Freeze after loading halfway solved

[kconrad]

I administer a network at a public library. A patron complained that he could not login to War Tunes. We tested it and found on other machines it did the same. It stopped loading at 49-50% when trying to login. After searching this forum I found that it is a common complaint but no one had the right answer. I contacted R2Games tech support but they did not understand how networking and firewalls work. Their answers were not useful.

If you understand network security then here is the background. Due to complaints of copyright violations of RIAA and MPAA that patrons were downloading from file sharing sites, we closed all access with implicit deny statement and then opened only tcp and udp ports that are commonly used like 80 and 443. But for any game or software that uses non-standard ports we must be told what those are to open them up.

Since R2Games tech support did not know those ports we had to find them ourselves using Wireshark packet sniffer. I found the ports that must be opened for War Tunes. I tested R2's other games and they are all different. Each uses different ports to authenticate the user. But for War Tunes here are the ports: tcp ports 5000 through 5007 and tcp 8080. If you can get someone to open those then the half way loading freeze is fixed. Of course you must also have the commonly used ports 80 & 443 opened too.

I found the right ports for other games too like League of Angels and Dragonbone Dynasty. If someone needs those maybe I will post an article with those details.

[Alsatia01]

Typically when troubleshooting this type of issue, eventually the idea of 'turn off your firewall and try again' comes up. While this idea definitely helps diagnose the problem, it's not nearly as accurate (or long term) as knowing which ports unlock. Kudos.

That being said, which provider/server did you use to diagnose those were the applicable ports? Were the results the same for completely different providers or servers? For people suffering from this type of issue, turning off the firewall temporarily may indeed still be the best way to diagnose this type of problem.

P.S. - If you block every website or game that has complaints from the RIAA or MPAA, just get rid of your internet. They are quite notorious for launching frivolous DMCA/copyright claims against content they not only, do not own, but against content that freely falls under fair use. Then again, I suppose you have to balance that out from the people who are illegally downloading movies that were just released. *shrug* Sounds rough.

[kconrad]

I am not sure if by provider you mean our Internet provider. Our provider is a state wide organization of libraries banded together to purchase large amounts of bandwidth cheaply. They don't block anything but we do. I tested multiple R2Games servers including one from every region like US and Oceanic. That is why there is a range of ports instead of a single port. Each server used a specific port for authentication but all of the ones I checked fell into the range of 5000-5007. The other ports I specified are common to all: 80, 443, and 8080.

Yes, turning off your PC's personal firewall for a very short time might help to diagnose but it is like playing Russian roulette due to the never-ending, random, automated attacks that hit your outside interface. To make sure everyone understands, what I changed was a stand-alone hardware firewall that protects our entire network where hundreds of patrons are using the Internet all at the same time. Alsatia01 is talking about turning off a software firewall on your local PC such as Windows Firewall or ZoneAlarm. These are two very different things but either one can stop the traffic from flowing on the ports you need to login to War Tune.

So for example, you could carry your laptop to a coffee shop where they have free wifi and not be able to login. Then you drop your Windows Firewall but still can't login. That doesn't necessarily mean it isn't a firewall issue. It may be that the service the coffee shop uses to provide Internet blocks the needed ports farther downstream. Unfortunately the coffee shop employees will not be able to help and if you are lucky enough to find a way to contact tech support for the service they are usually not very knowledgeable and are suspicious of any requests as if you are trying to hack them. But if you are playing at a library where they will try to help you if they can, and you give them the exact ports to open then this information may help you.

If you are connected to a DSL modem at home and having this problem then it is possible that only the Windows Firewall is blocking traffic because Internet providers like Cox, Charter Communications, or Time Warner typically do not block anything to your home connection. That is why it is dangerous to turn off your personal firewall. You can get infected very quickly when nothing is there to protect you. So this information can still help you by allowing you to adjust your Windows Firewall rules to open only the ports you need without exposing your machine completely.

[Alsatia01]

I am not sure if by provider you mean our Internet provider.

By provider, I meant publisher - my apologies. There's R2Games, armorgames, wartunedotcom, kabam, kong, aeria, etc - I asking if you knew if those publishers used the same ports as R2games did.

Yes, turning off your PC's personal firewall for a very short time might help to diagnose but it is like playing Russian roulette due to the never-ending, random, automated attacks that hit your outside interface.

I think you're overstating the risks there for the average user. I also wasn't suggesting it as long term solution, only as a diagnostic tool.

Also, the only hardware firewall most users are going to have is a simple router/modem firewall. Are you suggesting people with this issue may need to mess those settings in order fix this type of problem?

It seems unlikely that a router/modem would be the culprit, wouldn't it?

[kconrad]

Each R2Games game I checked required a different set of ports to authenticate so there must not be any kind of standard for publishers to follow.

I know you weren't suggesting it as a long term solution I just wanted to emphasize for others that it shouldn't be. By the way I did a study at a previous employer regarding frequency of attacks and at that time and with that Internet provider I found we were being hit by port scans and script kiddy attacks on average of every 2-3 minutes.

Yes, most users will have an Internet router with built-in firewall running on a consumer Internet connection. My post was intended for people who are using an Internet connection which may be open to the public but is secured using the best practices philosophy of permitting specific traffic and denying all the rest. You may run into that situation at a library, restaurant, coffee shop, school, hotel, etc.

[Reign0779]

kconrad, thanks for posting this but opening these ports did not seem to fix the problem for me. We've just installed a new enterprise firewall and I can open any ports I'd like but obviously I'd prefer to only open the minimal for Wartune. 5000-5007, 80, 8080, and 443 are all open but I'm still stuck at 49%. Any thoughts?