RealAudio and Firewalls

Release Notes: RealAudio and Firewalls

Configuring the RealAudio Player 2.0 for Firewalls

In order to work with some firewall proxies, it is necessary for the player to communicate with the proxy before hooking up to a RealAudio server outside the firewall. The RealAudio Player 2.0 supports this interaction.

Contact your firewall administrator to find out what server (or host) the proxy is on and what port number the proxy is listening on. Then you can configure the RealAudio Player 2.0 to work with the proxy by editing the proxy preferences:

In your RealAudio Player 2.0, pull down the View menu, select Preferences.
In the dialog box that appears, select the Proxy tab. The following options will appear:
- Use Proxy. By checking this box, you instruct the RealAudio Player to connect to the Server via a proxy. You MUST specify a host name and port number if you check this option.
- Host. The host name is the domain name or IP Address of the proxy server. If you are behind a firewall and do not know the host name of your proxy server, ask your firewall administrator.
- Port. You must specify what port the RealAudio Player should use to communicate with the proxy server. If you are behind a firewall and do not know the port number of your proxy server, ask your firewall administrator.
- No Proxy for: [Host 1, Host2...]. You may specify certain local hosts (domain names or IP Addresses) with which you do not need to communicate via the proxy server. Your firewall administrator may provide you with appropriate local hosts.

Additional Player settings

Receiving RealAudio as TCP-Only

If you have only a packet-filter firewall and your firewall administrator doesn't wish to configure the firewall to accept UDP packets from outside of the firewall, you can configure the RealAudio Player 2.0 to stream audio using TCP only. To configure the RealAudio Player 2.0 to do this, use the following steps:

In your RealAudio Player 2.0, pull down the View menu, select Preferences.
In the dialog box that appears, select the Network tab.
Where it asks "Receive Audio Via:", select "TCP."
Click OK.

Receiving UDP Through a Single Port

The UDP option in RealAudio may offer better sound quality than TCP on slower connections, so TCP-only may not be desirable. The RealAudio Player 2.0 also offers the ability to limit Players inside some firewalls to receive UDP on only one port, which makes router configuration easier than allowing the RealAudio 1.0 protocol UDP port range.

To configure this, do the following:

In your RealAudio Player 2.0, pull down the View menu, select Preferences.
In the dialog box that appears, select the Network tab.
Select "Use Specified UDP" and enter the UDP port where you wish to receive RealAudio UDP streams.
Click OK.

Continue to Generic Packet-Filtering Firewalls

Table of Contents