This is a forum where you can ask Kiri anything. She will answer to the best of her ability. Others may answer as well, but Kiri will try to answer all reasonable questions. Do not feel limited by topic.
I was just wondering if there was a way for me to connect to br from school.
The county runs a firewall which won't allow telnet to access another port. So consequently i can't connect to Br. Is there a way i could go around that?
Someone said that i could do it if someone hosted a proxy, is there a way i can do that on my home computer?
Try connecting from the java telnet appl on mudconnector.com
Or, you can telnet to another server without a port (if you know of/have another shell account) and telnet from there. Double telnet sucks, but it satisfies ya!
Scavenger might have some additional ideas, he's our resident tech support type.
Well, the Java solution won't work. Even if you download the Java app, the computer you are using it on will still try to make a connection over port 8000. I think it's safe to assume that your school has blocked all attempts to communicate over ports other than the standard, approved ports.
What you need to be able to do is connect to an outside computer over a normal port and then have that computer connect to BR on port 8000.
First you have to find out what ports are open on your school's computers? Can you telnet or SSH to other computers on the standard ports (23 and 22, respectively)? If so, you are in good shape. If not, you still aren't suck.
If you can telnet or SSH to other computers, all you need is an account on a remote computer. (ISPs sometimes give you shell accounts if you ask or maybe you have a friend with a Unix/Linux box that they leave on all the time?) Log into that account, then telnet to BR on port 8000 as usual.
If you can't telnet or SSH out, it becomes more tricky. What you have to do then is have a computer on the outside set up a special program that listens for non-standard traffic on a standard port. (For example, the program would be listening on port 80 (the standard web traffic port) but it wouldn't repond to web requests. It would let you log in with telnet instead.) Then that program could forward your traffic to BR on the proper port.
There may be other ways to do this too. Anyone else have any ideas?
That's still assuming that his school hasn't blocked the telnet and/or SSH ports. Hopefully they haven't (after all, they have many, many legitimate uses). But if they have blocked those ports, someone offering an account will only be part of the solution. And I will be of little help with the other part. Sorry.
I used it once, took awhile to figure out, but it broke through the firewall and enabled connection. I got a lot of lag when I used it, but you could at least chat.
It basically masks everything as an HTTP call and so it uses the HTTP port which I will assume is open since you have internet access.
Well, most basic way is to get the proper client for each port and try connecting to a known computer on the outside. For example, to test the standard Telnet port (23) you could fire up a standard telnet program and try connecting to magic.lib.msu.edu. If you get a screen welcoming you to Michigan State University Libraries, the telnet port is open.
You can do the same to test other ports too. FTP to ftp.download.com, SSH to www-master.debian.org (although you won't have a username/password to really get in here), etc.
There probably is a slicker way to probe what ports are open and how they have been opened, but I am not familiar with how to do that offhand. Maybe someone else would like to jump in here?
The simplest way for you to find out what ports are open on the firewall would be to just ask your network administrator. There's no really obvious reason for him or her to withhold that information, especially since it is so readily verifiable. If you're afraid of rousing suspicion, make up some reasonably innocuous purpose for asking, like running into a gopher server once at some library you can't remember offhand that ran on a non-standard port and being curious whether or not it would be banned. Note that this will not work if the administrator knows perfectly well you have no idea what gopher is or what would be a non-standard port for it; however, I think you can probably come up with something that would pass muster with your particular school's usage guidelines.
That's funny slart, cause i'm the "2nd" Administrator at my school, so really he is supposed to look over me, but he doesn't give a crap The other funny thing is alot of the times i have to teach him stuff, sad actually, so my guess is he wouldn't know, but can't hurt to ask Thankies!
Ah, That person. Well, that person is rather hard to get in touch with =|, plus there would be an inquiry as to why an "administrator" would be trying to access an alternate port.... *shrug*
but, i'll try scav's way and if that doesn't tell me anything, i'll work on squeezing some info out Thanks again.
The Cardboard Tube Samurai!
But due to the weekend we'll have to wait for the answer to your solutions Scav 
