University connections.

[Balduran]

Just moved yesterday to my University room. I am using a wireless internet connection through my University, but aperently, they have blocked all p2p ports, and Final Fantasy XI will not even connect. PlayOnline doesn't connect too. Limewire will not connect. Any past experience you had before with situations like these? Will it help if I talk with IT Department, ask them to open up some ports, or will I most probably get an answer of 'Sorry we can't operate non-acedemic internet programs'. Perhaps there is a way around. I am stuck here till December, so is there a way around this?

Apreciate any thoughts.

[Mekami]

Just moved yesterday to my University room. I am using a wireless internet connection through my University, but aperently, they have blocked all p2p ports, and Final Fantasy XI will not even connect. PlayOnline doesn't connect too. Limewire will not connect. Any past experience you had before with situations like these? Will it help if I talk with IT Department, ask them to open up some ports, or will I most probably get an answer of 'Sorry we can't operate non-acedemic internet programs'. Perhaps there is a way around. I am stuck here till December, so is there a way around this?

Apreciate any thoughts.

O.O...

This strikes fear in my heart... cause i'm going to college in less than a month.

[Celeras]

I played at school. When I signed up, they assigned my internet to my MAC address. Meaning no other PC could connect to the internet through my connection( was a real hassle for me when I upgraded).

Dont know if that helps at all.

[alt]

I highly doubt that your university network admins will be able to open any ports for you. But I guess its worth a shot asking. I has this exact same problem with Lineage II when it first came out and I tried playing it. Basically my school said sorry we cannot/will not open any ports for you.

However there is a way to work around this problem (at least with Lineage II and my school's network). I dont know the exact details because a friend of mine more familar with network stuff set it up for me. But it involved a 3rd party application that I believe somehow tricked your computer into using a different port to run the game, or something along those lines. Maybe someone here with more knowledge about the issues can explain more about that.

[FayeFaye]

I had a problem like that but it would just connect for a few min then disconnect, finally we got a bunch of other people who have the same problem on campus and we told the administration to open it up. Turns out they were just after kazaa or something and it happened to look like it (ffxi that is) yeah so try to find others having the same problem and keep getting your voice heard

Fight the Power!

[Balduran]

I just went to get my Student Card. While I was at it, I asked the guy who works at the IT Department. "I have this game, that uses certain ports, I may need to open them up if its possible" his answer "Well we have opened up msn, yahoo, icq, and some others ports, but we can't open up all 32000 ports, its just not good enough for our security". Balls. I need to find a way around this. 6 Months without Final Fantasy is no life lol.

[Hayama]

I had this similar problem a couple years ago. When I started FFXI there was no problem because my University didn't have a firewall built in. But the next year they completely revamped it and made us download a new program called the Aegis Client to connect. I don't know if your connection does something similar. When I asked them to open the ports, they said there was no way because 1) they couldn't open ports for only one person and 2) FFXI has a huge range of ports it says it uses.

Well, basically, what I did was let it connect normally and then go into the properties of my connection. It has a bunch of items that it uses listed, and the Aegis Client was one of them, and all i had to do was uncheck the box next to that, click OK, and the firewall would be gone. It let all the other programs like Limewire work too (I'd def. recommend having your own firewall like Zonealarm, though).

I think there may have been other solutions to this problem, because I played around with it a lot, but it's been well over a year since then so I don't remember.

I hope this helps, if your connection isn't run through a program, I don't know what to tell you. Just mess around with it a lot, and like someone suggested you may need a third-party program to trick either your connection or FFXI into thinking it's on a different port that's open (like AIM or something).

To this day that stupid Aegis Client messes up my connections sometimes (I'll have to enable or disable it randomly in different situations, and sometimes if I close it it will disconnect me, and I'll have to reboot my system.) Blah.

Good luck.

edit: I forgot to mention that you'll have to recheck the box for the program everytime you get disconnected or reboot your system. It's a pain but it works. Assuming your connection is through a program like mine was. For good measure after unchecking the box in the connection properties, go to ctrl+alt+del and delete the connection program from there. Closing it manually would disconnect me, but that wouldn't.

Another possible fix I remembered, was that sometimes deleting Zonealarm's memory of POL, then opening FFXI and having Zonealarm grant it access to the internet, FFXI would work, even with the connection's firewall up. Strange. It didn't work everytime though, if I recall correctly.

[Charla]

I remember there's a way to force PoL and FFXI to use a specific port. Someone used it to bypass the broken update server a few patches ago. Sorry for no specific information.

[Stromgarde]

Even if the ports are open, packet shaping can still shoot your connection speed to hell. When I first got the game at launch I was experiencing a 5 second delay on everything, and until several months later it didn't get resolved normally, leading quite a few people to use a loophole that was eventually closed.

[Aangeliceus]

Even if the ports are open, packet shaping can still shoot your connection speed to hell. When I first got the game at launch I was experiencing a 5 second delay on everything, and until several months later it didn't get resolved normally, leading quite a few people to use a loophole that was eventually closed.

