Configuring Hummingbird Exceed
2. Exceed and Firewalls
Exceed won't necessarily work if you have a firewall installed and enabled on your PC. Note that Windows XP comes with a firewall integrated into the operating system, which may be enabled without you realising it.
If you have a firewall enabled on your PC, you may find that you are unable to connect to the computers you wish to. If you are using Exceed in XDMCP-broadcast mode, you may see the list of computers available, but after double-clicking on one, find that nothing more happens and you don't see the normal login screen. If you can configure your firewall to allow communication on port TCP 6000 then this may be enough to allow everything to work once again.
2.1. Windows XP Firewall
Microsoft Windows XP comes with its own firewall, and again, if this is enabled (and you may not realise that it is), Exceed will fail to connect to other computers. Again, opening port TCP 6000 may solve the problem.
To check whether the firewall is enabled, do the following. Go to the
[Start] menu and open the [Control Panel]. Open the
[Network Connections] control panel (you may first need to open the
[Network and Internet Connections] category.) Look for your Local
Area Connection. If it displays
Enabled, Firewalled and has a little padlock in the top
right-hand corner of the picture, the firewall is enabled. If it simply says
Enabled and has no padlock, the firewall is disabled.
If you want to try having the firewall enabled and opening up port 6000, or if you wish to disable the firewall completely, do the following.
Select the Local Area Connection and choose
[Properties] from the [File] menu. In the Local
Area Connection Properties box that appears, click on the
[Advanced] tab.
To disable the firewall, turn off the option Protect my computer
and network by limiting or preventing access to this computer from the
Internet; to enable it, turn this option on. If you have disabled it,
you can now click on OK to close the Properties
box.
To open port 6000, make sure the option Protect my computer and
network by limiting or preventing access to this computer from the
Internet is enabled and click on Settings.
Click on Add and fill in the options as shown here.
2.2. Further Information
Note that technically X-Windows can use a range of ports between 6000 and 6063, so this may not always work. Note in particular that if you change the display number using Xconfig/Communications from the default of 0, this will change the port that Exceed uses. If you change the display number to 1, it will use 6001; if you change it to 2, it will use 6002. You will then have to change your firewall configuration accordingly.
If you are using Windows XP with the XP firewall enabled, never use a communications mode of XDMCP-broadcast with the Host List File disabled, the Use Broadcast Address enabled and the Address set to 255.255.255.255 — it won't work. If you restrict the broadcast to a particular subnet it should work (xxx.xxx.xxx.255). You may observe similar behaviour with other firewalls.
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