Port Question

[Scott Rossi]

>> So let's say there are two machines behind the same firewall on one side
>> of the net, and two machines behind another firewall on the other side.  Do I
>> need to determine both the public and private addresses of all machines
>> who want to play, and then somehow combine the addresses into a single string
>> to address socket messages?  Or do I just need the public address for each
>> network (which I assume accesses each router) and then assume that
>> messages sent to port 80 will be forwarded to all machines on that network
>> (who are "listening" on that port)?
> 
> You might just want to try out sending messages between machines behind
> different firewalls.  However, although I'm not exactly sure how these
> things work, I am inclined to say that you wouldn't be able to just send the
> messages to the router.  I believe that most routers will just drop requests
> if they can't figure out where they are supposed to go.  I think that you
> would need to set up a process called port forwarding on the router, where
> you tell the router to send requests for a specific port to a certain
> computer on the network.  But, once again, I'm not entirely sure how
> firewalls/routers work.

All the routers I've owned allow you to assign one system on the network a
DMZ (demilitarized zone) address which I believe allows pretty much any
traffic in and out.  Maybe this is what has to be set up by the game
players.

Thanks & Regards,

Scott Rossi
Creative Director
Tactile Media, Development & Design
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E: scott at tactilemedia.com
W: http://www.tactilemedia.com