Eircoms router./modem thing. (cayman 3300)

Mutant_Fruit

I was over trying to troubleshoot Norton internet firewall (shudder) for my friend, as he couldn't connect to any game servers, and i noticed his internal IP is different to his external one.

He has Eircom broadband, so i presume the eircom "modem" is more than just a modem, its probaly a firewall/nat yokey too.

My question is, how do i access this box (from his computer) to open ports for various games/programs.

Frank Grimes

Put the IP into a web browser. 192.168.1.254 is the default I think.

tuxy

http://192.168.1.254/
go to expert mode configure advanced pinholes
there you can add ports to open
however you only have to open ports to run servers and some p2p apps need them open
you dont need to opne ports to play games
imo he dosnt need norton firewall as the pc will be secure enough with just the netopia

Mutant_Fruit

Well, even for those of you who have hardware firewalls, i'd still recommend a basic software one. For the simple reason that you can get per-application access rules, which can be very handy.

Thanks for the help though, i'll get him to do that, and if he can't, i'll have to head over again and see what he's broken this time.

Ripwave

Originally posted by Mutant_Fruit
Well, even for those of you who have hardware firewalls, i'd still recommend a basic software one. For the simple reason that you can get per-application access rules, which can be very handy.

Sure they can. And if your friend could figure out how to use them, he probably wouldn't have to call you over to help him get NIS working in the first place.

(No offense meant, Mutant. But the non technical user doesn't want to be asked whether this application or that application or the other application can make inbound or outbound connections. And even if they want to be asked, they don't know the answers. So they either turn the notifications off, and allow everything that wants to to access the internet, or they disable the firewall altogether. Either way, they end up with no more protection than their router should provide).

By the way, does anyone know if the Cayman from eircom or the Prestige from IOL support UPnP, so that applications can set up their own "pinholes"?

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/columns/bowman/december24.asp

Mutant_Fruit

Well, i find that a software app is 10x better than a hardware firewall for the non-technically minded, for one simple reason.

If you want to use bittorrent (or whatever internet app of choice) with a software firewall, you only get asked once whether you want to allow it access, so the first time you run the program, you click "create permanent rule" and "allow".

Takes about 10 seconds.

But for a hardware firewall/nat/router thingy, for each app you have to check the manual, find out what ports the app requires, whether its TCP or UDP, then find out whether it needs to take incoming connections, or just make outgoing connections. Then you have to open the router control panel and insert new settings, and hen double check them to make sure you didnt make a mistake.

And then if you're really unlucky you have to reopen the router control panel, and find out where you went wrong.

Total time: 1-2 minutes per app, depending on documentation.

Obviously a software firewall by itself is 10x easier than a hardware firewall. And as lon as you follow the simple rule "if you don't know what it is, deny it and see if anything broke" you'll be grand.