(repost from Friday)

I have had some very odd problems with using NetMeeting through my firewall.

NetMeeting is on a Win2K system on an internal network.  The server/firewall
is on a RH7.2 system.  I presently am using IPCHAINS for the firewall, but
with the plans to convert to IPTABLES here shortly.  As far as I can tell,
there is presently no support for H.323 (netmeeting and other packages) for
IPTABLES, but I could be wrong about that.

Temporarily, I turned off the firewall and had the masquerading turned on.
I also told the firewall software to let anything through that came from the
IP address I was making the call to.  So, I had hoped that it would work
that way until I could work through the iptables issues.

But ... it only partially worked.  The people on the other end could see and
hear me fine.  I could not hear nor see them, but the chat window would come
open, whiteboard was available, and they could share their desktop and I
could see it. I find it very odd that part of the signals would make it
through, while the rest were either blocked or did not make it in.  I
checked the message log for the system and I did not see any dropped packets
from that IP address.  It is my understanding that H.323 works on the
premise of randomly selecting a port number to spawn a connection for a
particular feature (I could be completely wrong on this .. but this is what
I believe I read some place on the web).

Any thoughts or comments?  I need to get this video conferencing thing
worked out fairly soon.  I am having them check on their end to make sure
they are sending video properly.  I should know about that shortly as well.


Randy Clarksean, Ph.D., P.E.
Leading Technology Designs, Inc.
106 North Boardman Ave.
P.O. Box N
New York Mills, MN  56567

"Excellence can be attained if you Care more than others think is wise, Risk
more than others think is safe, Dream more than others think is practical,
and Expect more than others think is possible." - Author Unknown

ph: 218-385-3750
fax:218-385-3751
email: rclark at lakesplus.com