Traffic fowarding

[vivaladan]

I'm got an idea that I'd like to put into action, but I'd like to first run it by anyone here that knows something about this stuff.

I want to run a computer that can essencially redirect game traffic through a tunnel of some sort to the actual game server.

Reason I want to do this, is becuase how my university's network is setup. Currently we have a couple of servers running inside the university's network, with the relevant ports open in the uni's firewall so they are accessable to the outside world.

Problem is, the halls of residence down the road, where a couple of thousand students live has a really bad internet connection. A fairly slow pipe considering the number of students using it, that routes into the uni network and then they share teh campus's bandwidth and also go through the firewall. Aka they can't play games but due to the network setup, they can't access our internal games server either.

What we want to propose to the uni is to run a server at the halls of residence that routes game traffic to the internal games server on the campus. We can get a port or two opened up on the firewall between the halls and campus, but thing is we don't want to give the all the halls access to games on the open internet. Only because they don't have the bandwidth for it on the current connection.
So will something like this be possible to only give them access to the servers we run ourselfs?

[WhiteKnight]

Via IP its a fairly easy routing setup. You wouldnt even really need a computer, just a router (altho an old pc would be cheaper i suspect)

For broadcast games its less straight forward tho.

[KingDaveRa]

Doubt they'll allow it.

If your internet connection goes via JANET (which it likely does), then it's under the terms of the JANET AUP, which doesn't really allow running games and stuff.

Basically, if it's set up like it is, it's for a reason. Find out who runs the network, and have a word with them.

I talk from experience - I have a lot to do with running our own halls network ;)

[ez64]

this is another reason why moving to halls of residence is a bad idea.

[KingDaveRa]

Well some halls go through private ISPs, but that has been a bit of a disaster for some unis - NTL ran a system for a few and it failed miserably from what I heard. So a lot of places decided to do it in-house, and just provide a plain connection to the net. For most people, it's sufficient. The odd few will ask for something stupid (P2P or Skype) but most are happy with just plain web. Nearly all students use webmail anyway, so don't even need SMTP or POP/IMAP. The people who are hard-core gamers are the problem, as they need a WORLD of ports opened, and if you open them, then various P2P apps can also get out, and cause you problems, both in terms of legal and bandwidth. Squil and the likes can stop it. Various NAC suites exist, such as the Bradford networks one, but they cost a fortune.

I'll be looking to open things up a bit more, but I need to play with the Packetfence configs a bit more and make it catch P2P and sinbin people running it. It's a hard thing to get right though, as people will just abuse it.

[WhiteKnight]

Doubt they'll allow it.

If your internet connection goes via JANET (which it likely does), then it's under the terms of the JANET AUP, which doesn't really allow running games and stuff.

Basically, if it's set up like it is, it's for a reason. Find out who runs the network, and have a word with them.

I talk from experience - I have a lot to do with running our own halls network ;)

He`s not asking to host internet games.

He wants to setup an internal server to stop people needing to connect to internet servers.

At least thats how i read it .

Current internet connection for students is:
Halls ---> Campus ---> JaNET ---> The Intermegs

He wants to put a games server in the campus somewhere so students dont need to connect to the outside world over JaNET for games.

[KingDaveRa]

Ah right, my bad.

Well, I'd reckon that would be reasonable, BUT, you have to remember, the halls network could be on the end of a fairly slow pipe, and could end up saturated.

It'd be worth asking, but I bet they'll say no.