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Life Behind the Firewall Curtain?

Posted by Cliff on from the online-but-unroutable dept.

beegle asks: "After a recent move, I discovered that my only broadband option is a cable company that puts all of its customers behind a NAT box. That means that my ISP gives me a 'private' 10.x.x.x address instead of a routable IP address. I'd like to connect to my machines remotely and use software that depends on a real address (P2P, games, etc.). The ISP doesn't prohibit this, but they're not willing to help, either. I've considered setting up a VPN to a friend's network, but that seems terribly inefficient. What hardware or software would you recommend for those of us who are stuck with 'fake' IP addresses?"

6 of 91 comments (clear)

  1. Proxy Out by kevinmf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    After a couple hacking incidents and virus outbreaks, my school decided to impose a firewall on everyone which put a stop to gaming with anyone off campus. Anyway, those of us lucky enough to have a cable modem or dsl at home just set up proxys on those boxes and used SocksCap to make programs using winsock transparently go through and use the proxy instead of trying to get to the net from the firewall.

    Sounds like it'd be a good solution for you to do something similar.

    Game performance took a hit though, because of all the extra hops that added.

  2. If they will give you a port by QuantumRiff · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Ask them to give you a non-standard port, such as 1357 (I made it up, don't know if it goes to anything.) If they will set up Port forwarding to your Port 80, you can use a DNS provider, like EverDns.net ( I believe) to do the translation for you, telling clients to connect on that port.

    --

    What are we going to do tonight Brain?
    1. Re:If they will give you a port by Omega1045 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      He means that the ISP would take one of their public IP addresses and redirect all traffic on a port to his private ip on a port. You can do this in IPFW, IPCHAINS and on my D-LINK router. Haven't used IP Tables yet... I REALLY doubt that the ISP will do this.

      --

      Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein

  3. SSH tunneling by magefile · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Get a friend to let you be constantly SSH'd into his box - you can use that to set up tunneling to that certain ports are forwarded back. Or, heck, even tunnel it through IRC if he's a windows user, and doesn't want to set up SSH - just have him install an IRC server.

  4. Re:Mod: -1: The Universe doesn't revolve around yo by asdfghjklqwertyuiop · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Oh grow up. Just because an ISP doesn't support what you want to do doesn't mean they're evil.


    If they're going to be in the INTERNET SERVICE provider business, they need to provide INTERNET SERVICE. Internet service means they carry IPv4 packets from you to anywhere you want on the internet and back again. *All* of them. If they aren't doing that then they aren't really providing internet service.

  5. Re:Mod: -1: The Universe doesn't revolve around yo by fm6 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    By your logic, a "grocery store" should stock every grocery there is. Come to think of it, that'd be great. Then I wouldn't have to hunt around for those obscure cookies I like and nobody else does. Of course, it'd be hard on the grocers, since they'd have to stock a lot of stuff they'd never sell. But that's their problem, right?