Folks,

I am cross posting this in the CAN'T FLY ONLINE Thread as well. This was mentioned some time ago in early discussions, but I don't recall anyone trying it.

On the Steve Gibson/Leo Laporte Security Now! podcast http://www.grc.com/securitynow.htm they have been discussing VPN solutions. One promising solution that has had success with gamers is HAMACHI http://www.hamachi.cc which provides a secure encrypted VPN tunnel between (among) machines, essentially making everyone look like they are on the same Private LAN with individual 5.x.x.x Hamachi IPs. Supposedly it supports NAT Traversal for use behind routers. It 'only' runs on W2K/XP, so us Stone Age Win98 guys are out of luck...but it would be interesting for some of you modern folks to test this out, and see if using the LAN rather than TCP/IP option over a HAMACHI lan beats the router issue.

Might be a cool option not only for LB2 but for a home VPN solution for your own security ..and free!!

PositiveG and I were unsuccessful using a different 'LAN over WAN' solution but this may have some advantages due to the generation of virtual IPs on the same virtual subnet.


Report back!!

Recluse

For now, Im using my DLINK 614+ revB router and putting my LAN IP into the DMZ. It works for hosting and as client for LB2.

Thats my story, and Im stickin to it.

(thats until I get the used Linksys firewall like Reverants)

Still no successes with my new Linksys WRT54G and LB2 (even with DMZ). Heh I am 3 for 3.. SMC/Netgear/Linksys!

I am starting to wonder if Windows XP is another necessity for getting router Hosting to work. I *think* that so far everyone I have heard of with success hosting through a router either by port fwd or DMZ has been an XP user.

Recluse

The down side with VPN tunnels versus NAT is that each host TCP/IP address needs to be unique. So with a tunnel you need to make sure each of your friends use different host addressing on each and every PC on their home LAN. Hardly practical for scratch games, but it would work quite well with agreeable friends.

The other option, which I haven't tried to any extent is IPX tunneling ala Kali.

XP certainly added a number of improvements to the IP protocol stack running on it's OS. SP2 did even more.

In my books XP is king. Now when Vista comes around it will be interesting to see how stable that is for LB2.

True that VPN tunnelling, esp. via HAMACHI isnt practical for pickup games, but this community is so small, that that is hardly a downside. The HAMACHI model gives every machine a virtual adapter with a unique IP in the same subnet so covers that point.

IPX tunnelling over KALI doesn't seem to work either (as host behind router). I thought we also tried some other IPX tunnelling thing that looked promising (needed to install WinPCap for it) and we never got it working either..

Recluse

My NetGear FR firewall like Reverants came in.

back to the learning curve.

It's so easy, it shouldn't be a problem at all!

Recluse,

I think you should go with your intuition and set up a LB2 Hamachi server.
THe wildcard is whether or not this helps with the router port forwarding for our router's firewalls.
On the other hand, some routers cannot handle VPN and IPC routing, but most do if you enable it.

Give it a try.

WHen you get it up, ill fly on it with you, either IPX (LAN) or TCP (INET) modes.

Like I said elsewhere, Hamachi works fine for Falcon4 and does give a better quality of connection because there are less packets lost.

AV8R

I can't do it because I do not run Windows XP...
but I am pretty sure I will have a new machine and new OS in the not too distant future..

Meanwhile, it seems like you already have HAMACHI, so getting some other LB2er to try it should answer the question pretty quickly!

Recluse