Forums Connection Issues Ip blocking DCC

I'd just like to know if its possible for an IP to block DCC.
I can't DCC on any of my pc's. Have set port forwarding, firewall etc etc...installed the latest version of mIRC etc etc.

Yes, an ISP can block DCC. Colleges do it all the time as do most businesses. Other ISPs sometimes do as well. BT seems to have an issue with this that they are working to resolve. The best option is to contact your ISP and ask.

Thanks Raimus
Talking to BT support is like talking to a brick wall, I keep getting conflicting answers, one tech says its blocked another tells me its not. I do see other people have the same problem & have posted elsewhere. Unfortunately the dcc problem coincided with me installing the latest mIRC & a new router. All settings have been checked & I'm sure its an IP issue.

Well if it started with your new router and new installationj
of mIRC then I would say your problem most likely lies there.

Go to mirc options (alt+o) > connect > options > advanced button
default port range is 1024-5000 but that's way too many so narrow
that down to like 20 ports first 1031 - last 1050 .. select dcc ..
deselect other .. select use random ports or randomize ports ..
deselect bind sockets to ip then forward those same ports in your
router settings and allow those same ports to pass through your firewall.

If for some reason you cannot forward these ports in your router or allow
these ports to pass through your firewall .. if you're using mIRC v6.17 or
later, you can use the new Passive DCC feature by typing /dcc passive on
this will put the burden of open ports on the downloader until you
can fix your port issue.

Also, while connected to a server, type /localinfo -u to force mIRC
to get your correct WAN IP and host from the IRC server.

BT happeneed to block these on the same day as 6.21 came out, its a BT thing, just unfortunate timing, they can theoretically blame 6.21.

btk

they couldnt blame it on 6.21 because earlier versions wont work either ?

They could, they would be wrong, but they could.

If you let slip that you updated mIRC they will just say, oh well the new mIRC must have changed something in your own computer, and mIRC is a program we don't support, even going back to the old mIRC may leave the changed thing umm changed. Thanks for calling BT support. Is there anything else I can help you with?

btk(no correlation to bt, k?)

Yes there is, Im disconnect my service today, as your now in breach of your quality of service terms, and are breaching my privacy by listening in on my comunications. Ill leave your equipment on the front steps for you to pickup, and thanks for answering my call, have a nice day.

I still say paying the bill with a cheque with your signature/account details blanked out is a good answer, when they say they cant cash it, say "Sorry but I dont support that type of problem, thanks for calling. Is there anything else I can help you with?"

Hi

For point of reference, it would appear that many UK BT customers are having the same problem.

Having looked into settings and ip's it would appear to be hitting the BT ip 86.xx.xx.xx ranges, not the 81.xx.xx.xx sets.

Use this information to pass onto BT, if any consolidation it's happening to business connections too.

It is also just BT, not mIRC as everything works fine on my alternate connection @ home with main PC.

HTH

Thats interesting that its not hitting all BT customers, i think that would imply its something in there ISP Routers, since these are all high end jobs, it might be a bad protection filter, i know little to nothing about them but apparently alot of ISP's use filters that search for known torjen or virus signatures and well disconncet the connection they are comming through on.

Maybe a miss directed attempt at removing "evil" dcc sessions is catching there customers. If this is the case they may well be unaware of it in the sence.

my first post here, and im also having this trouble (bt internet)

i have successfully changed my ip range from 86 to 81, problem occurs on both of them, i have sent tech support 5-6 emails and phoned them about 5 times , but there indian, or pakistan tech support doesnt seem to understand a word im talking about, dont quite know if thats because there stupid, or because of my accent.

its very strange, as soon as i try to send, or recieve dcc, its like i get disconnected, but it doesnt say im disconnected, can i verify this is the same problem you guys have? btw this started 5-6 days ago (as far as im aware).

Thats exactly the problem I have, & it did start a few days ago. I too have contacted support many times & having the same difficulties as you. I also message them using the On-line support. Are you able to access the bt.internet.support newsgroup if so could you post a message there it seems UK support read that group.

