Firewalls
Firewalls prevent unwanted internet traffic from reaching your
computer, and by doing so, they play a very important role in
protecting your data and your privacy. We join all of the security
experts in recommending that you make sure your computer is
protected, one way or another, from the threat of viruses, Trojan
horses, and other unauthorized attempts to access your system.
If you do have a firewall installed, either on your computer or
on a router that connects your computer to the internet, and you
wish to be the host in a NetPlay session, it's likely that you'll
need to take steps to make sure the remote users can connect to
your computer. Without making the necessary preparations, your
firewall is likely to deny access because it regards the remote
user as a potential threat.
In our testing of the NetPlay feature, we have successfully
connected:
- over an office LAN when both computers were behind our
firewall
- over a dial-up connection with no firewall installed
- over a DSL line with a firewall disabled before the session
and then restored after the session
- over a DSL line with the firewall enabled and a specific port
opened to allow DMB traffic to get through (see Opening a Port for instructions)
Because virtually all corporate
networks have firewalls, it's likely that you won't be able to use
NetPlay from your office to play someone who is outside your
company network and your company's network administrators will not
permit a port to be opened for this purpose.
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