HOW TO BOOT
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Booting isn't rocket science, you just need a few tools and two computers. First of all running a dedicated server is the only way to go. People ask if they can boot from the same machine they play on. It's virtually impossible to do this as you have to switch back and forth between playing and monitoring the program that shows you player IP's. The server screen should be easily visible to you while your playing. On the dedicated server machine you need a program like Commview that monitors the packet traffic in and out of the server computer. While your in the game, when you see someone come in look at the Commview screen. I'm not going to go into how to set up Commview, it has an extensive help library and I suggest you read it and then set up the program so that it monitors automatically when the comp is started. On the Commview screen you will see IP addresses of computers that are connected to yours. Look at the ports column, you will see many ports being used but Iron Storm uses ports 3504 and 3505. When someone joins the game you will see the number of packets between this player and the dedicated server increasing. If you right click on this IP address you have the option to give the remote IP an alias, the player name is best here. What you have now is a record of the IP this player is using and if you need to boot or block them you go to your firewall with this IP address and set it up to do just that. You will need a retail version of what ever firewall you are using. While the free version of Zonealarm may keep your computer safe it cant be configured to block IP's.

Blocking an IP is easy enough but generally not good for more then a day as Internet Service Providers (ISP's) usually rotate the IP anywhere form every 4 hours to 4 months. What you can do to keep the fool you want out of your game from coming back in is to block their ISP. To do this you need to take their IP, go to www.samspade.org and search the IP. The result will come back with the whole IP range this ISP has. In your firewall block this range of IP's and he wont be getting  back in till he gets another Internet provider.

Commview is a commercial program and not cheap, $99.00 US for the home version and I have heard of other programs that provide the same type of service. A little searching will more than likely get you a program that does similar things for free.

The big draw back to being able to boot is the requirement of two computers, one running the dedicated server with Commview and the firewall and one computer that you play on. But once you have the set up above you can dictate who plays in your server and if we could all band together to ban the cheats they would have no more servers to play in, for them its Donkey Kong time again.