Sorry, the newsgroup is bt.broadband.support

i just got it working....

heres what i did, in full, because i dont know if any of this actually helped....

i set the ident server port to 1602
dcc server port to 1601 (and left it disabled)

then i went to : connect->options->advanced, and set this

made sure DCC was ticked (it was)

set DCC port box #1 to 1500
dcc port box #2 to 1510
ticked randomize ports
ticked bind sockets to ip, and put my LAN ip in there (192.168.1.2)
joined MIRC with 2 clients, joined a seperate channel and verified i could see each one typing

then i went into my router options, and forwarded all the ports to 192.168.1.2 and made my ip static (so my brothers comp doesnt use it and steal my port rule)

joined a channel, requested a file download, and it worked right away.

i have only tested this ONCE, im going to try it again now, if it works i will re-post.....lets pray

P.S i dont know how to use newsgroups ...

EDIT : just tried it on 2 more servers, it worked for me first time on both new servers...

also, to add to this, BT tech support sucks, i phoned them 5-8 times in 2 days, and none of them had any idea, seems if they dont release the program, they assume its my fault, on another side note : i have not changed anything in my router for 3-4 months, and this came out of nowhere, on 3 seperate routers, on all 3 of my comps, so im really doubting it was my setup that was the problem,

maybe it was nothing i changed which has got it working, maybe its the 15 messages i have sent them in 2 days, and the 8 phone
calls...lets hope so.

Oh, and not sure if this is any help but i tested this on my DLINK DSL504T because there "home hub" only supports 3 comps at max (thats one with usb)

any questions, my msn is bignoob@gmail.com

and bang, the problem has came back...i guess it was nothing i did, but something they did, time to phone them again....

EDIT tech support tried to help by taking control of the PC, but he didnt understand IRC or my dlink router i dont think, which is to be understood, he arranged for a "higher" tech support guy to phone me later, lets hope he can give me an explanation.

Just to add to the fray - another BT customer with exactly the same problem. IRC disconnects whenever a DCC get or send is initiated. How frustrating.

I shall message BT as well to pile on the pressure and help get their attention.

ok...its working again now, this is very, very strange, it seems to work, then not work, then work, tech support was supposed to phoned up an hour ago, still waiting, i guess i will end up waiting another day though....

Stop screwing with your settings, stop letting BT screw with your settings, its at BT were the problem exists, they are cuasing it, there is no way on earth all these BT customers all suddnely made mistakes with there setup and can no longer DCC. Its the ISP (by isp i mean beyond your control) and thats that, no matter what they happen to say.

PS: to get a non indian tech support simply ask for one, saying you can not understand there accent, and need a native english speaker, I have never had a problem being redirected to a local regional representitive, dont feel embaressed about it, the companies would rather have you ring once and use a local rep, than ring 6 times because each time you get no where because of language difficulties.

After hearing all of your whining, I thought I would give an idea of things from my point of view.

I'm unfortunate enough to be sitting in my business tech support chair at BT now. I've had a lot of calls regarding our inability to handle DCC traffic across our network. I've raised the issue as a major service fault and it has been recognised as an error on our servers.

Unfortunately it's not as simple as diagnosing the fault and pressing a big 'Repair' button, therefore fixing it. Whining at tech support agents won't resolve the issue. It's with BT Wholesale and they are repairing it as we speak.

Also, you won't get through to a British agent just by asking. Our residential helpdesks are based in Bangladesh. Our business support is based in Britain.

As mentioned before, don't mess about with your settings for a quick fix. Changing the port you connect on won't work, and neither will port forwarding. The problem is on our end of the system.

Quote:

don't mess about with your settings for a quick fix.

Maybe you should let your idiot tech support employees
know that as they seem to be the ones giving the advice
on changing settings and have no clue what the hell is
going on. BT sounds more and more like a mickey mouse
club all the time. Unfortunately, it seems to be the only
service a lot of people can get. It's sad.

Quote:

I'm unfortunate enough to be sitting in my business tech support chair at BT now.

It seems that your paying customers are the unfortunate ones.

Heh. This is obviously someone with no real customer service ability... telling people they are "whining" and that he is "unfortunate" to be where he is. Very bad CS skills.

And I have to agree with RoCk... if they KNOW it's a BT issue, they should tell all of their tech support people. I've seen so many posts saying that BT told them it's not BT's fault, or that they should change their settings. Obviously, one hand doesn't have a clue what the other hand is doing.

whaaa whaaaa whaaaaa LOL you of course do understand that if no one whined the error would never get repaired, and since the error has been recognised as being at BT whinning becomes justified complaints. If someone dents your car are you whining when you want them to fix it?

