I need a clever solution for two Bittorrent machines behind a firewall

I need a clever solution for two Bittorrent machines behind a firewall

[Brad Morgan]

I'm using a Linux firewall with IPTables as my home firewall.  Both my son
and I are gamers and my son actually has a couple of machines so he and his
friends can game together.

Blizzard's new World of Warcraft uses a custom Bittorrent for their patches
and it looks like both my son and I will be playing this one.  At the
moment, I manually switch the target computer before going online (we only
had one login during the open beta) but since you don't know until you login
if there's a patch and we may buy two copies for simultaneous use, I'd like
to figure out how a clever way to switch the target machine "on the fly" so
we both take advantage of the increased download speed of a cooperating
Bittorrent client.  I've experienced the speed difference because our first
install didn't have any ports open and it was SLOW (over an hour).  The
second install took maybe 10 minutes to download patches with the proper
ports open and forwarded.

Anyone have any suggestions?  Pointers to solutions or other places to ask
the question will be gladly accepted.

Regards,

Brad Morgan

Re: I need a clever solution for two Bittorrent machines behind a firewall

[Jason Opperisano]

On Thu, Nov 18, 2004 at 10:03:33AM -0700, Brad Morgan wrote:
> I'm using a Linux firewall with IPTables as my home firewall.  Both my son
> and I are gamers and my son actually has a couple of machines so he and his
> friends can game together.
> 
> Blizzard's new World of Warcraft uses a custom Bittorrent for their patches
> and it looks like both my son and I will be playing this one.  At the
> moment, I manually switch the target computer before going online (we only
> had one login during the open beta) but since you don't know until you login
> if there's a patch and we may buy two copies for simultaneous use, I'd like
> to figure out how a clever way to switch the target machine "on the fly" so
> we both take advantage of the increased download speed of a cooperating
> Bittorrent client.  I've experienced the speed difference because our first
> install didn't have any ports open and it was SLOW (over an hour).  The
> second install took maybe 10 minutes to download patches with the proper
> ports open and forwarded.
> 
> Anyone have any suggestions?  Pointers to solutions or other places to ask
> the question will be gladly accepted.

i suppose it depends on the flexibility of the bittorrent client.  the
one i use has the option to specify my "incoming TCP listen port."
so each machine behind the firewall just needs to specify a different
port, and you can forward accordingly.

i'm not familiar with the game your talking about or how it implements
its BT client.

-j

--
"The only monster here is the gambling monster that has enslaved your
 mother! I call him Gamblor, and it's time to snatch your mother from
 his neon claws!"
        --The Simpsons

Re: I need a clever solution for two Bittorrent machines behind a firewall

[Kenneth Porter]

--On Thursday, November 18, 2004 10:03 AM -0700 Brad Morgan 
<B-Morgan@concentric.net> wrote:

> I'm using a Linux firewall with IPTables as my home firewall.

Take a look at "port triggering". This is a feature in the Linksys WRT54G, 
which uses uClinux under the hood. When an outbound connection is seen to a 
particular port, a port forwarding rule is installed for the internal 
client. I'm guessing this is done by monitoring the iptables logs and 
installing a custom chain on demand that's removed after a period of 
inactivity.

Re: I need a clever solution for two Bittorrent machines behind a firewall

[Jochen Radmacher]

Hi,
Kenneth Porter wrote:

> --On Thursday, November 18, 2004 10:03 AM -0700 Brad Morgan 
> <B-Morgan@concentric.net> wrote:
>
>> I'm using a Linux firewall with IPTables as my home firewall.
>
>
> Take a look at "port triggering". This is a feature in the Linksys 
> WRT54G, which uses uClinux under the hood. When an outbound connection 
> is seen to a particular port, a port forwarding rule is installed for 
> the internal client. I'm guessing this is done by monitoring the 
> iptables logs and installing a custom chain on demand that's removed 
> after a period of inactivity.
>
I'm using a simple script to detect when someone connects to the 
battle.net . The basic Idea is to check for /proc/net/ip_conntrack for 
battle.net connections. Here is a simple version which has to be run 
every n minutes.
Greets
 Jochen Radmacher
---- cut here ----
#!/bin/bash
CONNECTED=0;
#Bugfix for netfilter bug 227
IPADDR=$(/sbin/ifconfig | grep -i "ppp0" -A 1|grep "inet addr"|cut -d " 
" -f 12|
cut -d ":" -f 2)

#you can repeat the following  4 lines with different argument for grep 
to make an 'OR'
egrep '213\.248\.106\.' /proc/net/ip_conntrack |grep $IPADDR >/dev/null
if [ "$?" -eq "0" ]; then
CONNECTED=1;
fi

if [ "$CONNECTED" -eq "1" ]; then
#do something
iptables -A ....
else
iptables -D ....
fi