Upon my return to University I have unfortunately found that all internet gaming is blocked. This is a long shot but I was just wondering if there was any way around this at all as im having serious withdrawls with no lfs to play

I guess the uni blocks specific ports, I put the question to all techys out there "is there any way to test this and/or would a workaround be possible?"

My connection is standard nic plugged directly into the Uni halls of residence network and I guess goes through the uni web server which must be doing the unthinkable and stopping me playing lfs

I have a feeling there isnt a way round and thanks in advance to anyone who can put me straight

Quote from hardcoreobscure :

I have a feeling there isnt a way round and thanks in advance to anyone who can put me straight

If you have an server / computer you can control on the outside, you could tunnel to that, ensuring the ports are open, and play. Although doing this will give you a significant additional overhead.

The alternative is speaking nicely to you network administrator (I'll tell you now, unless you're really nice, it ain't gonna happen considering LFS uses "high" ports commonly associated with other nefarious uses).

I have spoken to the admin staff at Uni and they arent budging

With the tunneling idea, I guess I would need a server setup on an outside network connected through a different network/connection. I then connect to this server through another port (hopefully not blocked by my network) and relay (is that the right word?) the data pulled from lfs to the server through this port?

Ill have a search around but would it be possible for you to explain how I could tunnel to this server or perhaps point me to somewhere that will explain as i am not familiar with this concept, thanks

VPN would probably be your best bet, but having applied a little more brain power than was available earlier, its occured to me that solution wouldn't work either. Well.. highly unlikely. Which leaves the tunnel and proxy option. Unfortunately LFS doesn't support the usual proxies (socks, etc.) and I dont know of any LFS specific proxy atm

i never tried but i once saw this program and was always curious if it would work, give it a try

I had the same problem a couple of years ago. The only port we had open was 8080 TCP. After fiddling around with lots of tools I managed to unlock and play LFS online. When LFS started using UDP packets for online play it was all over though. But maybe the tools have improved since then so you might have a chance.

Anyway these are the names of the tools that are still in my "Tunnelling" folder on my HD:

HTTP-Tunnel
Socks2Http
SocksCap
SSHProxy

I think the Socks thingy was for filesharing not LFS though. Good luck!

Cheers for the replies guys...

@the_angry_angel

Thanks for the use of your brainpower but it does seem likely that im not gonna be able to get around this. Oh well ill have to wait for the summer break to play online again (Ill try and look at it as a mid-year christmas present)

@barroso

I downloaded the program you mention but looking through the readme it seems that its primary purpose is to get around blocked IP's

@J.B.

Cheers for the info, its a bit late now need some sleep but ill definately have a search for the programs you mentioned and post again when I find out any more info

I have the exact same situation, but I am not fussed about playing online - I just need to activate my copy.
Is there any way I can activate it?
I just get a "unable to connect to master server" message when I try to unlock at the moment.

You can unlock on port 80. IIRC you have to edit the config file manually to do so.

Quote from Bob Smith :

You can unlock on port 80. IIRC you have to edit the config file manually to do so.

Brilliant!

How do I do this, please?

Set "Port 80 0" to "Port 80 1" in cfg.txt.

Open cfg.txt in LFS root folder. Search for the string "Port 80". It should have the number 0 after it. Change that 0 to a 1.

Edit: Argh, too slow.

Doesn't work!

Did as you said, didn't work, so rebooted, still no luck.

Changed all instances of port 63392 to 80, rebooted again, still nothing!

Any other ideas?

Yah pray to the LFS lords

Network admins! They get everywhere!

Paranoia is no substitute for knowledge. You should not be forced to compromise your legitimate activities because of their failure or inability to distinguish between your use and someone else's misuse.

Maybe you could take your box to the college network admins, and show them what you want to do. Tell them they can be there and watch you unlock LFS (as long as they don't look at your password).

probably not the right place to ask, and I probably won't get an answer, but what are the nefarious uses of these high ports? I know next to nothing about networking and I'm curious.

anything from P2P (like Limewire, Kazaa, BitTorrent etc) (well, the standard ports - any P2P'er worth his salt changes the ports as some ISP's throttle em)

Quote from hardcoreobscure :

Upon my return to University I have unfortunately found that all internet gaming is blocked. This is a long shot but I was just wondering if there was any way around this at all as im having serious withdrawls with no lfs to play

I guess the uni blocks specific ports, I put the question to all techys out there "is there any way to test this and/or would a workaround be possible?"

My connection is standard nic plugged directly into the Uni halls of residence network and I guess goes through the uni web server which must be doing the unthinkable and stopping me playing lfs

I have a feeling there isnt a way round and thanks in advance to anyone who can put me straight

Its a shame that universities are doing this and it sort of sums society up as whole! We dont agree so just ban it. Just out of interest what uni is this? I reckon it can be done but you may have to forfeit your degree researching it

This is really getting to me now! All I want to do is race the BF1, on single player!

But I can't register!!!!!!



Anyone had that port 80 thing actually work?

And any other ideas?

My uni has the same policy as the OPs, that's at Newcastle.

EDIT: Long shot, but maybe IE doesn't use port 80 here? Can I use any port other than port 80 or 63392 for lfs?

Newcastle Uni? Which halls are you at, I live only a 10 minute walk from some of their halls. Could always bring yer box round if you can't get it to work otherwise. At least you're not in Northumbria halls, they don't even have internet in most of the halls.

I'm at Marris House, which is on Richardson Road, by their sports centre.
Right by the hospital if that helps more.

If it's on the same side of the Uni as you, I'd happily buy you a few beers in return for using your connection to register!

Presuming that Derby is your uni then I'm afraid there's very little you can do. I've seen no end of threads on the UDSU boards moaning about the impossibility of gaming on the halls/uni network, and no end of work-arounds tried and failed. The answer is always the same - the network admins err on the side of caution and try to make everything as watertight as possible. Until you get out of halls and into your own place I'm afraid it's not going to be possible for you to play.

Yeah im at Derby and your right about it being watertight im just gonna have to put up with no lfs until the summer break