Getting through blocked ports

[Avelain]

I recently moved to a different college and the campus internet here blocks the necessary ports to play FFXI. The whole campus uses wireless internet, and requesting to unblock ports from the IT department is not an option. Playonline says this about the needed ports:

If you are using any kind of software/hardware Internet Sharing service/device the following ports need INCOMING access to your PC. TCP 25, 80, 110, 443 and 50000 - 65535, UDP 53, and 50000 - 65535, also check to make sure that the ports mentioned are not blocked by your ISP for INCOMING access.

When I try to log into FFXI, I get a POL-1158 error. I've tried every solution I could find, including following http://www.your-freedom.net/index.php?id=126 step-by-step with YourFreedom and ProxyCap, but I'm still unable to connect. I've also tried searching the tech forums for similar threads but I couldn't find an exact solution.

Has anyone had this problem, and if so, can you share your success stories about how you were able to get through this sort of firewall? I'm not computer retarded, but I'm also not extremely computer literate. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Kriz]

My (sad) solution when I was in college: free AOL dialup accounts.

[Taera]

This was the case with me when I went to UCA and the only solution I could get to actually work was pack up my game and move to the college down the road. It sucks but they are usually pretty unwilling to let you through on port forwarding unless you are pretty buddy-buddy with the IT dept...or they also play FFXI/WoW.

[SnickySnacks]

If you have a computer at home that you can use, set up an OpenVPN connection.
Once connected, it basically routes all your traffic through your home computer with no special setup required for ffxi or anything like that, plus it has the advantage of encrypting your traffic so the college can't spy on what you do.

Really all you need is a home pc that's always on and connected to the internet, the ability to forward 1 port on your home router, and some time to work out an open port to connect to (which can be the hardest part since of course many ports are blocked by default at college, but you should be able to find something like an open POP, SMTP, FTP, Telnet, HTTP, or HTTPS port you can use).

I can provide more details if you need, but to start go here:
http://openvpn.net/index.php/open-source/downloads.html

quick edit:
Again, the nice thing about openvpn is the fact that once it's setup there's no fiddling you have to do to make ffxi (or any game) work. It basically functions as your main connection at that point, routing all traffic/ports/etc over your private VPN to your house. No messing around with proxycap or any of that nonsense.

[Kobus]

Going along with the above poster, most colleges have VPN clients for research fellows and things like that. You could try going to the university computer solutions place and asking if they have a secure VPN. It's how I play games and all while still using the university's fast internet.