Alternative Access?

[Derfel]

Howdy.

I remember someone mentioning somewhere (how vague is that, eh?) that they had a way to access Ravenblack Games in an alternative way, bypassing firewalls, etc.

I teach at a high school, which blocks any URLs that contain the word "game". Obviously students shouldn't be playing games during school time, but us teachers bore easily.

I had a solution that I thought was working, which was using an instance of PHProxy on my own website to encrypt the URL using Base64, but apparently while allowing me to access the site and submit moves, does not allow me to change the target of my monsters, which you can see would make certain matches somewhat difficult to play.

Anyone else have ways of getting around this sort of problem?

[nawglan]

The way I do it:

0) I use Linux at home. Should work with windows though. May need Cygwin to get ssh working.
1) install vnc of some sort, I prefer tightvnc.
2) move ssh to port 21 (ftp port), this is because my work allows us to FTP out.
3) ssh from work to home over port 21.
4) use the ssh connection to forward the port 5901, used by vnc.
5) install vnc viewer on work machine. Connect to localhost:1
6) surf in the vncviewer window, using firefox installed on your home machine.

Could use port 80 (web), but I run the archive from my linux machine.

[Slartucker]

I think Zugzwang's profile has that mention.

[Derfel]

Uh... well, if they are blocking websites that have "Game" in the URL, I'm doubting I can do something that intensive... but I'll look into it.

[nawglan]

they block the same thing here Derfel. Can't even hit games.slashdot.net

One nice thing though, using ssh to form the tunnel causes all of your traffic from your pc to work to be encrypted. 8)

[laxen]

just thought i'd throw my rather feeble hand into this one- as a school student, i know quite a lot about trying to get around firewalls, blacklists etc, as our school operates the same blacklisting system as derfel's.
the only way we could find to get around this was by finding various proxies before they did, and at the moment we have found a pretty permanent one because the school think it has already blocked it- they have blocked www.aitd.co.uk/browser, but NOT aitd.co.uk/browser.
there are loads of other proxies out there as well- msnvip.com and all the various 'tunnels'- atunnel.com, btunnel.com, ctunnel.com etc.
however, this may all be completely irrelevant and not helpful at all as it seems pretty basic stuff and i don't understand any of the previous technical comments

[Rycchus]

Moving laterally here, can't you ask whoever administrates the system to remove bans from staff accounts? When I was at school, we had a similar system - there were different levels of moderation for staff, sixth formers and middle school students.

[Derfel]

Ugh - don't even get me started on allowing better access to staff. I have tried before, both about access and about installing different software, and they really won't have any part of it. They cite security reasons, "hardware integrity" (the old "It will blow up if you do that" schtick), etc. Mostly it boils down to them having to do more work than they feel comfortable with!

As for the web proxies - the problem with them is that they allow the URL through unencrypted - so if the site is blocked by IP, it will work this way... but in this case they block out any instance of the word "game" in the URL. My current solution actually encrypts the URL, but for whatever reason does not allow the targets of monsters to be submitted.

[Slartucker]

How does it allow you to choose gestures and targets, but not monster targets? That's really weird.

[Derfel]

I think it has to do with the fact that the information passed gets truncated somehow. I can choose spells and targets of spells, but when it comes to the monster part (or possibly the choosing of hands for Paralysis, etc) it doesn't get changed.

If I knew more about how the information gets passed from page to server, I could maybe troubleshoot.

[vilhazarog]

I can explain exactly how it works if you are still interested. PM me and I'll tell you how you can troubleshoot this... especially easy if they allow you to use Firefox.