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studiophi

Radu, I choose you!

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I was recently banned, and was directed by el.exe to post my story here.

 

First of all, I am only able to play EL because my connection is tunneled via an SSH connection to my Ubuntu box. I am fully aware of what terms this violates with my various ISPs, but am not currently aware of this as an infraction of any of the EL rules. Please contact me if you desire further explanation.

 

As mentioned in the topic title & description, I was banned by Radu at 6:45 pm EST, 12/12/2005. I believe this banning to be unecessary, let alone premature. I was not given a thorough explanation of what the true reason Radu had to ban me, although I believe I deserve to have received one.

 

My brief conversation goes as follows:

 

[PM from radu: wtf]

radu: hello?

radu: Mr. ZOltok

[PM from radu: are you a bot?]

[PM from radu: ok, bye]

[PM to radu: what?]

[PM from radu: I said bye, you are banned]

[PM to radu: what makes you think i am a bot?]

[PM from radu: you tell me]

[PM to radu: and what am i banned for?]

[PM from radu: using an illegal client]

[PM to radu: dude, i'm not the one accusing people of being bots]

[PM to radu: it's not illegal. i downloaded it from eternal-lands.com]

[PM from radu: sure, sure]

[PM from radu: well, you had your chance to admit it]

[PM to radu: okay, then where is the evidence that it's illegal?]

You were booted by radu!

Disconnected from server!

Press Alt-x to close the game

 

As you see, I have been accused of using an "illegal client." I am absolutely sure that this is false, unless illegal clients were distributed publicly from eternal-lands.com yesterday in place of "legal" ones. I will be happy to prove, if possible, that I was using a "legal" client at the time Radu falsely accused me of not doing so.

 

Thank you for your time. I'll see you in cyberspace.

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The ban was because we got a LOT of 'red flags' from your IP. However, you didn't mention anything about a SSH connection. So give me more details about it, and what is it's purpose, and we'll see if it can be the cause of the red flags we got, in which case we will unban you.

 

P.S. The rule you violated was using a proxy to connect to the game (proxy which altered the information sent to the server). However, in some cases, we are willing to make excaptions, as long as you address the issue of your proxy corrupting the information.

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The ban was because we got a LOT of 'red flags' from your IP. However, you didn't mention anything about a SSH connection. So give me more details about it, and what is it's purpose, and we'll see if it can be the cause of the red flags we got, in which case we will unban you.

 

I use an SSH tunnel, through Putty, because TCP port 2000 is blocked on my campus. The tunnel forwards all traffic from TCP 2000 to TCP 1080, which is then sent to my Ubuntu box at home. The Ubuntu box acts as my go-between between the Eternal Lands server, eternal-lands.network-studio.com:2000, and my pc at school. Thus the IP you should be seeing for me is 71.240.58.206. It is dynamic, and thus will change from time to time.

 

As I was unaware that sending encrypted traffic through a tunnel would raise the "red flags" you speak of, I didn't anticipate the confrontation with Radu or the subsequent IP banning. I am interested in what these red flags are and your methods for interpreting them as use of an illegal client is.

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I don't know how Putty does the tunneling (I use it only as a SSH client) , and obviously we can not see that the traffic is encrypted. However, for some reason or another, the traffic sent to the server from your rely is not right (the datastream is corrupted, which caused MANY (almost 1K) errors in our logs).

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For putty to tunnel, open a connection, right-click the titlebar, click "Change Settings..."

In the settings window, look under Connection >> SSH >> Tunnels.

 

If you have another method of tunneling, I'd be happy to test it. I have been looking at the Zebedee software, which may perhaps be better, but I can't really test it with a banned IP, and I am unsure of how to correctly forward the port to the EL server in zebedee.

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Ok, I unbanned your IP.

Please test a different way to connect, maybe write your own tunneling software.

 

I don't have the tunnels option, perhaps I am using an older version.

Did you use any keepalive value?

Edited by Entropy

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Hrm. Zebedee connects erratically, and doesn't seem to work well.

Yes, I'd like to write my own tunneling software, and I've found a wonderful market of college students behind restrictive firewalls. Unfortunately, I am not a programmer. I am simply a freshman studying computer science at a school in the middle of a corn field in Pennsylvania.

 

Would it be possible to see my 1,000 errors, or at least a basis of what is happening going outbound from the ubuntu box?

