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Changing homes, concerned over ISP blocking ports

B

bluntey5

Junior Member
Hey there everyone, I'm currently on FIOS and i'm moving to the sticks where theres only 1 broadband ISP available, blue ridge. In their agreement it states that they block IP traffic sent to TCP 25, TCP 80, TCP 443, TCP 445, TCP 1080, TCP 6667-6669, TCP 1433-1434, TCP&UDP 135-139, TCP&UDP 67 for security/virus reasons. What i'm mostly concerned about is me not being able to connect to certain games once I move.

So my question is, should I worry about those ports being blocked for Incoming traffic (I don't think outgoing is blocked, because it states incoming only). and if so, can I use a VPN to bypass those ports so I can play/connect to the games? I'm also not sure what ports VPN uses, but can I config it so it doesn't use any of the ports I listed above?

Thanks a bunch for reading.
 
Do you play any games that need any of those INCOMING ports? (Most games don't) If not, then there shouldn't be anything to worry about.
 
The services that they're blocking mentioned above are for 2 things. The first is preventing you from running your own common traffic servers in your home (E-mail, Web, IRC, etc). The second is to prevent traffic from leaking onto the internet that could easily compromise your security.

TCP 25: SMTP -> Means they don't want you running a mail server.
TCP&UDP 67: Remote Booting -> Prevents exposing BOOTP servers to the internet.
TCP 80: HTTP -> Means they don't want you running a web server.
TCP&UDP 135-139: Microsoft Endpoint -> Prevents exposure of Windows management services of DNS, DHCP, etc to the internet.
TCP 443: HTTPS -> Same thing as port 80.
TCP 445: AD / SMB Shares -> Means they don't want you running SMB shares over open internet.
TCP 1080: SOCKS -> Means they don't want you running a SOCKS proxy.
TCP 1433-1434: MSSQL -> Means they don't want you running an internet facing MSSQL Server.
TCP 6667-6669: IRC -> Means they don't want you running an IRC server.

The ports that they mention are all pretty standard for blocking amongst ISPs, and no game service should need incoming traffic on any ports below 1023. Since the ones above that are officially recognized ports registered with the IANA, game services should not be using those ports either.

Basically, any game that says it needs incoming connections on any of the ports you listed would be highly suspect to me.
 
yeah, I don't think I need any of them for incoming ports, they wouldn't be blocking outgoing access on those ports, or I wouldn't be able to access the internet on 80, correct? Some games use login on TCP 443 to access web reasources and client authentication as well as battle.net launcher needs TCP 443 to be open but I assume that has to do with outgoing and not incoming, right?

Also, do you guys think VPN will be an issue with this? I'm using privateinternetaccess, and it seems to work good and its actually fast for a VPN. To connect with a VPN it just needs outgoing on those ports?
 
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To your first question, you're correct. All the services you're referring to only need to make outgoing connections, of which you have no restrictions.

For your VPN, you would only have issues if you were using an internal VPN server in your home (such as an OpenVPN server). I'm not familiar with the VPN you mentioned, but it just looks like another one of those external VPN sites. In that case, you're making an *outgoing* connection to your external VPN provider. Again, there would be no concern regarding your incoming connection restrictions.
 
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