[AG-TECH] AccessGrid Venue Server installation - network problems

[Sebastian Tabarce]

Hello!

I'm trying to install a Venue Server and a Bridge Server. So, I have 
installed two machines and everything works fine inside our network.
Then I spoked with the network administrators and asked them to make my 
machines visible to the outside in order that people can connect to my 
server from anywhere.
The machines that I'm using have addresses like 192.168..... They also 
have assigned names, like silicon.fe.up.pt and poly.fe.up.pt.
What they did was that they linked two IP adresses (visible to the 
outside of the network) to my machines, like 193.136.28.183 and 
.184...... , opened ports 8000, 8002, 8004, 8006 for the Venue Server 
and 50000-50010 for the Bridge Server and they told me to use those 
addresses. However, the machines are not visible to the outside with 
their names.
So, people try to connect to my Venue Server at 
https://193.136.28.183:8000/Venues/default. I can see them trying to 
connect, they even appear for a short time in my venue client, but they 
never manage to connect to the server. I suspect this is because my 
server reports itself as https://silicon.fe.up.pt:8000/Venues/default 
and that is why everything gets mixed up when they try to connect.
I know that it would be simple just to make this machine visible to the 
outside as silicon.fe.up.pt and see what happens, but, due to the 
network policies applied here at the university and to the fact that the 
administrators are damn sttuborn I can't do that. To them, they already 
made me a favor by assigning those IP's and opening the ports 
temporarily to test this, which would have required some paperwork from 
me to be done, that had to be approved in 3 places, I think some of you 
know the drill......they say everything works fine and from here it's 
not their problem........but I think that the problem is that the 
machine should be visible on the internet as silicon.fe.up.pt.
So, let me know what you think of this....

Also, another question........what ports should be opened for the Venue 
Client?... Because I have a case where people can connect to the server, 
shared presentations work fine, however audio and video does not work 
for them, altough for other people it works fine (this was tested with a 
different server of course :) ).

And last, is there any Venue Server that also provides a Bridge Server 
without the need to create an account and stuff that could be used only 
for testing purposes.

Thanks!


Sebastian Tabarce
Junior Researcher
INESC Porto
Campus da FEUP - Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, nº 378 
4200-465 Porto  Portugal
E-mail : stabarce at inescporto.pt
Web : http://www.inescporto.pt