The XMEN Clan Forums

<br>Hey guys,<br><br>I heard a rumour that a bunch of you have SMC Barricades. And I happen to have a problem, so I thought I'd stop by......<br><br>THE SIT<br>My brother has a barricade. My 2 brothers both use it as a LAN and to share their DSL connection. None of us are rocket scientists, but we're not bad with the tech talk.<br><br>THE PROB<br>We're trying to fire up Arcanum and BattleCom multiplayer, with their 2 computers and mine (far away cable modem connection). Unfortunately, we can't seem to get anything to work. They can get out on the internet, but direct connections don't seem to work. If they disconnect the Barricade, and one computer runs directly into the DSL modem, then we can get things running smoothly.<br><br>Arcanum uses the WON network. If I host a game, they can see it on the list, but when they try to connect it craps out. Vice versa for when one of them hosts; I can see but can't touch (at least I'm not paying $5 a beer).<br><br>THE FIX?<br>Well, that's why I'm here <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :) --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/intl/aenglish/im ... /smile.gif ALT=":)"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> My bro is talking some language neither one of us understands, asking about Trigger Ports or DMZ....... but we're a bit lost as to what to try. <br><br>Have any of you guys run into this problem, and would you be so kind as to point us in the right direction? <p>{BEE}King Friday[BE]<http://football261.fantasy.sportsline.c ... f><br>"Let us bathe in the blood of battle"<BR></p><i></i>

Port Forwarding and using the DMZ Host option on your router is a good place to start. The DMZ Host option will allow one PC on the network to be exposed to the internet, allowing you to connect to the host game. This, is not recommended however, because it only allows 1 PC to be on, and because you are now exposed to the Internet, and not behind your hardware firewall.<br><br>Port Forwarding, on the other hand, allows you to forward data thru the ports that Arcanum uses to allow both PC's to connect. You ste the Port ranges you want to forward to which IP's, and the Barricade will see the request, open those ports, and allow all 3 of you to play together. I had to do this so I could host Diablo 2 games via TCP/IP, and still let the 2nd PC on the network join in the fun. This method is safer than the DMZ Host option, but you'll still want to follow safe computing practices, and install a software Firewall on both systems as well. <p><map name="SHMAP"><area href="http://xmenclan.org" target="_blank" shape="rect" coords="169, 72, 193, 143"><area href="http://dragontalonmercs.com" target="_blank" shape="rect" coords="0, 78, 25, 141"><area href="http://pub1.ezboard.com/uspinninghat.sh ... anguage=EN" target="_blank" shape="rect" coords="22, 3, 172, 30"></map><img border="0" src="http://www.xmenclan.org/sh3d2.gif" usemap="#SHMAP" width="194" height="144"> <br>Why Do I always Die?!?!</p><i></i>

heh. You wouldn't be the first with this prob, KF. It's not a Barricade problem, it's a firewall/NAT problem. Since all the residential broadband gateways on the market use this technology or one similar, you can't just replace the hardware for a fix.<br><br>Here's the deal. The Barricade takes one IP address, and hands out its own IP addresses to computers inside the firewall. Usually the inside ones are 192.168.xxx.xxx, or 10.xxx.xxx.xxx. Anyway, what happens is that each packet of information coming from outside is wrapped up by the router into a packet going to one of the computers inside. Every packet from one of the internal computers going out is wrapped similarly. <br><br>The DMZ that your brother's talking about is the easy way out - it opens ALL ports to go directly to the specified machine. When you do this you sacrifice any and all protections that the firewall might offer you, and you may even prevent the other machine from accessing the 'net.<br><br>One of the ways in which the incoming packets are distinguished by the router as belonging to one system or another is the destination 'port' assigned to the packet. These routers basically mess with the port assignments to indicate where a packet is supposed to go on its internal network, and they do this when the packet goes out and undo it when a packet comes in.<br><br>For most things, like surfing or downloading, this works fine. But some things don't tolerate having their port assignments mucked up. Like your game. So that's why you're having this problem.<br><br>Here's my suggestion for a solution. <br><br>Step 1: The game will need to be served on one of the computers inside the Barricade. (This is actually the last step chronologically, but bear with me.)<br>Step 2: You'll need to find out what ports are used by the program(s) you're trying to run. You can usually find this info on their website, but sometimes it's in the manual or in the "readme" file. Then you need to go into the Barricade configuration and set up those ports to go directly to the machine that will serve the game. The port(s) you need to configure may be just a couple, or it may be a range (like 2000-2999), or multiple combinations of each. The Barricade should be able to handle it; if you can't find the settings then you may need to look into a FlashROM update. <p><img height=150 width=115 src=http://www.xmenclan.org/xmengambit.gif border=0 align=left>XMEN member<br>Card-carrying DTM<br>OKL Fish-napper<br><br><br>Though a program be but three lines long,<br> someday it will have to be maintained.<br> <i>- The Tao of Programming</i><br>Life is complex; it consists of real and imaginary parts.</p><i></i>

