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Re: testing open ports on the user's side



On Fri, 28 May 2004 09:59:20 -0400
Emma Jane Hogbin <emmajane@xtrinsic.com> wrote:

> On Thu, May 27, 2004 at 10:32:20PM -0700, Alvin Oga wrote:
> > > I'm working on a web site that includes streamed rich media files.
> > > I need a way to test to see which ports the user can access if
> > > they're behind a firewall. I'm guess that I need to try and send
> > > them an object (a picture maybe?) on one of the ports I need
> > > information about and then see if the picture is received or not.
> > 
> > any secure site will only allow port 80 or port 443 for web ...
> 
> It's not the server I'm testing, it's the user. Some streaming video
> (RealPlayer) doesn't come through on regular ports so the client wants
> a little app that they can ping at the *user* to figure out if they
> should send RealPlayer or something else. (I'm working on an
> auto-detection"suite" and my partner is working on the associated
> wizard/help files.) Basically we don't want to present the user with
> the option of RealPlayer if the port isn't even open for the user to
> receive the stream.
> 
> Not sure if that makes sense yet. It's not so much a Debian question
> as it is a general ports on the web question.

In that case, all good ISPs allow connections on just about any port,
provided the connection is initiated from the user side. 

So, I would think rather than trying to ping the user, you need to get
the user's comp to try pulling a small file from the appropriate
port on the server. Even something like a little javascript pulling
some text from a url such as http://www.example.com:5190 (where 5190 is
replaced with the port for RealPlayer) would work to test this, I would
think.

HTH,
Jacob

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