[AG-TECH] vic fact

[Supreeya Miller]

Dear technical guys,

I apologize if I put the question in the wrong place.  I'm desperate for an
answered to some question and have sought other ways but failed.  In case
somebody who might have the knowledge about the vic program is in this group
and can help me out.

I wanted to use vic and rat program to talk (point-to-point communication)
to a friend, who was in another university.  He was behind a firewall.  The
rat program ran fine.  We both could talk.  However, the vic program had
some difficulties, though it did not show any error.  Here was the scenario:
	I could see myself and him, but he could only see himself.

We thought that the firewall at his university blocked my signals.  The
question was that the firewall allowed rat but not vic, why?

We even swapped the port that rat used for the vic program.  It did not
help.  We still got the same problem.

So, we sought help from the network admin at his university, and he found
out that vic used the specified port (command line port) to listen and use a
random high-numbered port to connect.  Since vic used a different port to
connect, that was why the signals from my machine were blocked, and my
friend could not see me.  So the network admin added a new rule to the
firewall saying that opening all the ports for any signal coming from my
machine.  As a result, my friend and I could see each other.

Can somebody verify that the network admin was right?  If I got the wrong
information, please help correcting it.

Any help provided is greatly appreciated.

Supreeya Miller
Visualization Researcher, System Administrator, and Access Grid Coordinator
Center of Higher Learning
Building 1103
Stennis Space Center, MS  39529
228-688-2900
Internal Mail Box: 10002
Supreeya.Miller at usm.edu