Yahoo/MSN Messenger behind a firewall

authenticate

Senior member
Nov 21, 2000
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Yahoo Messenger installs and works "right out of the box" here in my office even though I am behind a firewall and have to go through a proxy. The installation has automatically picked up the proxy dns address and port.

However, MSN Messenger installed and was not as smart. After a reboot and manually setting the proxy dns address and port it still will not work (= login to my msn account).

What can be causing this?
 

Macro2

Diamond Member
May 20, 2000
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Are you behind a router? You can try opening some ports or go DMZ. Even then you make not be able to use voice or send files.

Mac
 

authenticate

Senior member
Nov 21, 2000
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mac,

I am part of a large office lan with routers and a firewall. Yahoo Messenger installed and worked from the first minute. MSN Messenger did not and still does not.

 

bsobel

Moderator Emeritus<br>Elite Member
Dec 9, 2001
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I am part of a large office lan with routers and a firewall. Yahoo Messenger installed and worked from the first minute. MSN Messenger did not and still does not.

Yahoo Messenger is not network friendly and does some nasty things (like using the telnet port to connect to it's servers). MSN Messenger (by default) uses a high port number that must be configured on at your firewall. The latest version (at least on XP) does support tunnelling over HTTP, so that option might work for you.

Bill


 

authenticate

Senior member
Nov 21, 2000
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Bill,

Interesting what you say about Yahoo Messenger using the telnet port.

Looking at the connection preferences it chose:

Use Proxies
Enable HTTP proxy
automatically filled in the proxy name and server port of 8080

I tried to set MSN Messenger to the same values as above but this made no difference. Is Yahoo Messenger really using the telnet port?
 

bsobel

Moderator Emeritus<br>Elite Member
Dec 9, 2001
13,346
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Originally posted by: authenticate
Bill,
Interesting what you say about Yahoo Messenger using the telnet port.
Looking at the connection preferences it chose:
Use Proxies
Enable HTTP proxy
automatically filled in the proxy name and server port of 8080
I tried to set MSN Messenger to the same values as above but this made no difference. Is Yahoo Messenger really using the telnet port?

That doesn't mean it's the default, Yahoo will actually search commonly used ports and 'use' an open one (for example, when I run it here it configures itself for the telnet port).

Bill