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We don't log the traffic itself, but contact me in the game and I'll tell you (you can use putty for a while, but try to find an alternative soon).

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Would it be possible to see my 1,000 errors, or at least a basis of what is happening going outbound from the ubuntu box?

check out something like ethereal, then you can log all network traffic leaving your computer on your own. it might take a bit of work to use it remotely, though, the local GUI is usually easier to use

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Right. Since setting openssh's log level to DEBUG3 involves shutting down ssh, the medium by which I'm able to connect to the server in the first place, I can't enable logging.

 

If anybody else has a way by which to change my packet size/stop null packets from happening, feel free to reply. Otherwise, I feel like I'm wasting my time here. The gameplay just isn't worth investing this much time into something that I'm not even sure is broken

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Even though the gameplay might not be worth it, you might still want to investigate this issue because I am resonably sure that most of the MMORPGs also have similar systems in place, and they will also tag you. From what I heard, in the big, commercial MMOs, they are much more 'nazi' when it comes to that than we are.

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I doubt that.

 

Reason? Case in point:

My roomate has been using the same setup as mine, same ubuntu box and everything, to play WoW for weeks. He has had no problems. At this point, I'm considering joining him.

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With all due respect young sir obviously you are not giving yourself the chance to work something out, now you sound like you are getting all uppety and high and mighty because things aren't going your way, this game takes a strong hearted person with a sense of humour to play :) please chill bud i'm sure there is a way around things

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With all due respect, "With all due respect" is a stupid phase that basically translates to "Please excuse me for acting like I have no respect at all."

 

Now back to the topic at hand:

I play online games to relax. I don't play them because I wish to figure out the subtle nuances of packet transmission from an SSH tunnel. If there is a way around this, I'm not likely to find it here. I've had enough of a learning experience thwarting a campus firewall in order to play this game. To learn that I must find another way because my method, a method unfamiliar to the creator of the game itself, isn't good enough because it "raises red flags" is a slap in the face.

 

I've had a strong enough heart and I've been pretty good humored so far, but my patience and good humor for this game has run out. If this is what I must go through to, as I said, relax, then it's not worth my time, patience, strong heart, energy, etc.

 

However, I am interested in seeing if somebody else has had any similar experience, advice, instruction to share. I will continue to keep an eye on this thread for one week. Reader: If you have a stronger heart than I, or even a tunneling/routing method that doesn't result in confusing messages and the ensuing banning that I received, step forward now.

 

- Zoltok

 

"So long and thanks for all the fish." -Douglas Adams

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Studiofi your manners are atrocious,I was trying to be polite and you throw that back at me!! You have made a great start :)

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Suggestion, use a command line ssh client. drop putty.

I have to use a similar system from work or when loged into the vpn there. never been flaged before.

Infact its ment to be transpernt, so i carnt see how this could have flaged you at all, isnt putty just a front end?

Edited by Zep

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on second thoughts ill pm you a url for an ssh client.

If you need command line instructions, feel free to PM me. Maybe we can test on the test server with it, grab a mod for 20 mins and see if that is suitable.

Edited by Zep

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I would try cygwin with OpenSSH, I know that there is a ready-for-use OpenSSH-client for Windows based on Cygwin.

 

I don't get your setup (too little info I guess), but I think Cygwin is worth a shot (with X.org and OpenSSH).

 

I have a lot of network-troubles when using PuTTY or plink at the office, so I reverted to Cygwin for everything SSH-related. Works like a charm.

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If this is how you treat your users, then Adieu, Radu Privantu.

I got what I paid for.

 

Mr. Steven Farkas, perhaps you do not understand that every online community has it's own rules which are arbitrary, decided by it's creators. One of our rules we have here is no modified clients and no bots (with some exceptions). While by using a SSH tunneling system you did not technically break a rule, your client was behaving in a non standard manner which is, obviously, suspect. Since you did not respond imediately while I was talking with you in the game (it took you a few minutes to respond) and you did not mention about this SSH tunneling that you have, the only alternative I had was to ban your IP and character.

After you did explain the issue here on the forums, I did unban you and explained that the method you are using is incompatible with our game (packets get fragmented, information lost) and suggested you to find some other alternative to connect to our server.

If you believe you can get a better support from a free MMORPG, let me know.

Edited by Entropy

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Anyway, this thread served it's purpose so it will be locked. If you are interested in help with some other tunneling program, please make a new thread in the Help forum.

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