Multiplayer: Success hosting behind a firewall

[EatYerGreens]

Good news for would-be MP hosts.

I wanted to give MP a try for some time and finally set up an account last night. Advice from the player lobby was to turn my firewall off to make it work.

I wasn't happy about this and a few test attempts with VI granted 'Full Internet Access' in the basic Mcafee application settings proved this change was insufficient, resulting in 'out of synch' or crash to desktop problems just as deployment ended.

I asked if anyone knew about what port numbers to open in the firewall. This drew blanks from many but one player understood what I meant and directed me to totalwar.com for details. I had to create a user-ID, register, validate and so on, just to be able to read the multiplayer tech forum but I got what I wanted.

There is a sticky thread there with a title referring to port forwarding settings for hosting behind a router.

I tried setting up permissions for the same port numbers for both TCP/IP and UDP in Macafee (Personal Firewall Plus) advanced settings and am pleased to report that a 1 v 1 and a 2 v 1 match both worked without a hitch.

I am posting this here purely as a piece of good news. I will post the technical info and the port numbers in the Apothecary as soon as I can.

However, because somebody else did the leg-work in finding out what ports were in use and because they have posted in totalwar.com but, for whatever reason, have not also posted it here(*), I want to get them to confirm it's okay to simply copy their findings over to here first.

IMPORTANT
I disable XP SP2 firewall on my machine, to avoid conflicts with McAfee and general CPU/resource wastage from running both at once. Whilst it may be possible to tweak the XP firewall in a similar way, with knowledge of the port numbers, I can't vouch for the likelihood of success with it and am unfamiliar with its inner menus. I hope to post in Apothecary with step-by-step instructions and maybe screenshots, for McAfee.

XP firewall equivalents may follow but please bear with me. I need a patient amd willing volunteer in the MP lobby to actually test these things for real, before I post. That will have to wait for another session.


* I had done forum-searches in the Apothecary and Tech Library already but got 'sorry no matches found', for the word 'firewall'. This is very odd because I later chanced upon a thread with my exact search term in it. Someone else had asked the exact same question about firewall ports as I had but had also received no reply.

[CBR]

Firewalls can be annoying as some are not easy to host with. I had to to close down Zonealarm as just disabling it wasnt enough. With Norton I dont have to do anything as it allows hosting right away.


CBR

[EatYerGreens]

Hi CBR,

Sounds cool.

Unfortunately for me, my Mcafee subscription auto-renewed before I realised it was even due and I'm tied in for another year. (Might as well get my money's worth, eh?) However much I'd like to switch to Norton, I've no immediate plans to do so. I'm hoping the Mcsettings will be useful to someone out there.

Who knows, maybe XP SP2 firewall can be tweaked to get port permissions set up correctly. Current received wisdom is 'turn off the firewall' but I routinely got about 100 hits per hour on my machine, maybe 30,000 per month until I got more selective about what events to even bother logging, so I'm more than reluctant to take that route.

The Virus advisory notice had been unchanged for weeks but it changed to something about a high-risk worm, only a couple of days ago.

I'm glad that a moderator has replied. I wanted to collar one of you to ask about policy with regard to taking info from TW dot com and pasting it in here. I don't wish to cause any upsets and have asked permission in their forum before I go ahead with quoting the port numbers. Could be a day or three before they reply. The posts in question are from October '04 and the person I'm asking may not even be regular in that forum any more.

It would be nice to have this sorted just in time for the weekend but let's not push our luck. ;)

[CBR]

I have a list of ports but dont know if its all:

6667
3783
27900
28900
29900
29901
13139
6515
6500
MTW 18321
VI 18322

Both udp and tcp.


There is no problem with pasting info from .com. And especially as posts get deleted rather quickly at .com its better to copy/paste a post instead of just giving a link ~:)


CBR

[Jochi Khan]

You don't have to turn firewalls off in order to host games.

With Windows XP SP2 firewall, in exceptions, you can enable the game to allow you access to the internet.

With Zone Alarm, in the firewall settings. set both at Medium, this again allows you access to the internet. (safe for trusted sites)

Hope this is of help to you.

Jochi

[EatYerGreens]

Thanks for saving me the trouble, CBR.

Did you know I couldn't find anything like that amount of detail in the Apothecary?

I've got everything on that list *except* 18321/18322 yet it still worked, for some reason.

One slight complication was that I'd also opened the ports I use for FS9 multiplayer and didn't know if they helped or not. They aren't on your list so I can safely turn those off again.


@Jochi,

thanks for mentioning those as well. I had a feeling XP2 FW was good enough to be configuarable. I only have mine disabled to prevent clashes with McWall and duplicate CPU effort/resource use, if I have both of them trying to do the same job.

Confusingly, if I go into Control Panel, Security centre, the light is green and the sign says ON. But under advanced settings, the radio button is set for 'OFF (not recommended)'. So maybe the Security Centre detects a firewall is active, even if it's not the XP one.

McAfee firewalls internal Help instructions are good enough that I probably don't need to write up a step by step guide after all.

[ToranagaSama]

Firewalls can be annoying as some are not easy to host with. I had to to close down Zonealarm as just disabling it wasnt enough. With Norton I dont have to do anything as it allows hosting right away.


