very tough networking stuff: netcat/fowarding/steam

[arsonist]

Let me tell you my tale of woe. Several months ago I was regulary playing day of defeat, natural selection, and many other steam games. Then I had to go to college and lo! steam did not work. To make a long story short, I am a nub when it comes to this kind of network/code stuff and would like some help getting netcat (or any other program) to foward the ports for steam so i can play. I will probably need the exact commands to use or a very good explanation. Other suggestions on how to get around this damn college firewall are welcome. I am not using a router. I have tried setting up a router but the college firewall wont let me run the router setup properly. I have tried all the other fixes on the steam website & forum so I am pretty certain this is the problem. And so after 2 weeks of trying to get steam to work, I come to beg assistance from the knowlegable people of Anandtech.

http://freshmeat.net/projects/netcat/
http://216.239.41.104/search?q...ties/+netcat&hl=en
http://www.atstake.com/researc...k_utilities/nc11nt.txt
^---stuff about netcat
http://home.covad.net/~k25125/...ection_Problem_FAQ.htm ^-----------------very bottom of the page is stuff about steam
http://img.photobucket.com/alb...061702_ls_arsonist.jpg
^-----------------me doing a 'netstat -ano' if that help at all

steam needs these ports open:
UDP 1200
UDP 27000 to 27015 inclusive
TCP 27015 to 27039 inclusive
If anyone can get steam to work for me, you will have my eternal gratitude. Thanks for reading

 

[n0cmonkey]

If this is a firewall on the edge type of problem, nc probably won't help you much. Even if you put it outside of the school's firewall, there may not be any incoming ports open that go to your computer. Your best bet would be to SSH into a system outside of the network and do some nifty port forwarding there, but it's complicated and system intensive (processor mostly, cuts down on throughput a LOT on some systems).

Anyhow, the "how do I get around the college firewall" type of post is frowned upon here, and at one point was a bannable offence. Here are a few tips though that may prove fruitful:

1. Talk to the admins. They may not be aware of the situation, or they could have something setup for users already.
2. Get yourself a non-school provided internet connection. If they aren't providing it, they can't block it.
3. If the admins refuse to help in any way, talk to the dean or bring it up to the campus. A good attitude, and a friend or two in the school newspaper are quite helpful. Let me emphasize the GOOD ATTITUDE. Admins don't like some rude little kid demanding anything, but many of us don't mind to help a polite user out.

That's all I got for now. Good luck, and welcome to the forums. 🙂