To expand on Gambit's idea here, is that You would connect to the hosting machine the normal way, but the other machine would connect to the Local IP of the machine hosting the server. A Simple Graphic:<br><br><!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://www.theta_mercenaries.homestead.com/files/LAN-Pic.gif"><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><br>So, the dotted line would be where the non-host PC would connect to thru the router. Does that make sens to you? <p><map name="SHMAP"><area href="http://xmenclan.org" target="_blank" shape="rect" coords="169, 72, 193, 143"><area href="http://dragontalonmercs.com" target="_blank" shape="rect" coords="0, 78, 25, 141"><area href="http://pub1.ezboard.com/uspinninghat.sh ... anguage=EN" target="_blank" shape="rect" coords="22, 3, 172, 30"></map><img border="0" src="http://www.xmenclan.org/sh3d2.gif" usemap="#SHMAP" width="194" height="144"> <br>Why Do I always Die?!?!</p><i></i>

Might make more sense if the dotted line actually went TO (or through) the router, SH. Don't let 'em think that you actually run another cable. <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START ;) --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/intl/aenglish/im ... s/wink.gif ALT=";)"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <p><img height=150 width=115 src=http://www.xmenclan.org/xmengambit.gif border=0 align=left>XMEN member<br>Card-carrying DTM<br>OKL Fish-napper<br><br><br>Though a program be but three lines long,<br> someday it will have to be maintained.<br> <i>- The Tao of Programming</i><br>Life is complex; it consists of real and imaginary parts.</p><i></i>

It was a simple graphic... lots of things happening at once.. what can I say? <p><map name="SHMAP"><area href="http://xmenclan.org" target="_blank" shape="rect" coords="169, 72, 193, 143"><area href="http://dragontalonmercs.com" target="_blank" shape="rect" coords="0, 78, 25, 141"><area href="http://pub1.ezboard.com/uspinninghat.sh ... anguage=EN" target="_blank" shape="rect" coords="22, 3, 172, 30"></map><img border="0" src="http://www.xmenclan.org/sh3d2.gif" usemap="#SHMAP" width="194" height="144"> <br>Why Do I always Die?!?!</p><i></i>

Thanks very much for the help guys. We're on hold right now.<br><br>We did have some limited success getting connected to a couple games. I think Arcanum has a sub-par multiplayer system.<br><br>Anyway, we'll be back up trying this again in a week. Between then & now my hard drive failed. I got the RMA replacement this week. <br><br>BTW, Maxtor customer service is pretty sweet. My Quantum is 15 months old, somehow still in warranty, and they actually shipped me the replacement in 2 days. I now have a full month to ship back the RMA, at no charge except the shipping. Sweet. <p></p><i></i>

Damn these multiple IDs...... True N0rth is me. <p>{BEE}King Friday[BE]<http://football261.fantasy.sportsline.c ... f><br>"Let us bathe in the blood of battle"<BR></p><i></i>