Configuring Routers/Firewalls/Proxies
DisclaimerHaxial is NOT the company that made your router/firewall software/hardware! It is NOT Haxial's responsibility to help you work out how to use equipment produced by other companies. If you need help with your router/firewall, then you should contact the company that made it, not Haxial. You should also read any documentation/manuals that came with your router/firewall. However, despite this, Haxial Support is providing some information about configuring third-party routers/firewalls. Hopefully you will find this helpful, but remember, it is NOT Haxial's responsibility to provide technical support for products produced by other companies.
Firewalls at Corporate or Educational InstitutionsThe information on this page explains how to configure home or small business routers/firewalls. This usually means a situation where YOU are the owner of the router/firewall, or at the very least you are authorized to make changes to it. On the other hand, if your problem is that you are accessing the Internet at work via a corporate firewall, or if you are accessing the Internet at an educational institution such as a university, then you will probably be unable to follow these instructions because the company or university probably does not allow you to make changes to their firewall. In this case, you will need to contact the Network Administrator person at your work/university/institution and explain to them that you need to be able to use this particular Haxial program, and ask them to configure the firewall accordingly to make you authorized to use the program.
Description of the ProblemVarious programs (such as the Haxial products listed following) require the ability to receive incoming connections. An incoming connection is when someone on the Internet attempts to connect to your computer, as opposed to an outgoing connection when you attempt to connect to someone else. For example, when you are browsing the web, you are making outgoing connections on your computer. There is a server computer somewhere that hosts the website and responds to your requests, and it receives your connection as an incoming connection. The problem is that some people use routers or firewalls or proxies or internet sharing products, and by default these usually block incoming connections, meaning that the program you are trying to use never receives the data to know that someone is trying to connect to it. Sometimes the problem is described in relation to "Network Address Translation" (NAT), which is the technical name for the method which routers use to share 1 IP address amongst multiple computers.
The SolutionThe solution is simply stated -- you must configure your router/firewall to allow incoming connections for the particular program that you are trying to use. Unfortunately, there is not a standard way of doing this -- each company that manufactures a router/firewall product has their own unique way of doing things, and in some cases they also use differing terminology to describe the same thing, so again you should consult the documentation that came with your router/firewall. Competently designed routers usually describe this configuration option as "port forwarding" or "port mapping". Other routers may describe it using some other ambiguous name.
When port forwarding is enabled, when the router detects an incoming connection on a certain port number, it forwards it to the computer on the LAN (your network) which you specified. For example, if 10700 is the port number for Haxial KDX Server, then you would configure the port forwarding in your router to forward incoming connections on port 10700 to the computer where the KDX Server program is running. It is a simple concept to understand -- the incoming connection is simply forwarded/redirected/sent to the computer of your choice.
The above is what you need to do, but ofcourse the exact instructions will vary depending on what product(s) you are using as your router/firewall. For more information, consult the documentation that came with your router/firewall. Haxial also has some specific instructions following.
Port numbers are used to distinguish between different programs running on the same computer. Thus you will need the following information when configuring your router/firewall. The following port numbers are correct unless you changed the port number of the program using Settings.
Addresses Beginning With 192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.xNote that you cannot tell someone on the Internet to connect to you using an address that begins with 192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x because this is the private LAN address of your computer. You need to tell them your public/real IP address instead, which can be obtained from your router or by using Haxial's What Is My IP Address? webpage.
Multiple Copies Of KDX ClientAre you running multiple copies of KDX Client? For example, a copy on each of your computers? Assuming you are using NAT (all your computers share the 1 public/real IP address), then if you want DCC to work with every computer, you will need to give each copy of KDX Client a different/unique DCC port number. Go into KDX Settings, and look for the place where the DCC port number is specified. Unless you changed it, it will be set to the default number of 10600. So go to each copy of KDX on each computer and set a different port number. For example, set your first computer to 10600, your second computer to 10601, your third computer to 10602, and so forth. Done? Good. Now you need to configure your router. If your router supports Universal Plug & Play (UPnP), then you can use the UPnP option in KDX to do it automatically. If that does not work, you will need to configure your router manually. You will need to tell your router about all 3 computers (or however many you have). For example, configure port 10600 to be mapped to 192.168.0.1 (or whatever the internal address of your first computer is). And then configure port 10601 to be mapped to whatever the internal address of your second computer is, and so forth. Note: For correct operation, do not attempt fancy tricks like using a different external number and internal number (for example, external port 10603 mapped to internal 192.168.0.3:10600). If you do this, it will result in the wrong port number being sent to KDX Server and then DCC will not always work. The external port must be the same as the internal port which must be set in KDX Settings. Your router might not even give you this choice -- if it gives you only the 1 port number setting, that is good.
Built-in Firewalls in the OSMS Windows XP and MacOS X include an option to enable a software-only firewall that is built into the operating system. Did you enable this firewall? If you did, then if you want other people on the internet to be able to connect to you, then you must either disable the firewall OR configure it to allow incoming connections for the Haxial program of your choice. The instructions for doing this appear below. Note that if you have both a hardware router AND the built-in OS firewall enabled, then you will need to configure BOTH of them.
Specific Router/Firewall Types
If anyone can provide instructions and/or screenshots for other routers/firewalls not listed above, please contact Haxial.
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