Indeed.... I work for a University full-time, we use a packet-shaper and it blows games all to hell as far as latency. If I'm logged in on my laptop here at work, there is atleast a 4-5 second delay between keypress and action on the screen. People here are complaining however it doesn't appear that they will do anything about it. I don't control the pipeline into the University, just the routers and switches that handle the traffic before the core routers and the OC-12 lines. There is no way around our packet-shaper, everything passes through it....slowing everything down. I really feel for the thousands of students on campus that can't get their gaming the way they like it.

[Stromgarde]

If your university also provides dial-up access and phone service, they usually don't packet shape/port block that sort of thing- no point, unless they just route it in before the blocks are in place... that's what I eventually wound up doing until the situation got fixed, sadly.

[Balduran]

Thanks for replies. Apreciated.

I have a question. I am going to pay a visit to the IT Deptartment person. I need to convince to open up the FFXI ports for me. To do this, I have to backup my speech by facts that opening the ports will not result in loopholes or security issues, and thats its completly safe. According to the PlayOnline Support page, it says the following ports are used by the PlayOnline Viewer, and Final Fantasy XI.

PlayOnline (including all related software such as FINAL FANTASY XI) may use any of the following ports. If you are using a router, please configure it to allow packets to pass through these ports.

Port numbers that may be used by the PlayOnline server group.
TCP 25, 80, 110, 443 or 50000 - 65535
UDP 50000 - 65535

Should I print this note, and show the IT person. If we open up at least 25, or 80, will that suffice? or everything needs to be opened?
Any thing you can think of for me to tell the IT person will be apreciated thanks. Games are not their concern, but security issues are. So proving its a safe action will get me the ports opened, and I will be able to play FFXI again.

Thank you

[Raineer]

Move off campus, get cable.

Or use directTV hanging out your dorm window lol

[Balduran]

Move off campus, get cable.

Or use directTV hanging out your dorm window lol

Moving out of the dorm is not an option for me right now. DirectTV? I don't even know if thats possible where I am. I would have to research, plus I am not sure if I am able for extra costs like that.

[Manwe]

If you have the option to hardwire into the network, i suggest trying that. Some schools will put a firewall on their wireless so that they wont get driveby hackers etc leeching their internet.

Odds are, they wont have the same security set up for the hardwire ports as they do for the wireless.

[Raineer]

If you have the option to hardwire into the network, i suggest trying that. Some schools will put a firewall on their wireless so that they wont get driveby hackers etc leeching their internet.

Odds are, they wont have the same security set up for the hardwire ports as they do for the wireless.

ooo very true also, i'd look into that

[Balduran]

If you have the option to hardwire into the network, i suggest trying that. Some schools will put a firewall on their wireless so that they wont get driveby hackers etc leeching their internet.

Odds are, they wont have the same security set up for the hardwire ports as they do for the wireless.

Yeah I thought of that too, so I went to the laptop room, where you can plug the Ethernet cable into your lan port. FFXI still didn't work there, same as other p2p softwares.

[Cephius]

Just to give you a ray of hope, I've lived on campus for 3 years at my University and as long as I was registered on the network I never had a problem connecting to FFXI. They tend not to block ports as I've seen, they monitor the network for people hosting filesharing utilities and let Symantec handle viruses and spyware and whatnot. I know they also put a 7GB limit on your total bandwidth per week, that tends to stop people who fileshare also. If your unversity operates like mine does, you may not have a problem. Otherwise make friends with people in the IT dept and beg them to open the right ports

[Balduran]

Just to give you a ray of hope, I've lived on campus for 3 years at my University and as long as I was registered on the network I never had a problem connecting to FFXI. They tend not to block ports as I've seen, they monitor the network for people hosting filesharing utilities and let Symantec handle viruses and spyware and whatnot. I know they also put a 7GB limit on your total bandwidth per week, that tends to stop people who fileshare also. If your unversity operates like mine does, you may not have a problem. Otherwise make friends with people in the IT dept and beg them to open the right ports

Well said. Yeah I need to work on making friends with IT department. I'll take it step by step then.

[Ferien]

That's a shame...NYU didn't have anything blocked my freshman year (only year I used their connection)....Bittorrent with a 10/10 was beautiful. The dorm I'm in now has Cable from an outside company, though ><

As for your problem, most likely the only way to deal with it is through IT. The probably won't open it up for you, especially since SE wants over 15000 ports opened. That would probably trip them off as a huge security risk (ports are not program-specific). There are firewalls that can deal with program-specific traffic, but if you're having this problem, your school probably doesn't use one, and I highly doubt they'll start.

There is one way I've used to bypass my school's filters though, whenever I'm on NYU's wireless. It requires having a server at home that you can tunnel your connection to, and then you connect to the game through that connection. Essentially, it opens up a connection to your network at home, and you play the game through your home connection. This requires a ton of bandwidth on your home connection to do properly, though, and I don't know how to set up the server, as I use a friend's. If you know how to work with PuTTY though, you should understand what I'm talking about.