The following are the answers to some questions we have been asked frequently by users. We have tried to arrange them into logical groups.
Can I use WinGate on a machine between two ethernet
segments?
Yes you can. In fact, with the normal case of using WinGate
between a LAN and a modem connection, you can think of the modem
connection as another interface on another LAN - being the
Internet.
Can I use WinGate on a Windows95 dial-in server to allow
access to my LAN?
Yes you can. You can also set up two modems on this machine
and allow users dialling into the dial-in server to access the
Internet out through the other modem link.
Can I use WFW3.11 on my LAN?
Yes you can. You can use any operating system that supports
TCP/IP. The only machine that needs to be running either Windows
NT or Windows 95 is the machine that runs WinGate.
Can I run other protocols (i.e IPX/SPX) on my LAN as well? Yes you can. The Microsoft network software supports multiple simultaneous protocols. You may find that you get better response on your LAN if you enable NetBEUI, and set it as your default protocol. The default protocol is the first protocol that Microsoft Windows networking will try to connect with (except for sockets applications, which only support TCP/IP), so it will be used for you local LAN traffic, and is a bit more efficient than TCP/IP. If you are running Novell, you will probably want to enable IPX/SPX.
Can I run Mac's on my TCP/IP network?
Yes, as WinGate only needs to run on the wingate machine, Any
Mac with TCP/IP installed can hang off the network. The
applications such as Netscape and Eudora, are setup the same as
the PC equivalent.
How do I set up TCP/IP on my LAN?
There are a number of good resources available on the
Internet for this. You should look at the lan setup pages
Can I use WinGate with ISDN?
Yes, WinGate can operate over any dial-up connection, leased line
or microwave link. The setup for ISDN is the same as any modem
connection. With a full time connection via leased line or other
links, simply disable the dialler in WinGate.
Run WinGate as a service under NT?
You need to use SRVANY, which ships with the NT resource kit
(available from ftp.microsoft.com)
. All the documentation you need is included. If you want to
configure it, you will have to enable "Allow service to
interact with desktop", do your changes, and then disable
again under the service control manager in control panel.
Use a Proxy server on my ISP?
Yes. What you need to do is remove the WWW Proxy in WinGate, and
add a mapped link on port 80 which maps through to the proxy
server on your ISP (normally on port 8080 - you should get the
details about this from your ISP)
Ping anything on the internet from my LAN
OK, the reason is, because your LAN is not connected to the
internet. Ping uses the ICMP protocol, which WinGate does not
support - WinGate is not a router. If you could ping internet
hosts, chances are you wouldn't need WinGate (except perhaps as a
firewall).
Connect more than one user to the IRC server?
Some IRC servers only allow one user per IP address. As
all your WinGate connected clients look like a single IP address,
the server rejects multiple users. Your IRC administrator may be
able to help you with this.
Why do I get a socket error?
A Socket error occurs whenever WinGate tries to do something
that it cannot, whether that is due to a remote host not
responding, or your link being down, or some other reason.
WinGate will provide error messages that your browser and other
applications can interpret - like the page you see in Netscape.
Why do I sometimes keep getting socket errors
Often when you keep getting Socket Errors in response to
hitting the reload button, that is because your browser thinks
that the error message sent by WinGate is the file you want, and
keeps loading it out of its cache.
Why does WinGate sometimes dial up without reason?
WinGate will only ever initiate a dialup when it is trying to
connect to something. The usual reason for apparent dialling
without reason is because of DNS forwarding. DNS forwarding does
not show up on the Users tab in WinGate. So if there is any DNS
activity on your LAN on a regular basis, this could cause WinGate
to dial up. Try disabling the DNS forwarding and see if it still
happens. You will need DNS forwarding enabled to get SOCKS
running (e.g for all the other protocols in Netscape).
WinGate always hangs up my connections when I start it!
If you have Take over existing connection on selected
profile" selected, then WinGate owns that profile, and
will wage war with anything else that tries to use it (e.g DUN or
RAS). If you are using DUN or RAS on your wingate machine, this
option should be disabled.
Why is there a long pause before WinGate starts dialling?
You should check to see what setting you have selected for When
to dial. If you have try to connect first selected,
then WinGate will try to connect (sockets connect not dialup
connect) to the remote host first. If that fails, then WinGate
will kick off the dialler. This can take up to a minute to fail
before dialling - hence the pause. Normally you should choose the
second option, and specify which machines or subnet you don't
want WinGate to dial out for.
