Bzflag and linksys firewall

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isfry
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Bzflag and linksys firewall

Post by isfry »

We are using a linksys firewall here at work and have noticed some strange issues with bzflag and wonder if anyone else has seen this before. Here it is:

if 2 people are playing through it given some time one of us or both of us go NR and both of use become <unknown> and no longer get points for things and cannot pick up flags but can get killed.

If 1 of us is playing we just for <unknown>

We are on a T1 here so I doubt it is lag but my guess is the firewall is getting confused and is dropping something important along the way. If you have an ideal let me know.
badger
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Post by badger »

is this firewall doing NAT (i.e. share one external IP with multiple internal systems)? i know some linksys boxes that do NAT had a firmware bug that would corrupt TCP payloads. (annoyingly, it would corrupt the payload before recomputing the IP checksum so the TCP/IP layer on the receiver could not detect the corruption.) such corruption could, depending on where it happened, permanently break a bzflag protocol stream. anyway, the solution is to upgrade the firmware.

-chris
isfry
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Post by isfry »

Yeah it is doing NAT. i think it has the latest firmware on it . It has version 1.43 on it.
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Fiberchunks
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Post by Fiberchunks »

yes, the linksys has an issue.

I am behind a linksys, and experience the same problem when 2 clients try to connect (whether to the same server, or different servers, doesn't matter). I am currently running the latest firmware for the linksys, and it doesn't seem to have affected the reliability or functionality of the linksys at all.

Unfortunately, it seems that linksys is more concerned with releasing what I consider non-necessary things in their firmware upgrades rather than a product that actually works. I have talked quite a few times with tech support and on a couple of forums about the issue, but they do not seem to want to support the product fully (BEFSR41, by the way).

Moreover, they do not support people who use linux. Their product, instead of being multi-browser compatible, chokes when anything other than IE is used (buttons don't work, scripts don't apply values, etc).

To sum up: if you're thinking about buying a router for your home network - stay FAR AWAY from linksys products. Go with a company who either 1) supports linux, 2) cares about what their customers think, or 3) whose product is actually functional under a variety of environments.

Linksys makes a cheap product, and in this case, you really do get what you pay for (oh, that I had known this before I bought the POS). :evil:

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JeffM
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Post by JeffM »

I have no problem doing nat and having a butt load of people play. But then I don't use the linksys boxes, they do seem flakey.

the NAT realy is OS independent, but yes the linksys does all kinds of wacky stuff in it's web config that non windows browsers don't like, tho I think you can telnet into the thing.

I use Gigafast ( yeah it know it sounds cheap, but the think kicks ass ), and D-link boxes. There web configs are simple and powerfull and work on every OS I have tried. And the things go for about $40. Now they don't realy say they "support" linux if you call there suport, but they made there products in such a way that the OS don't mater. the D-link did say "if you are running linux you proablay know what your doing, so set up DHCP, and get to this web page". I thought that was kinda nice that they got right to the point. But it's windows install was cake too.

As long as you are not running a server you should not have to set anything special up on the NAT. I think the linksys is geting the UDP ports screwed up when it does it's NAT, they have poor UDP suport even when you can get to the config.
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isfry
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Post by isfry »

Well that was not what i wanted to hear :sob: oh welll i guess it is time for plan B then was hoping this was somethign easy to fix rather thern have to do something more exotic.
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Post by isfry »

i guess i should of read your rant on linksys in the chat forum i will post a link here for people to read. http://bzbb.homelinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=150
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