're not trying to torrent a bunch of stuff
 
I'd be honest. If they open them, great. If not, it's better than risking getting caught doing something against school policy. Your degree could be on the line.
 
most likely the IT guys are wow nerds anyway, you should just be honest and tell them you want to play an online game there...

This.

And, use it to your advantage! Tell them you want to open the ports to play SoD, and point them to the website, tell them to check it out, too. Strike up a little gaming convo. Work'em.
 
The fact that they are asking you suggests they are open to it. Be honest with them. Like someone above alluded to, it could cost you dearly.

When any of my users ask me for something a little out of the box, I summarily answer no. If they persist, I tell them to have their supervisor request it, then a log of their Internet activity suspiciously ends up in their boss's inbox before they can even get back to their desk. Yeah, it might be altered a little bit, but it tends to get the big-wigs attention when someone has nambla.org in the list of "sites most frequently visited".

Yeah, BOFH=me.
 
Tell them it's to all you and your friends to play this game, and that you will spend lots of time playing this game. Therefore, your will fail your classes, and have to retake them, staying in school for longer. This of course will mean more income for the school! How can they argue with making money for the school?
 
Hi to all :)
I used to use HTTP tunnel (.com)! when I worked in the bank. It was easy to set up and $few/month for high speed. Worked well straight out over :80.
Found this for you on google:
http://www.twock.com/java/cubehub/axlrod/
With any luck there will be so much stuff flying out over :80 no one will ever notice!
br
 
They haven't replied, so I believe I'll just be using my laptop on wireless to play for now. Thanks for all the help.
 
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