How can I skip the Win95 connect box? Can I reconnect
automaticaly if I lose a conection?
This is a Microsoft 'feature' which can be overcome with the use
of a program called Dunce, or another called Keepgoin'. They hit
appropriate reconnect and connect buttons when they are on
screen. These programs are available on most shareware sites.
What are rules for
Rules are used whenever you want to specify some aspect of
how WinGate will respond to certain events. There are three types
of rule you can specify.
Using Rules you can restrict access to the Internet, on a site by site basis, or protect your internal LAN from unwanted visitors
How do they work
Rules are defined as being an action taken upon a match of a
certain type with some data. The match types are either where the
data being verified equals some specified filter data, or
contains that filter data. Every connection in or out, and every
URL is checked against the rule base. If a match is found (i.e
you get a match on an hostname) then the action is performed. If
no match is found, the default action is performed.
How do I use them
The first thing you need to configure are the default rules.
These specify what action will be taken (allow or deny) when a
request does not match any of the specific rules.
What rules should I set
Normally, by default you will set default inward connections
to deny.
Then you set up a rule as: allow Inward connections from host
containing xxx.yyy.zzz.
Where the xxx.yyy.zzz. are the first three octets of your
internal LAN
This will allow only your internal LAN users to connect to
wingate. You then need to enable any specific other machines to
connect to the wingate by adding specific allow rules for them
(i.e remote machines that you want to be able to connect back to
the wingate)
If you wish to deny your internal users access to certain hosts
on the internet, you can set up deny rules for those hosts.
Similarly you can deny access to URLs containing certain
sequences of characters.
What is the WinGate proxy for?
The WinGate proxy was developed to allow applications
developers to transparently access remote hosts using TCP/IP. In
this way it is very similar to the SOCKS system. However there
are a number of differences between SOCKS 4 and WinGate Proxy,
notably that in the WinGate Proxy, WinGate does the name
resolution for the client, whereas in SOCKS 4, the client can
only request connection to an IP number, and hence requires
access to a DNS server.
How can I use it in my programs?
You need to get hold of the protocol specification from us.
Just email Deerfield
Communications Company and we'll send it to you. It is very
simple to implement support for WinGate proxy in your code, and
it means you can gain leverage off WinGate to a more specialised
market.
My key doesn't work
From version 1.3.08, WinGate has used a different key system.
The old keys were 'ugly', using ~!@#$%^&*()_ symbols etc. The
new keys use only CAPS and numbers. New keys were issued when the
new key system was introduced. If your old key has the old style,
then it will not work with versions later than 1.3.07. If you
have a new key, and it still doesn't work, then there is a
problem. Make sure you enter the Licencee name not the
licence number. New versions of WinGate will all work with the
new key system. Some features will need further registration.
I run WinGate in Win95 and nothing happens. WinGate runs as a small >> icon in the task bar system tray, just beside the clock. Double click on this icon to bring-up the WinGate options box.
I can't connect to "wingate"
Chances are your hosts file isn't set up properly. You should
note that the default installation of Windows95 does NOT include
a hosts file that you can edit - you need to create one. Also,
notepad does not let you save a file with no file extension. You
need to rename it to hosts (with no extension) in explorer. You
should check that you can ping the IP number of the wingate
machine, if that works, and you can't ping "wingate",
then that is a hosts file problem.
FTP does not work under any WWW browser! You need to make sure in your browser that the FTP proxy setting under preferences is blank - i.e you do not use a specific WinGate proxy for FTP in Browsers, you use the SOCKS server for this. Make sure you don't set the proxy for FTP to port 21 on wingate, this FTP proxy is for FTP clients (including command line clients) only, Netscape does not understand how to talk to this proxy.
The other thing you need running is DNS. SOCKS will NOT work without working DNS. The DNS settings should be:
WinGate machine:
DNS enabled
Server = IP number of your ISP's DNS server
In WinGate:
DNS forwarding: enabled
Server = IP number of your ISP's DNS server
LAN machines:
DNS enabled
Server = Ip of machine running WinGate (normally 192.168.0.1)
Testing:
Try a "ping ftp.microsoft.com" from the command line
on a workstation. You should get:
Pinging [aa.bb.cc.dd] with 32 bytes of data...
destination host unreachable
destination host unreachable
destination host unreachable
destination host unreachable
This means that the IP number was found, and that DNS is working.
If you don't get the "Pinging etc etc", then your DNS isn't working.
While your DNS isn't working your SOCKS will NEVER work, so you really must get this going to get anywhere with SOCKS.
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