Since the error is now been recognised as on BTs end, are they informing all customers of this who ring, and have rung and been miss informed that its not BT ?
Id hazzard a guess thats a big fat NO!.

My comments for redirecting to "english native speaker" were in general, I have never experenced any support services that can not provide such. BT by the looks even sees the need for it, by your own statments has based its commerical tech support in britain with at least some of the reasoning for that being the knowledge of the difficulties in using second language
speakers as the support staff.

As to me personally I dont mind who im talking to as long as they understand me and i can understand them, and they know somewhat about what there ment to be supporting.

As to a patch, for most i would say wait it out BT well fix it, if u cant then use a SSL connection, I have since my last post gotten a person conencted on SSL and hes sending and dccing fine, looks like the ISP cant see his DCC init messages so no disconnect.

You cant really blame them, no ISP wants to fess up and say "oh yeah we been screwing with your access and now you cant use the internet" or worse "ummm yeah we did something but we dont really know what or how to fix it" OMG can u amagine how many customers you loose on that!

I can - my cable company alost lost me a few weeks ago for that very thing

actually, m00 dude, the people that i have been in contact with, even tried "remote assistance" to forward my ports (yes that was a bt "tech help guy", he tried his best sure, but obviously he wasnt informed, so whats the point in having a technical support team, if they arent informed of problems, i mean this dude even asked his superior, and he didnt know anything about it either...so theres obviously a major lack of communication.

about there language, i couldnt care less if there indian, pakistan, bosnian, russian, whatever, i can still make out "most" of the things there saying, and i dont think the language barrier is whats causing the problems when you phone, its because there not informed on issues.

and no, mines still not working

the problem today is "give them less info and look smarter". They give less and less info out but dont really fix the problems in a timely fashion. Sure they may get around to fixing it a week later after being on hold 5 separate times with one call having enough time to get the mail, take a shower, cook lunch, eat lunch, let people into a room across the street, take two phone calls on call waiting and STILL not be brought to a tech guy who never knew that the "your call will be answered in "X" minutes" queue hasnt been working for over a week lol

Rant over :P

been on the phone with them, and he said he was gonna forward it to the engineers and contact me tommorow, shame it took over a week for this to happen, but lets hope it goes somewhere.

Hi

Well when I telephoned the Steve Rxxx, in Shrewsbury (BT Wholesale), who were responsible for the ip ranges i was connecting to according to RIPE database. I received his assurance, that it was BT Retail!, now it appears to be Wholesale - Doh.

My favourites on my telephone have changed to include the 0845 xxx 7020 Business support. Let's hope they have all been informed about the error, because as late as yesterday afternoon (30th), they still did not know about it.

As it has now been a week without "service" let's all put in a claim for a weeks rebate on rental

While I am sure we all understand there is no magic button to rectify the situation, there should surely diagnostics to see a) why has it taken a week to admit to a fault inspite of numerous telephone calls to BT, even giving this forum as reference in many cases b) should we as users have to pay for the phone call to inform BT they have a problem c) the MSF (Major Service Failure) not yet noted on the Status on btbroadband website.

Annoying innit

Just spoken to BT support in the UK.
After lengthy discussion with one guy who said he was unable to help I asked to speak to his supervisor. Low & behold after further discussion he called the engineering dept. After a long wait sure enough they now acknowledge there is a major problem with there hardware & they are working on it now.
I asked them for goodness sake tell support in India!

lets hope it gets resolved then, keep us informed of any changes/messages/phonecalls

replying to no-one in particular. The missus told me when i got in from work that theres a talk talk guy coming out tonight wanting to sign us up to the phone service, couldn't have come at a better time I think he's about to get a phone+broadband sale just in time for the weekend.

screw BT, they are screwing us! lol

btk

hmmm numerous sends have just worked fine, and so far one get is working...

lets hope they've sorted it eh.


btk

still doesnt work for me....

ya missus went and changed ya to talk talk's service maybe? LOL

Well if it has been repaired at the ISP end, then your problem is likely in all the settings they tried to get you to change locally. Your problem now is finding out if in fact BT has fixed it, before bothering to try fixing your settings, becuase if they havent then nothinsg gonna solve it anyway ,

And of course thats the RUB isnt it, a company blames the user, the user adjusts settings and then when it is fixed the user still cant connect due to settings changed.

it's not changed, just for some reason it's an intermittent problem, it's toying with me, challenging me to a duel.

