Playing Behind a University Firewall that Chokes Traffic

[LuckyStrike]

I'm in a bit of distress right now. I started playing poker online this summer. Currently, I'm grinding my way up through the microlimits at Pacific. I came back to the dorms a couple days ago and found that I can no longer play at Pacific because the university firewall restricts traffic so badly that I frequently time out when the action is on me.

So, my question to you guys is: has anyone ever defeated a university firewall for poker playing purposes? I've been reading up, and it seems like I have two choices: begging the network admins to open up the port that Pacific uses or doing some arcane HTTP tunneling crap. Can anyone even tell me what port Pacific and most other gaming sites use for a starting point?

[Nemesis]

get a dial up connection or move off campus

[NLSoldier]

[ QUOTE ]
get a dial up connection or move off campus

[/ QUOTE ]

Is dialup sufficient speed for online poker? i havent used dialup in a long time so i have no idea, but if dialup would work that would be a definate option, and it would aslo be nice to know so that i could get connected at my cabin in the summer. Does anyone on here play with a dialup connection?

[Schneids]

I know as of the summer time, Nate played on a dialup. I know this because I remember ripping on him multiple times for it. So yeah, if he four tabled with a dialup, it's possible.

[Your Mom]

I play with a dial up. It works fine.

[MiloBloom72]

The port is probably already open. If they were blocking the port, you could not get on at all.

They are most likely restricting bandwidth to the dorms in some way. This may be a blanket cap on all bandwidth coming from the dorms--in which case your problem is being caused by your cohorts sucking up all available bandwidth--or they may be using what is know as "bandwidth shaping" to prioritize traffic at different levels. You may or may not have luck with talking to them exactly what they restrict. Have you tried other sites besides Pacific?

[RiverMel]

Two years ago, I had the same problem with Planet Poker. I would time out quite often, but the access wasn't completely blocked.

As another poster surmised, the port is not blocked because if it were you wouldn't have any access at all.

I never found a solution to this.

[LuckyStrike]

Yeah, it's definitely not blocked completely, just restriced. So far, I've tried two other sites: Poker Room (downloaded client, not the web client) and FTP. Poker Room had the same thing, but FTP ran just fine. Unfortunately, FTP doesn't have a whole lot that appeals to me right now.

I'm still trying to figure out what port Pacific and other online sites use. I was using IRC the other day as well and it was painfully slow, similar to the poker sites. IRC uses ports in the range of 6887-6889, I believe. Perhaps they run on the same restricted port. Right now I'm trying some HTTP-tunneling. If it works, I'll be sure to report back. I may have to get a cheap dial-up connection if I want to play, like someone suggested, but I don't really want to do that because I'm playing .25/.50 and dial-up fees might be more than my winnings.

And to whoever asked, yes, online poker works fine with 56k connections. I used one all summer to play.

[daveymck]

Do the other sites time out?

If not then the simple solution is change sites and go back to pacific once you move off campus.

[NLSoldier]

I ran into the same problem, but it is a little wierd becuase up until yesterday i could play just fine(with only the occasional timeout problems), but then yesterday all the sudden i couldnt log in at all and neither could any of my fellow players on campus. Im wondering if they just now blocked the portal or whatever possibly because they could see all the bandwith we were taking up(i refered almost every person on my floor [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]) Anyways, ive got the biggest computer junkie i know working on it and im hoping he can come up with a solution. He mentioned something about making a website from your internet connection at your house that will run the poker application for you or redirect you to it or somthing like that. I also plan on talking to the university tech guys or whatever but i dont thnk they will be too simpathetic.