CBR


Re Norton, is that because you have "Automatic Program Control" turned On? Or, because you opened the Ports?

Automatic Program Control is On by Default, which allows ANY program to pass thru the Firewall. This is one of the issues regarding Norton. It s/b Off by Default.

Norton is a good firewall, but you really have to get under the hood to setup properly, once done its great; but the doing is a total PITA!! and the manual isn't that Novice friendly.

I just upgraded, and the POS didn't simply take my previous settings and implement them. No, I have to go thru the whole hassle again. Annoying! Guess I ought to make notes.

For the first time I just may give Zone Alarm a try.

[CBR]

Re Norton, is that because you have "Automatic Program Control" turned On? Or, because you opened the Ports?

Any new program that connects to the internet will cause Norton to ask me about allowing the program access. Maybe there are other firewalls that are better but to me it seems nice and simple.


CBR

[CBR]

Thanks for saving me the trouble, CBR.

Did you know I couldn't find anything like that amount of detail in the Apothecary?

I was checking out Apothecary today and couldnt find anything but searching for "ports" or "firewall" gave several hits when searching Jousting Fields instead.


CBR

[EatYerGreens]

I was checking out Apothecary today and couldnt find anything but searching for "ports" or "firewall" gave several hits when searching Jousting Fields instead.
CBR


Ah! I thought it belonged with 'techy stuff'.

In fact, I completely overlooked Jousting Fields. I assumed that was just for people arranging MP meets and so forth. Sometimes I think too logically.



Any new program that connects to the internet will cause Norton to ask me about allowing the program access. Maybe there are other firewalls that are better but to me it seems nice and simple.

McAfee has a similar feature to this. On the first occasion a prog does something with your connection, you get an alert. It doesn't so much pop-up but slides in from the lower right of the screen. The prog updated itself a few days ago and I've already spotted a new feature, which is an extra tickbox for 'Game Mode', which suppresses the alert messages so as not to interfere with fullscreen games. Apparently, after exiting the game, the alerts will be shown when back at the desktop.

At the alert, you can immediately block all access or grant just outbound access. To grant full access requires going to a list of application permissions in the submenus. However, this alone was not sufficient for normal play. When I joined games, I got CTDs just after deployment ended. Only after opening ports was I able to join without problems and also host as well.

[bretwalda]

I have a linksys router/firewall and I could not let mtw vi online hosting through. Finally I had to DMZ (demilitarized zone) my computer and worked. I just mustn't forget to close the router after the game is done...

[EatYerGreens]

Thread bumped for Arkell.

Windows XP Firewall :

Start|Control Panel|Security Centre

Under "Manage Security Settings for:"
click on Windows Firewall.

click on Second tab "Exceptions"

click on "Add Program"

Scroll Down list to relevant version of mtw.exe
(if you have dual installations, both icons will show and the VI version has the triangular-shaped icon)

Click Ok.

Exit out of security centre, connect to internet and fire up the game.

If there are any problems, you'll have noticed the button "Add ports" next to "Add programs". See the list of required ports further back in this thread.

Read the online help for the appropriate syntax for entering lists of single port numbers or ranges of port numbers.
The prompt has a radio button for TCP/UDP, so you may need to enter every port number twice over, once for TCP and again for UDP.

When done, Tick the relevant tickboxes on the Exceptions list for the items you've added.

I have Windows firewall disabled at the moment, so this is incidental, but I only have "Microsoft Direct Play8 Server" and MSN Messenger 6.2 ticked. The other items in the default have specialist uses and are best left closed unless you have a genuine purpose for them. Some are popular points to be 'probed' by hacking attacks.

Hope that helps.

[Jochi Khan]

An even quicker way........
Right click your internet connection icon on the task bar (looks like two monitors)...left click Change Windws Firewall Settings..click Exceptions and put a tick in the prog you want to allow access..click OK. All done ~;)

Remember to remove the tick when you have finished playing (hosting)

Jochi

[Alexanderofmacedon]

I hate firewalls with a vengence. My dad has me on some parental controls, and sometimes I feel like breaking my computer...

[Budwise]

Okay, I don't use virus software or firewalls. To be honest, I don't really care about attacks on my PC. I can always reformat and reinstall windows and my games so its not really a big deal. If I think I have a virus, I use an online free virus scan.


I hate firewalls with a vengence. My dad has me on some parental controls, and sometimes I feel like breaking my computer...

You have two options to fix your little problem, one - install a keylogger and don't let him know about it. Then screw up your system so he has to use his master password to fix the problem and that way you can look at the keylogger and find his password. THen use it and disable the firewall.

Or, just find out how he lock you out and uninstall the program "by mistake"

[EatYerGreens]

So if his dad happens to run a business using this (shared) PC and the messing around with system files, or subsequent virus attacks lose all his data, which he hasn't backed up properly for several weeks, 'cos he's been really busy lately, then you're willing to accept full responsibility for dishing out this kind of advice?

Also, if his dad runs the right kind of software on a daily basis, a keylogger will show up straight away, won't it?

My Firewall has blocked 20,947 attempted accesses in the past month and that's after I told it not to log the more routine kinds of events. Today's count is 429. I'm taking no chances. ~;)