Let's Chat About Firewall Issues Working with mIRC Behind a Firewall Ron Pacchiano
Q.
I have been using mIRC on my home PC for a few years. I find it to be an invaluable tool for keeping in touch with people and also find it to be a useful research tool. I just started working for a new company and thought that it would be useful to have access to my mIRC clients while at the office. So I tried to install mIRC on the PC at my office, but I just can't seem to get it to work. I believe I installed it correctly, but no matter what I try, it still won't connect to the mIRC service. My Internet access and e-mail all function fine, so I know it's not my connection. What am I missing?
A.
To accurately solve these types of problems it is always helpful to send us as much information as possible. Some specific information about your network environment and perhaps a copy of any error messages you might have received would be helpful in solving this problem. In spite of this, though, I think this problem is straightforward enough that I can offer you an explanation for your current difficulties.
Since you're using mIRC (which is a Windows application for handling the Internet Relay Chat protocol) on your home PC, I think it's a safe bet that you installed it correctly at the office. Further, since you have access to the web and e-mail at your office, we can also rule out any problems with your Internet connection. This strongly implies to me that your company is likely using a firewall to block the ports that mIRC makes use of when establishing a connection.
This isn't an uncommon practice in a corporate environment. Many companies have strict firewall and security policies in place and seriously frown upon employees installing software on their workstations without first gaining authorization from the network administrator. An application like mIRC is typically blocked by the company firewall for a variety of reasons. In addition to being a potential security risk, applications like mIRC have a tendency to drain employee productivity levels. Not to mention the fact that IRC has a reputation for hosting some pretty sexually-explicate sites that could leave the company liable to a potential lawsuit.
However, if you can prove to your company's network administrator that you have a business need for the mIRC client and can also get permission from your manager to use it, then IT might be willing to open up the necessary ports on the firewall for you. I say might because mIRC potentially could use a very wide range of ports to take full advantage of its capabilities.
For starters, mIRC makes use of UDP port 113 for establishing your identity. Then you'll need to open up TCP ports 6660 - 6669. I believe that port 6667 is the one generally used, but to be safe you should probably open all of them. The area where your network administrator is undoubtedly going to have the biggest concern is regarding mIRC's DCC functions. To use this feature, ports 1024 - 5000 will need to be configured to allow mIRC traffic to pass over it. If this is something your admin's willing to entertain, then he or she can find more detailed information on mIRC and its port requirements at http://www.mirc.co.uk/help/proxies.html.
Once these port issues have been resolved, you should have no further trouble accessing mIRC on you office PC. Good luck!
Q.
I have a cable modem Internet connection that is shared with two PCs. Both PCs are connected to the network via RJ-45 Ethernet cables. The cable modem is connected to a NETGEAR RP614 router. One of the computers is running Windows 2000 Professional, while the other is running Windows XP Home Edition. The latter machine is the one giving me a problem.
The Internet connection on my Windows 2000 Professional PC is running just as well as it always has, yet for some reason when I use the Internet on my Windows XP Home Edition computer, that same connection is extremely slow. Web pages can take almost a minute to load and occasionally time out. This behavior is consistent whether or not the other PC is also online.
Both PCs can ping each other and I can print over the network without any problems. I have uninstalled and re-installed the network adapters, the
modem, and the TCP/IP protocol. I also tried upgrading the network drivers, but that didn't change anything. I even tried moving the slow PC to a different port on the hub hoping that it might just be a bad port. It wasn't. As a final act of desperation, I contacted my ISP and had them perform diagnostics on my cable connection, but according to them everything checked out just fine.
The most frustrating thing is that this isn't a new configuration. I have had all of this equipment in place for almost a year now, and everything worked fine until now. Any suggestions on what I can try next to resolve this problem would be greatly appreciated.
A.
Well, I have good news and bad news for you. The good news is I don't think your problem has anything to do with your hardware or your network configuration. Just the fact that all of this hardware was purchased, installed, and had been working for over a year pretty much rules that out. Now, could something have happened to the hardware to cause this? It's possible, but the odds are against it.
This brings us to the bad news. From the way you described it, to me it sounds like the problem has more to do with a software incompatibility or resource/memory shortage. Unfortunately, trying to isolate exactly what that could be is extremely difficult and would be almost impossible for me to instruct you on with the space we have available here.
Typically the cause of this type of problem usually comes down to identifying exactly when things started to go wrong. You'll usually find that this corresponds to a time when a new piece of software was installed, a driver was updated, or a service pack was applied. The best way of preventing this in the future is to use a utility like Microsoft's System Restore before installing or updating anything on the PC.
With System Restore you can revert your system back to a previous good configuration in the event of a problem. System Restore monitors changes to the system and some application files, and it automatically creates easily identified recovery points. These are created daily and at the time of significant system events (such as when a new application or driver is installed). You can also create and name your own restore points at any time.
While this might be helpful for you in the future, it unfortunately does nothing for your immediate problem. This is where the real headache comes in. If you can't isolate when the situation changed, the easiest thing to do would be to simply wipe out and redo your laptop with a clean installation of Windows XP Home Edition.
One of the problems I've discovered over the years with Windows-based computers is that they religiously need to be erased and "reset" on almost a yearly basis in order to keep them running at peak efficiency. You see, over time Windows becomes bloated with numerous utilities, applications, driver updates, security patches, and so on that have a tendency make the system unstable. Regrettably, resetting the system is usually the only way to effectively rid yourself of these mysterious problems. It's unquestionably a hassle, but it will typically give you the best results.
The only other suggestion I can make before taking on such a daunting task would be to thoroughly scan your system for viruses. The symptoms you described are definitely exhibiting virus-like behavior and, at the very least, are worth investigating. A few years ago I had a similar problem. For some reason, my server had slowed to a crawl and no matter what I tried, I just couldn't seem to repair it.
Then one day I was out with another technician working on a client's mail server when I noticed that the symptoms it was displaying were identical to those I was experiencing. We soon discovered that this server was infected with a variant of the Code Red virus. Sure enough, when I got home that evening, I scanned my server and discovered that it too was infected with Code Red. I downloaded and ran the virus removal utility and within minutes my server was back to normal. I hope this helps. Good Luck!
