FAQ: Configuring Norton Personal Firewall
by Justin Mette · in General Game Discussion · 12/29/2002 (7:00 am) · 4 replies
We have had two reports and subsequently proven that Norton Personal Firewall will interfere with access to the Ranking Server from within Orbz. In particular, you will recieve the error message "Server Unavailable, try again later" when trying to sign on with a ranked user name and password.
We are working hard to find a way to configure Norton to allow Rank Server traffic but as of yet have no solution. For now, if you want to have a rank in Orbz, you will have to disable the Norton Personal Firewall software while you play the game.
We will post a configuration solution in this thread as soon as we find it.
We are working hard to find a way to configure Norton to allow Rank Server traffic but as of yet have no solution. For now, if you want to have a rank in Orbz, you will have to disable the Norton Personal Firewall software while you play the game.
We will post a configuration solution in this thread as soon as we find it.
#2
12/29/2002 (10:20 am)
I know with ZoneAlarm you can allow certain programs to have access to connect to any domain. This is what I use at home and is what I do to allow Orbz access to the internet. Maybe there is some way to do this for NPF...?
#3
Here is a health HTTP response from the Rank Server, when Norton is disabled:
<<<<< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
<<<<< Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
<<<<< Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2002 22:43:02 GMT
<<<<< MicrosoftOfficeWebServer: 5.0_Pub
<<<<< Content-Length: 16
<<<<< Content-Type: text/html
Here is a version of the same response, but with Norton enabled:
<<<<< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
<<<<< Transfer-Encoding: chunked
<<<<< Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
<<<<< Date: Sat, 28 Dec 2002 22:46:24 GMT
<<<<< MicrosoftOfficeWebServer: 5.0_Pub
<<<<< ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~: ~~
<<<<< Content-Type: text/html
<<<<< Expires: Sat, 28 Dec 2002 22:45:24 GMT
Notice the "Transfer-Encoding: chunked" header section and the strange "~~~~~~~~~~~~~~: ~~" section and finally, there is no "Content-Length" section.
We do have a custom encryption scheme for our messages and are investigating if Norton doesn't like some of the characters. We are also trying to figure out how to tell Norton to stop processing our requests and responses and let them go through untouched.
Any ideas?
12/29/2002 (10:31 am)
We were indeed able to get Norton to communicate with the Rank Server by doing what you guys are suggesting. Our real problem now is that Norton (and only Norton so far) seems to muck with the HTTP header on requests and responses and turns them into an encoding type of chunked - which Orbz and the Rank Server don't handle gracefully.Here is a health HTTP response from the Rank Server, when Norton is disabled:
<<<<< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
<<<<< Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
<<<<< Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2002 22:43:02 GMT
<<<<< MicrosoftOfficeWebServer: 5.0_Pub
<<<<< Content-Length: 16
<<<<< Content-Type: text/html
Here is a version of the same response, but with Norton enabled:
<<<<< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
<<<<< Transfer-Encoding: chunked
<<<<< Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
<<<<< Date: Sat, 28 Dec 2002 22:46:24 GMT
<<<<< MicrosoftOfficeWebServer: 5.0_Pub
<<<<< ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~: ~~
<<<<< Content-Type: text/html
<<<<< Expires: Sat, 28 Dec 2002 22:45:24 GMT
Notice the "Transfer-Encoding: chunked" header section and the strange "~~~~~~~~~~~~~~: ~~" section and finally, there is no "Content-Length" section.
We do have a custom encryption scheme for our messages and are investigating if Norton doesn't like some of the characters. We are also trying to figure out how to tell Norton to stop processing our requests and responses and let them go through untouched.
Any ideas?
#4
I think this is a little out of my area of expertise but have you tried to add Orbz under NPFs "Internet Access Control" manually e.g. don't use the automatic configure? Maybe you could select some property in there to stop it modifying that ports data. Or maybe you can configure it's ruleset, maybe there's something in there.
Just guessing to be honest.
I'll have a little search later, see if I can find anything relevant for you.
- Melv.
12/29/2002 (11:30 am)
Justin,I think this is a little out of my area of expertise but have you tried to add Orbz under NPFs "Internet Access Control" manually e.g. don't use the automatic configure? Maybe you could select some property in there to stop it modifying that ports data. Or maybe you can configure it's ruleset, maybe there's something in there.
Just guessing to be honest.
I'll have a little search later, see if I can find anything relevant for you.
- Melv.
Associate Melv May
Does adding the rank server details as a trusted zone not work in NPF? You should be able to enter the server DNS name or IP as trusted and NPF will ignore any traffic for that address, in theory.
Personal Firewall / Internet Zone Control / Trusted
- Melv.