Hey guyz.... After a little struggle I got Avalaunch working correctly...

I am running Avalaunch thru XP with ICS(Internet Connection Sharing) with 2 NICs(Nic1=Modem; Nic2=XBox). I won't be getting a router or running my PC without ZA(ZoneAlarm)... So I am looking for someone that is running this setup successfully while using all of Avalaunchs great features and keeping ZA protecting the PC...

I know all aspects of Avalaunch works great cause I ran it without ZoneAlarm and everthing ran fine... But I run ZoneAlarm on the PC & I bet some one out there does too...

Can u hook me up with the knwoledge on how to run Avalaunch thru ICS with ZA still protecting my PC... Don't want to water ZA down by running ranges of ports open... But let me know if u do and how u did it....

Right now the XBox doesn't have a problem communicating out... But ZA stops all responses from the time sever, news server, skin servers, irc, Update server...etc...

I know that on ZA I can give special privileges to Host/Sites; IP Address; IP Ranges & Subent's... But I am not sure how to use this to get Avalaunch working fine behind ZA...

The only thing I can think of right now is to make ZA show me alerts when it blocks the IP's that Avalaunch uses & then try to figure out which are use by Avalaunch and give those IPs permision to communicate thru ZA but I would hate to mess up and give a non-Avalaunch IP access to my PC... And Avalaunch also needs so many different internet connections that I would hate to have to add a whole bunch of IP's... Don't want to make ZA to weak....

This are some of the ways I know Avalaunch communicates to the internet...

Clock Server
News Ticker Server (At least 3 Servers)
Avalaunch Update Server
Telnet (Probably won't use this...)
IRC Server (Probably won't use this...)
Game Saves Server (Not sure I would use this one)
IP Phone (Probably won't use this...)
Online Shoutcast (Not sure I would use this one)
Other Servers I might of missed...

Any Ideas would be appreciated... Except for... U know... "Get a router"; "Turn off ZA"; "Get another firewall" & "Firewalls don't work" I already heard them...lol

Thankx for any help u guyz can give me....

Your going to have to open whatever certain ports that ava uses otherwise it can't talk to the internet. Do a search to find out which one( I'm not really sure )

Anybody know all the ports???

I think that way opens up my ZA to wide since there are so many things to get connected to...

The problem is not Avalaunch sending but on the return... Need to figure out a way to allow the specific return without making a big hole on my PC's security...

Someone out there must be running Avalaunch & ZA thru ICS... Please let me know how...

I don't think you'd have to open ports... but lets get the whole picture here anyway to verify..

first, if you open ZA and go to the main firewall tab then click advanced button at the bottom. Under the section that says Internet Connection Sharing do you have checked that your computer is an ICS/NAT gateway? if not check it and put in the address of your computer (hence the gateway). Then verify it is added as a trusted address and honestly I would add the subnet it is on as a trusted subnet. Get back to me on this ...

I'm using a hardware firewall and I'm not experiencing any problems with it blocking access to Avalaunch. It's something else keeping you from using Ava's internet features.

Just needed to add...

I decided to take caution to the extreme and I changed both my PC(ISP/Modem) Network & XBox Network Zone allowement to "Internet" instead of the default "Trusted" for Networks detected since I believed that was more secure...

But then I notice that ZA won't let me FTP to my XBox cause I think it sees the XBox FTP address coming from within the Network which is not coming from the Internet...

Is this correct and all I should do is change it to Trusted for both/one or ???

Those settings you described are perfect. Glad that did the trick.
Your pc/ISP modem, if not a local network should be internet. Xbox should be trusted.

Great cause I tried it backwards with ISP/Modem "Trusted" and XBox "Internet" and It would not let the XBox contact out to the clock server in my time zone but it would allow all the other Avalaunch online features... I switch them around and it's back to normal now...

Thankx for the courdious, promp, and great help MRRobinson...

Actually I just rechecked the setup and it seems that all of the features work all the time*...

* But once in a while after a XBox hard or soft reboot... I get a ZA Alert saying it blocked Internet access to my clock server (.gov time server in my time zone) IP from my PC.. I can’t always reproduce the problem but it does seem to be happening more often now...

Any Ideas here???

Update: Now this is happening after every reboot.... Becoming more then a nag... Wonder why...

Weird... Need to get that fix...

You could try opening port 123 through ZA if its a bother. Don't know why it would block that though.

Right... Won't be able to test it out till I get home later today...

Wouldn't it be safer if I just add the clock servers IP to the internet or trusted IP addresses... Not sure but I think that is safer then having a port wide open...

I am still trying to figure out why everything works great but I do get that alert... It doesn't make any sence... Maybe a single setting is causing it...