Wingate and ENS/NAT with redirection and P2P apps

[Nil Einne]

Hi,

I've been using WinGate for quite a while and something which bothers me is that for some reason, I can never seem to get redirection to work as expected.

I have used a ADSL NAT router elsewhere once with 2 computers and everything seemed to work fine. Once I set up port forwarding, and adjusted (if necessary) the applications to use the ports I set up, everything worked, as expected. E.g. Emule, Bittorent, FreeNet...

With Wingate (and different computers so I admit, I can't be sure it's not on the client side although it unlikely IMHO), this doesn't seem to work. I've got NAT working fine but redirection never seems to work properly. It appears in the Gatekeeper as a connection but it doesn't seem to work as I would have wanted it. For example, I've been trying to convince DC++ but although I've managed to get searching working (which uses UDP) I can't seem to get downloading/connecting to clients, which uses TCP working. I'm confident I've set up the right ports in the application and the ENS since I've done it many times. I've also set up the IP for the destination computer running DC++ in redirect field properly. And yes, it's of course Internet connection to... There is nothing in the firewall to indicate I've done something wrong either and since I'm using a high level port (above 4096 which is blocked by default under my config), it should show up if I did... It isn't only DC++ either. I've had issues with eMule. It seemed to work sometimes but not very well and running it on the server computer with redirection worked a lot better. I believe I had problems with FreeNet as well. I can't figure out whats wrong. The settings which confuse me somewhat are syn cookies and don't translate IP but I believe the should be mostly be left on. I can't seem to find anyone else who has problems when they've properly port forwarded with their strandalone routers on either eMule or DC++ so I'm at a loss as to what's going on.

Also, if I enable the WGIC and turn off port redirection (but allow traffic on the port through), DC++ works fine.

I was using WinProxy for a while to identify the source of another problem and from what I recall, it had something in it's NAT which seemed to work properly...

Am I doing something wrong? Or is the ENS port redirection not really like port forwarding in most routers?

[erwin]

Hi Nil

You probably understand this already but:

If the client machine behind WinGate is attempting to join or access a remote p2p session of DC or emule server on the Internet then WinGate will have not have to open or redirect any ports for this to happen.

If the machine behind WinGate is hosting the DC or emule serve obviously you will have to select "Connections from the Internet" and open the approriate ports (Tcp or Udp) and set the redirection to point at the internal IP of the client machine so that WinGate will send them there approriately.

From your description it sounds as though you have done this all correctly.

It will work fine as you found with the DC/Emule apps running on the same machine as WinGate. This is because WinGate should not affect Internet access from the machine on which it is installed.

Just some thoughts

Regards
Erwin

[Nil Einne]

You're right, I did know all that :-)

That's why it seems to me that ENS/NAT port forwarding is not working properly. It's not my ISP and it's been set to redirect the ports (to the right IP) so it seems to be WinGate portforwarding. I'm pretty sure it's the right ports too because other then the fact I checked many times, those (incoming) ports are firewalled by default (for connections from the internet) so I do have to open them (no redirection of course) when I used them on the WinGate Server PC. It only seems to be TCP in the DC case as searching (uses UDP) works fine with redirection. Transferring files (uses TCP) does not work. (I've enabled redirection for both UDP and TCP). The TCP redirects appear in GateKeeper but for whatever reason, the program isn't receiving or accepting them. Also, as mentioned, if I use WGIC and turn off port redirection, it works fine on the WinGate clients as well.