i hate my network

[worker201]

While I'm sitting here waiting for my network admin to call me back (could be a week!), I thought I'd pose my problem to you all.

As you can tell from the fact that I posted this, I can actually surf the web. And my bit-torrent download seems to be working as well as one would expect. But I cannot check my email (pop3: connection refused), I cannot telnet into the server (connection refused), and I cannot use my ftp program (connection refused). Nobody else that I have talked to has had any problems with their email, and I was able to telnet into my account from another computer.

Perplexing, to say the least.

Any ideas?

[Tux]

Are you on a different sector of the network to the computer that could access it?

Since you have a public IP you may be in their DMZ and they may have changed a firewall setting, stopping you from accessing that server. Your systems guy will probably be the best guy to talk to.

[worker201]

Issue was firewall.

I installed a gnome-based firewall gui called Firestarter last week. When I turned it on, it must have blanket-closed all ports. I added the bit-torrent range right away, so that's why that worked. But everything else was closed. After adding 20, 21, 23, 25, 110, and 587 to the list of allowed services, everything works again.

My network admin was less than helpful on actually determining that this was the cause, but he did ask about the firewall, which made me consider the possibility that firestarter screwed my policies.

Dumbass crisis averted

[worker201]

Oh, but now I need to find out what ports gaim needs to use to access my Yahoo and AOL IM accounts. Anybody know?

Actually, for learning purposes, a link to an web list of common port assignments would be kinda cool. Then I could figure out what all these mystery hits are.

[Tux]

These are the 'standard' port assignments.

[worker201]

For anyone who is interested, here are the port assignments I have found:

AOL - 5190
Yahoo - 5050

Allowing those ports makes the respective IM services work.
Of course you can change them to different ports as you see fit.