Topic: MSN video conferencing and firewall

[Jan]

Hi all,

I was hoping I could use MSN's video conferencing with SME over the internet but ran into some troubles. I had allready used open ports tool to enable filetransfer and voice chat. That seems to work fine now but for video conferencing it seems I need to open a LOT of udp ports, read below:

-------------------begin quote from M$ site ----------------
The actual Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) streams are sent using dynamically allocated UDP ports in the range of 5004 – 65535. Without a way to open these UDP ports on any firewall in the path dynamically, the streams will fail to reach their destination.
--------------------end quote from M$ site -----------------

Is this really nessecary? And is there a way to open and or foreward whole port ranges, not just a singel port at a time. Any help, advice and such is very much appreciated.

Kind regards,

Jan

[Jan]

What I mean is do I need to open all 50,000+ ports or what? It would be a shame if I couldn't use video conferencing. If anyone knows if the high range UDP ports (5000>) are open or blocked by default I'd appreciate hearing from you.

Second question is does anyone have the commandline syntax for opening and closing port ranges? Say open and close TCP ports 21000 - 21100. Does this work for UDP also?

Third question is about portforewarding ranges. Does anyone have an idea on the proper commandline syntax to be used there?

Final question, does any of these commandline opening/forewarding of these ports influence the portforewarding  and or opening tools. (if I open 50,000 ports does this show up in de addon? )

Any comments suggestions and such are very welcome.

Regards,

Jan

[Michiel]

Use Yahoo Messenger. Works without any tweaking (voice, video, files), is a lot cooler (imvironments etc.) and keeps M$ from dominating also that market
Michiel

[Terry]

MSN 6 (beta) works (file transfer and video, have not tried voice) behind my SME now, where version 5 did not.  May want to try and locate the beta and give it a whirl.

[Jan]

Michiel,

Well yes maybe yahoo is all fine and dandy but none of my contacts use it and I do not have the 'influence' to convince them to change. Though I agree very much M$ monopoly should be limmited wherever possible the messenger program is good enough to warrant a stay of execution


Terry,

Thanks for the tip! I will certainly test it. You have not opened any ports on you SME? Cewl! Very nice that would solve a LOT of problems. (Over 50,000 of them;-) )

Regards,

Jan


PS I still would like to know how to open port-ranges espacially when using passive FTP serverices from behind a SME. I have some diehard M$ people here who just won't use SME for their FTP so an answer to this question would be very welcome.