[plug] Masquerading ICQ?

[Bernard Blackham]

Just sharing experiences... I used to run Licq on an internal machine
using masq'ing with the ip_masq_icq module (I think the one Brian
mentioned), which worked fine for most things, but not all. It worked with
the pre-2000 protocols based on port 4000, but post 2k releases have the
ICQ protocols redone entirely, before the ip_masq_icq module was fully
completed and it hasn't been updated in a while, and I don't see it likely
to.

I now run Licq 1.0.3 on the gateway machine, displaying on my desktop
machine, and everything seems to work (incl. chats, file transfers, etc.)
except with a few select people. Originally I thought it was a problem on
their end (using WinGate or something), but I've been told that other
people don't have a problem connecting to them so I'm rather mystified. I
suspect there may be some incompatabilites between the ICQ2k protocols and
the original pre-2000 ones that licq uses.

I'm sure that ICQ2k claimed "Now works behind firewalls" - I guess it
means using a proxy server such as SOCKS or HTTP or similar. Before Licq I
ran ICQ with the NEC socks server (www.socks5.nec.com) and it still fell
down in places like file transfers and chats. But your luck might be a
little better.

With kernel 2.4.x I believe it'd be possible to use it's improved
firewalling setup to forward particular ports to particular machines and
set the option for ICQ to say "I can receive connections on this range of
ports". I've never done it before, but I suspect it should work. Anyone
tried this?

One other solution is to put Licq on your linux gateway machine, and send
its display to an X Server running on the M$ box, but last time I looked
you couldn't get a free X-Server for 'doze anymore. But a great thing (of
the many) about Licq is the abject lack of ads (thank god!) :)

Regards,

Bernard.

-- 
 Bernard Blackham
 bernard at blackham.com.au