I am doing a bit a traveling at the moment and I am having trouble connecting to AC at RV campgrounds. I have tried AC support and all they have is how to change userpreferences.ini to specify a port between 9000 and 9013. This has not helped at all. On the ACclient screen where you see the 2 blue spiral bars, all I get is the first(connection) bar, the second(update) bar never fills.

Anyone else ever have this trouble at a wifi location such as a campground, truckstop, coffeeshop or whatever?

Any ideas as to what I could do to get connected? I will be away from home for a couple months and I don't think I can stand that long without AC... I can feel the withdrawal symptoms already.

 

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There could be a port block at the router on the RV yard.. Any way you can contact the network Admin and see if he could forward the ports you need to your computer?

 

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thanx, I will check with them in the morning. I wonder if this is going to be a common problem at most places I stop along the way. Would it be possible that they could or would block ALL possible ports?

 

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By default the routers wont have the correct port forwarding to support AC.

ok thanx, what port would I need to ask them to forward to me? Any between 9000 and 9013? All these? or another?


any more info would be appreciated

 

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Sho those are correct, and you can have them forward any between 9000 and 9013 if you change the port in the little text file in your my documents folder,

if you have them just forward the group you won't have to do any tweaking.

On another note, my router's port forwarding sucks, and even when it's not forwarded i can try 10+ times once in a while and get in lol. Random chance of getting through the right port or something like that.

I have the same problem when I stay at most hotels. I've asked about the ports, of course thier network admin says there aren't any blocks and I should have no problem connecting. (ya right) So I just gave up.

It's nothing to do with blocked ports. It's all about port forwarding.


Your machine sends data out on a certain port and your router needs to know that data coming back on another port is for your machine and not another.

You can blindly forward all the required ports to a specific machine, which in turn means only that machine can use AC and no other, or you can do it the correct way and use a port trigger.


http://www.fuzeqna.com/asheronscall/consumer/kbdetail.asp?kbid=148


The initial port is often called the trigger port.

Also, just having the ports opens doesn't do it.


I spent many weeks trying to get a SonicWall firewall/router and a Wireless Access Point running, with no luck.


Apparently the incoming UDP packets range all over the place on the inbound side and a "Commerical" firewall is much to strict to let AC do what it does. A "Resisdential" firewall is pretty "loose" in what it allows, and thus works.

the key term to remember in Firewall Configuration is "Loose UDP".. if your firewall does not support "Loose UDP" in some way, then I'm not sure how effectively it will work with AC. (unless it's just a crappy firewall).


As Arch_Magi said, the UDP transmission ports in AC are all over the palce, and it makes it a little difficult to set up a "good" firewall to allow it.