I am running a slackware 8.1 linux release, with gShield firewall, and iptables, I am not expert in linux but I am able to get around, and that. Most games up to this point I have been able to forward the ports, and they work, but with C&C Generals I setup all the ports, but I still can't connect, their readme says the follow: 2.10. Firewall/NAT Port Number Info: The game will need to talk to external servers that use the following port numbers. These ports need to be open in your firewall in order to play on Generals Online: TCP ports: 80, 6667, 28910, 29900, 29920 UDP ports: 4321, 27900 If your firewall does not allow outgoing packets to open ports to incoming traffic, or you experience problems connecting to other players, you will have to specify which port you want Command & Conquer Generals to use for communicating with other players. To do this, perform the following steps. Go to your “My Documents” directory, and go to the “Command and Conquer Generals Data” directory. Right click on the options.ini file and choose "Edit." Look for the "FirewallPortOverride" entry. If you don’t see this entry, add it as a new line. Then assign the port you want to use to the port override entry. After making this change, this entry should look like: FirewallPortOverride = XXXX Where XXXX is the port number you have chosen. You will need to open the chosen port in your firewall for communication with players external to your firewall or NAT device. If you use the port override feature, the port you have chosen can not be masqueraded by a NAT device. So I setup the forwards in the config file(forwards, in Firewall/conf) 0/0 tcp 0/0:6667 192.168.73.2:6667 and so on, reload the firewall, and I can't connect, so any ideas on what is the problem? and just a note, I am not doing the online, just direct connect to another friends ip, who everyone else can connect to him, and when I plug my non-linux computer into the cable modem instead of the firewall, all is well

Hi Mike, i can play online. But i cant connect to a frind on direct connect. :-( He is connect to my IP cant connect, too. Online i can play :-))) My iptables: iptables -A INPUT -s 192.168.1.10 -p udp --destination-port 4321 -j ACCEPT iptables -A INPUT -s 192.168.1.10 -p udp --destination-port 27900 -j ACCEPT iptables -A INPUT -s 192.168.1.10 -p tcp --destination-port 80 -j ACCEPT iptables -A INPUT -s 192.168.1.10 -p tcp --destination-port 6667 -j ACCEPT iptables -A INPUT -s 192.168.1.10 -p tcp --destination-port 28910 -j ACCEPT iptables -A INPUT -s 192.168.1.10 -p tcp --destination-port 29900 -j ACCEPT iptables -A INPUT -s 192.168.1.10 -p tcp --destination-port 29920 -j ACCEPT iptables -A OUTPUT -p udp --destination-port 4321 -d 192.168.1.10 -j ACCEPT iptables -A OUTPUT -p udp --destination-port 27900 -d 192.168.1.10 -j ACCEPT les -A OUTPUT -p udp --destination-port 27900 -d 192.168.1.10 -j ACCEPT iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --destination-port 80 -d 192.168.1.10 -j ACCEPT iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --destination-port 6667 -d 192.168.1.10 -j ACCEPT iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --destination-port 28910 -d 192.168.1.10 -j ACCEPT iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --destination-port 29900 -d 192.168.1.10 -j ACCEPT iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --destination-port 29920 -d 192.168.1.10 -j ACCEPT Have fun to play online. Plase can everywon write me to i can play direct connect. Thanks alot. Greets Oli

i´ve got a similar problem, i have a home network with 2 pc, the server running windows me and internet connection sharing and the client one running windows xp. when i try to play generals from the client machine it gives me a time out error and i can´t join the game, the only way that works it´s by connecting the xp machine to the modem directly. so, i want to know if there´s a way to play generals without all this trouble. i mean, mapping the ports or something with ICS. with other games i have no problems joining direct ip games, even with age of empires when i play on the msn zone any hints to solve this problem? thanks in advance

I too am having a similar problem. I have a machine running XP sitting behind a Netgear router. I have opened all the ports listed both by the firewall documentation and mike's message, to no avail. It works fine when I hook my machine up directly to the DSL modem however. I have run a packet sniffer, and the only ports that I see it even trying to use are UDP 8086 and 8088, regardless of the "port override" setting that EA recommends in the options.ini. I've run the packet sniffer throughout a complete game, and those are the only two ports that I can see being used. When I hook my machine back up to the Netgear router and try to connect again, it still shows all traffic being sent out on UDP port 8086. I set up forwarding rules for this port and tried again. Now I can get communication between both machines on port 8086, but the game still times out. Anybody else have any ideas?

hello, a friend told me he has a network with 2 pcs, but both running xp and he can join games from both, but i think its because xp has built in nat, so it fowards the ports directly... i also have windows me on the server, and xp on the client, i can´t put xp on the server because it will run too slow since its a pentium 1

I have come across the same problem trying to play direct connect. I have a linux internet machine running kernel 2.2.24 (redhat 7.0). I thought I could get around it with packet forwarding. I set it up like so: # forward all traffic from server machine to my-machine # mark all traffic from server machine ipchains -I forward -d server-ip/32 -s my-ip/32 -j MASQ # forward all marked packets to my machine ipchains -I input -s server-ip/32 -m 3 ipmasqadm mfw -I -m 3 -r 192.168.my.ip A friend of mine setup server for me and he says that after I did this he could see me join but I still do not get anything on my side... Maybe the client (me) sends the server its ip and then server tries to open a port on the clients ip. If this is the case the client sends the local net ip (192.168...) which server can never open so the client never gets a reply and there is nothing we can do... This is just speculation though. Anyone had any more luck with this?