This week brings another triumph in my battle with NAT, and some gaming glory.
As discussed last week, I managed to get internet sharing working by using a beta of Microsoft's ISA Server. All was bliss for a short period, until I couldn't get any games using DirectPlay to work.
DirectPlay is part of DirectX that allows people to play over the internet by linking via an IP address. This way you don't have to go through a central server like the Zone or Battle.net, but can enjoy simple connectivity. I remember the old days of DOS trying to get a multiplayer game off the ground using a modem, and I don't miss it.
Anyway, I checked online at Microsoft's Knowledge Base and found the port range that DirectPlay and the Zone use, plus instructions for adding these to Proxy Server 2. Unfortunately I was using a newer version, but it turned out to be about the same, or so I thought. After careful configuration I tried to get a multiplayer game going but still found no success. I went back over everything and double checked, but nothing. I decided to leave it for a bit and use my modem for those few gaming experiences.
Next came my weekly upload of my website ( warning shameless plug ). I couldn't make an FTP connection to my server ( second plug ), and checking other sites with WS-FTP LE I could connect to about half, which struck me as very strange. I like WS-FTP LE for two reasons; it's a simple FTP program to use and it's free. In truth I only use it as a backup, since my web software includes built in file transfer.
For the last few years I've been using NetObject's Fusion for my web authoring. It's designed to look and feel like a desktop publishing program, letting you place objects on a grid and allowing precise and simple page design. It's easy to use and I've grown quite accustomed to it.
After that huge swing off topic, let's get back to it. I fiddled but couldn't get anything going, so I used Norton Ghost to make an image of my current configuration to a second hard drive. This way if things went wrong I could just reload it and be back where I was. Cloning software like Ghost or Drive Image allow you to make a complete image of your hard drive(s), then reload it from any available medium like a second hard drive, a CD-ROM or across a network. They're fast and easy to use, just have to configure a boot disk to do the dirty work for you.
After the cloning I uninstalled Microsoft ISA Server and configured NAT again. This time I had the internal NIC configured with my ISP's DNS address, as I discussed last month. I fired up Internet Explorer and … nothing. Checked through the settings and event viewer for any tidbits. Found an error indicating DHCP could not serve 192.168.*.* because it was out of my range of 10.0.0.*. This led me back to RRAS ( Routing and Remote Access Server ) to the NAT settings, where I found an option to have the DHCP server handle the requests. Going from this I assumed NAT needed the 192.168.*.* range for it to work, so I defined a new scope with this range and removed my old 10.0.0.* range.
Back at a client machine I tried to browse, again with no success. I went back to DHCP and added some optional configurations; my internal DNS server and my ISP's server. This time around I was able to browse! Quite a journey to get things working properly, and I'm not sure how much of it I caused myself.
I tested browsing, FTP, MSN Messenger, Norton Live Update and DirectPlay games: everything was working properly. Now my network is able to run all applications seamlessly with the internet. My only concern now is security: although my ISP assigns me a new IP every six days, that leaves me with an open door to my server for that period. I'm getting some security products from Symantec this month, so I'll have to wait until then. I thought about using something like Zone Alarm from Zone Labs or Norton Internet Security, but these are personal firewalls and not designed for Microsoft's server products.
I've been playing EA's Shogun: Total War on and off for the last few weeks, and I'm proud to say I finally played a full campaign and won. I've talked about Shogun before, but let me say how well it entrenches you in feudal Japan. I just finished the GameSpot game guide, and it really helped out. Be sure to grab the version 1.1 patch.
That's about it for my week. As a new feature I'm running down the week's top tech news. Follow the links to get the full story for yourself.
Lots of big news this week from major players. Nintendo announced its new gaming system dubbed GameCube, which will be priced below the Playstation 2 and will perform about the same. Included are an IBM PowerPC processor and an ATI video card. They've decided to use proprietary 8cm CD's that store 1.5 GB, which appears to be an effort to stave piracy.
Microsoft went public with it's beta of Office 10. Included features are ease of use and voice recognition, with the same amount of bloat. Outlook will now incorporate Hotmail and Instant Messenger, pushing their products into the user that much more. Are they learning nothing from their legal woes?
Big chip news this week: Intel recalls and AMD announces. Intel was forced to recall their 1.13 GHz Pentium 3 processors after hardware reviewers reported problems. AMD announced their 1.1 GHz Athlon processor shortly after, making another quick move on Intel. It's funny that AMD got so much press about their Socket A chips breaking when used with large heat sinks, but we never heard of a recall there. Looks like Intel wants to keep its reputation spotless while AMD doesn't have a reputation to deal with.
Another chip announcement is the 100 MHz bus will finally be used for Intel's Celeron line next year. This may help the Celeron regain some glory, but it needs a lot more to catch up to AMD's Duron, which is much faster and a whole lot cheaper.
I loved reading about Micron's suit against Rambus for patent infringement. Rambus has been rampaging across memory manufacturers forcing them into royalty payments because of their patents. I don't want to see memory prices increase, so let's hope this brings about a royalty free era.
by Scott VanderPloeg
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