I can't turn off my firewall. Well, I can, but won't. My whole house is behind the firewall. I use it for NAT for all my computers - have 3 for the kids, 2 for me, etc. I'd have to take all my kids off the internet and just hook directly up to my cable modem.
It looks like it's a firewall issue after all. I reread Ronin's post on getting set up. Here is his firewall setup:
47624 to 47624 TCP 192.168.1.??? X
2300 to 2400 TCP 192.168.1.??? X
6500 to 6500 TCP and UDP 192.168.1.??? X
6667 to 6667 TCP 192.168.1.??? X
3783 to 3783 TCP 192.168.1.??? X
27900 to 27900 UDP 192.168.1.??? X
6073 to 6073 UDP 192.168.1.??? X
28900 to 29901 TCP 192.168.1.??? X
13139 to 13139 UDP 192.168.1.??? X
6515 to 6515 UDP 192.168.1.??? X
2300 to 2400 and 28900 to 29901. That's 1100 ports! For DirectPlay games I usually just forward 2300-2305. That is generally sufficient. In any case, I tried the full 2300-2400 range and that has no effect. I don't think those ports are the issue anyways, because I haven't even gotten to the DirectPlay part yet.
But 28900 through 29901. I had missed that when I read that the first time. I just had 28900. In any case, there is
no way I'm going to direct forward over a thousand ports. I heartily recommend anyone who is actually doing this on their firewall to seriously think about the security issues. That's over 15% of all the ports - wWhat's the point in having a firewall if you open up a hole that wide where anything can come in completely unchallenged.
I read the
GameSpy firewall doc and it says:
- 6667 (IRC)
- 3783 (Voice Chat Port)
- 27900 (Master Server UDP Heartbeat)
- 28900 (Master Server List Request)
- 29900 (GP Connection Manager)
- 29901 (GP Search Manager)
- 13139 (Custom UDP Pings)
- 6515 (Dplay UDP)
- 6500 (Query Port)
It doesn't mention anything about a range from 28900 to 29901, though it does mention the individual ports 28900, 29900, and 29901.
My first attempt, when I was getting the Campaign Selector screen, I just had 28900 forwarded. 29900 and 29901 weren't. If I add 29900 and 29901, I can no longer log into GameSpy. It says "email address not found", as if I don't have an account and when I try to create an account it says "connection refused". If I leave 29900 and 29901 off of my port forwarding, I can log into GameSpy, but (as you all know) my campaign list is completely empty.
So, I'm stumped. I'll keep trying, and see if I can find out the issue.
Meanwhile, if anyone else has a firewall and is using Ronin's port list, I would very much appreciate if you would reconfigure the 28900-29901 range to be the three individual ports 28900, 29900, and 29901. Do this and see if it still works. If it does, Ronin's post should be edited. As it stands, people may be ignorantly removing a big chunk of their firewall protection by following its suggestions.