[TriLUG] gaim/ircd help

Brian Henning brian at strutmasters.com
Thu Oct 12 17:35:16 EDT 2006


Hm.  Forgive me if I'm telling you things you already know, but your 
replies make it sound like you're confusing services.

IRC =/=/= "Instant Messaging"

(that is, "not congruent"..  IRC is relatively instant, but.. well, 
anyway:  )

IRC is one form of real-time text communication.  One could call it a 
form of "instant messaging" and not be entirely wrong.  However, Yahoo, 
MSN, AIM, and others are not IRC.  They have their own protocols, ports, 
etc.

None of the IM services I've ever used require any particular inbound 
firewalling, as long as your firewall is set to allow 
RELATED,ESTABLISHED.  Only in the case of things like direct-connect 
might specific inbound rules be necessary.

For all the "commercial" protocols (AIM, Yahoo, MSN...), gaim knows how 
to get connected, as it simply has to resolve one or two hostnames that 
point at servers run by the companies (and that's why there isn't a 
server option for those services).  IRC, on the other hand, is not 
centralized, and to connect, one must know the hostname of an IRC 
service.  Some common ones are freenode, EFnet, and DALnet.

If your kid is trying to get onto one of the commercial IM services, 
setting up a test case using a local IRC server isn't likely to tell you 
anything useful.

Hope all that was somewhat helpful :-)

~Brian


Joseph Mack NA3T wrote:
> On Thu, 12 Oct 2006, Cristobal Palmer wrote:
> 
>> Sorry to post two different replies.
>>
>> What protocol(s) do(es) the windows client your son uses and the 
>> service he's trying to connect to speak? Ie. are you sure you're using 
>> a client that can actually speak to that service?
> 
> I don't think so, but this is one of the things I'll check. He's gone to 
> 3 IRC providers (Yahoo for which he's got the client trillian), MSN and 
> someother one to get accounts and client software. Two have not worked 
> so far. I assume he's got the appropriate client for the server. The 
> fact the two in a row didn't work made me think that something else 
> might be going on.
> 
> which lead me to wonder about...
> 
>> Do you have any interesting firewalling going on that might be getting 
>> in the way?
> 
> I have a firewall that blocks any incoming connections, but allows all 
> connect requests from inside to get out. Do the protocols require a hole 
> in the firewall?
> 
> Joe
> 

-- 
----------------
Brian A. Henning
strutmasters.com
336.597.2397x238
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