Proxy connection and BBO

[Dragan]

Is it possible to play bridge at BBO if you had coonection to the internet via proxy ?

 

I try, but do not success...

[uday]

You can try installing sockscap32 from

 

http://www.socks.permeo.com/AboutSOCKS/SOCKSOverview.asp

 

I vaguely remember that some users reported that this worked for them.

 

 

the BBO program is c:\bridge base online\netbridgevu.exe

and it needs to connect to bbo.bridgebase.com port 9999

[DrTodd13]

I have some experience in this area. If you give me more information I may be able to help you. In almost every case, you'll need access to a machine outside your firewall that can relay internet requests for you. What kind of proxy do you have? Is it just an HTTP proxy or do you also have a SOCKS proxy? Either one will work with the technique that I currently use. I assume you are talking about a Windows machine for the client and for the outside relay machine? I ended up using cygwin for both ends but I was already using cygwin for other things so it was no big deal. I know of other techniques which should work but I haven't had much luck with them. Just so you know, this process is likely to be pretty difficult.

[Dragan]

I had just an HTTP proxy with firewall to P2P conections .

 

Does to netbridgevu.exe establish P2P connection ?

[uday]

I don't know what you mean by P2P, but netbridgevu establishes a simple TCP connection on port 9999 to bbo.bridgebase.com

 

I suggest accepting DrTodd's offer of assistance.

[Dragan]

P2P = peer to peer

[DrTodd13]

P2P is just a buzzword. When you have a situation where the parties in a TCP connection are fundamentally assymetric in their function then one is usually called the server and one called the client. "Client-server" is basically the opposite of P2P and BBO would fit into this client-server paradigm. Things like Napster were actually a mix of client-server and P2P. It was client-server to find out who had a particular file you wanted but from then on it was P2P because you talked to another "client" (client-to-client = P2P) directly. So, for the task you want, don't confuse yourself with P2P or not because that is really irrelevant. You just need to be concerned with TCP.

 

There are two ways I've gotten what you want to do to work. One is using HTTPort and the other is using SSH. The following is a brief flavor on both. I don't provide enough information here to actually get it working I think but I give you enough to show you how hard it is. Ask for more info if this doesn't scare you off.

 

1. HTTPort - Look up HTTPort on google and download the software to the machine behind the firewall (hitherto known as the client). Start HTTport and add a mapping for local port 9999 to remote host bbo.bridgebase.com and remote port 9999. Specify your proxy server's address and then go to BBO's directory and edit the file bbover.ini. Change the BBO server name to "localhost" (without quotes) and change the server IP address to 127.0.0.1 (leave the port alone at 9999). Click the "start" button on HTTPort and then run BBO. When run in this way, you will be using a public HTTHost server that will relay your requests to BBO. The problem is that there aren't many of these servers and they are very overloaded so your connection to BBO will be dog-slow if it works at all. The solution to this is to download HTTHost onto another machine that you own that is on the internet but outside the firewall that you are trying to evade (call this machine PSERVER). Then go to HTTPort and specify PSERVER as your own personal relay server. Sounds easy but it is pretty tricky. If you are using XP then you'll have to open a hole in the Windows firewall to allow HTTHost traffic to enter your machine. If you are using broadband on PSERVER then you may have to provide a NAT entry on your broadband router so that incoming HTTHost traffic goes to the right computer.

 

This method has been very flaky for me and I don't recommend it although it is the easier method for computer novices, although easier in this case is still pretty difficult.

 

2. SSH tunnel. This is the method that I currently use. Start by installing cygwin (google it) with ssh support on both client and PSERVER. Open up TCP port 22 on your broadband router and XP firewall. Open up a cygwin command prompt on PSERVER and run sshd. You may have to mess with configuring accounts recognized by ssh first. Then on the client, download "connect.c" from the internet through google and compile it (gcc -o connect connect.c), which of course will require you to install gcc on the client. Now, on the client you can setup an ssh tunnel from the client to PSERVER with the following:

 

ssh -2 -x -o "ProxyCommand ./connect.exe -H <your HTTP proxy:port> <PSERVER's IP address> 22" -L 9999:bbo.bridgebase.com:9999 <your username@PSERVER's IP address>

 

This gets more complicated if you have a broadband NAT in which case you would specify <your username@your machine's internal/private network address>?

 

Need I go on?

[uday]

Is there something we can install on our end that will make the process easier?

 

For instance: if httport works, might we be able to use a bbo-specific htthost server that we ran on our network ? How slow is dog-slow ? BBO needs to send down a couple of hundred K on login, and then needs a couple of hundred bytes every second or so

 

Or perhaps we could distribute and use an ssh program (maybe the one that comes w/Putty, if it is suitable) on the client side? And connect to a bbo-pserver ?

[DrTodd13]

Hmmm. Unfortunately, HTTHost is Windows-only software so I don't know what you could do to facilitate HTTPort except to install a Windows machine with HTTHost on it. If you went that route then I believe you can restrict HTTHost to only forward packets to BBO servers rather than the general Internet.

 

To facilitate the ssh solution, you could create an account for every BBO user on one of your Linux boxes (with very restricted permissions of course). Basically all you could do would be to solve the need for a machine outside the user's firewall. The client side tends to be the more difficult side anyway in terms of configuration. It is so difficult that it is probably beyond the abilities of most BBO users. It is totally possible to integrate most of the difficult points into the client where the user would just have to configure whether they wanted to use a proxy, which type to use, and the address of the proxy.