RealAudio Systems and Firewalls

Release Notes: RealAudio Systems and Firewalls

Configuring RealAudio Player for Firewalls

In order to work with some firewall proxies, it is necessary for the player to communicate with the proxy before hooking up to a RealAudio server outside the firewall. RealAudio Player 2.0 and later supports firewall proxies.

Contact your firewall administrator to find out what server (or host) the proxy is on and what port number the proxy is listening on. Then you can configure RealAudio Player to work with the proxy by editing the proxy preferences:

In RealAudio Player, select Preferences from the View menu.
Select the Proxy tab.
Check Use Proxy box to specify that RealAudio Player connects to the Server through the specified proxy.
In the Host or RealAudio Proxy box, enter the domain name or IP address of the proxy server. If you do not know the host name of your proxy server, ask your firewall administrator.
In the Port box, enter the port number the RealAudio Player uses to communicate with the proxy server. If you do not know the port number of your proxy server, ask your firewall administrator.
In the HTTP Proxy box (if present), enter the domain name or IP address of the HTTP proxy server. Check your Web browser's configuration for these values.
(Optional) In theNo Proxy for: [Host 1, Host2...] box, enter any local hosts (domain names or IP addresses) for which you do not need to communicate through the proxy server. Your firewall administrator can provide you with appropriate local hosts.

Additional Player settings

Receiving RealAudio as TCP-Only

If you have only a packet-filter firewall and your firewall administrator doesn't wish to configure the firewall to accept UDP packets from outside of the firewall, you can configure RealAudio Player 2.0 and later to stream audio using TCP only. To configure RealAudio Player for TCP only:

In RealAudio Player, select Preferences from the View menu.
Select the Network tab.
Click the TCP button for Receive Audio Via.

Receiving UDP Through a Single Port

The UDP option in RealAudio Player can offer better sound quality than TCP-only on slower connections, so TCP-only may not be desirable. RealAudio Player 2.0 and later also offers the ability to limit Players inside some firewalls to receive UDP on only one port, which makes router configuration easier than allowing the RealAudio Player 1.0 protocol UDP port range.

To configure RealAudio Player for a single UDP port:

In RealAudio Player, select Preferences from the View menu.
Select the Network tab.
Check the Use Specified UDP Port box and enter the UDP port number for RealAudio UDP streams.

Continue to Generic Packet-Filtering Firewalls

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