I hate BT

btk

ps. I missed the talk talk guy, apparently the missus heard him at the door while she was in the bath, i was too busy on IRC probably...

Riamus. I am not talking to you as a technical support agent. More so as a fellow IRC user who happens to be a BT tech support agent. I like to think that I can post on message boards and offer advice without going through all of the formalities that my job entails.

Obviously the BT tech guys are going to try to help as much as they can. If they try forwarding the ports on the router, they are under the wrong impression. They are still trying to help you though.

All I was trying to say with my previous post is that BT recognise the problem as a major fault, hopefully saving you all from calling us up to ultimately hear the exact same thing.

Basically, all we can do on tech support is REFER the fault. We can't personally go to the server and repair it. I understand that it's more than frustrating and inconvenient, and our Wholesale engineers are working to repair it.

Don't shoot the messenger.

she should have rushed out of the bath and opedn the door, hell he might have given you a discount! :-)

do the indian tech know this? as one is supposedly phoning me at 12 this afternoon.

damn dude, what did he ever do to you?!

My experience would be not only do they not know, they don't care.

one other thing, if bt recognise the fault, how come its not on there fault page, or fault phone line?.

im talking about : http://help.btinternet.com/yahoo/help/servicestatus

I think because they don't perceive it as a fault. Remember they intended to implement a system to monitor and block IRC commands.

http://www.scmagazine.com/uk/news/article/600227/hackers-switch-web-control-zombie-pcs/

tech said he had relayed all the info to the engineers today, and has verified its nothing on my computer which is the issue, he said it should be fixed within "4-5" working days, and i should hear from them within that time, i guess only time will tell

Hi, this is what i receaved on the 28th of Nov when i registerd the "fault"



i replied with a link to this thread and receaved no response at all!??!!

they said the same thing to me the first time.....

You really have to admire them for there responce, they read what you say, likely pasting it back changing things from "i have this problem" to "you have this problem"

They then make a completely lame statment like suggesting its not there problem, and you should contact someone else who it really really isnt related to them.

Keep the email, and refuse to pay your bill, stating that the helpdesk support supplied as part of your service was being deliberitly missleading and had the intention to attempt to cost you money by suggesting you contact your pc vendor for support on a matter unrealted to them.

Actually dont bother about it, just send BT a cancellation Email, stating due to service failure of BT you are terminating service and going with a reliable company, and you well be telling everyone you ever meet what a load of dirt bags they are for lying to you, and thank you have a nice day.

I heard that if you encrypt your connection using ssl then you can do dcc chats and transfers etc.
Ive tried this and it I cant manage to get mirc to use ssl.
The weird thing is that I have been happily xdccing for ages and tried to dcc the other day using an fserve but it didnt work as detailed before hand.
Thanks

DCC is working for me now... Lets hope it stays working

well, earlier today BT phoned me, and said it should be working now, so i tested it, and it worked, and is still working as i type this message, will update this thread if it doesnt work, can other people verify is theres is working now also?

mine working again !

not me, i'm still broken...

At least I'm not dropping the connection though still can't dcc

Due to all the messing about with my settings by BT my Norton Firewall settings had been changed, set correctley now & I am at last able to dcc.

another update, allthough my irc appears to be working, bt phoned me this morning, and said they had found a blockage on the network which should be resolved in 4-5 days, anyway i wasnt in so my mother took the call, and said there phoning back next tuesday when the issue is resolved, to give me more details.

mine stopped working again....

Mines stopped working again

Anyone had any further updates on this issue from BT? I've never even managed to get them to the point of admitting its them!

yes, they told me there was a fault on the network, something was blocking something bla bla, it should be fixed within 4-5 days, and there gonna phone me next tuesday

damn , mines gone off again today ?

seems they are messing with something, thats for sure, mine seemed to work randomly, for various ammounts of time ranging from 6 hours, to 2 minutes over the last 5-6 days...one thing to note, if a DCC is allready in progress, and then it stops working, it doesnt appear to stop the send, only the subsequent sends fail.

In my research on it, it seems as soon as the "client" trys to send me a file, it blocks me, not just me, but also that irc server, not quite sure on how DCC transfers work, but this is what happens most of the time.

I request a file, lets say for example an update for my xbox dashboard, i type :

/msg blabla xdcc send #x

now, what happens here, i would imagine is :

server gets the message, and forwards it to the blabla (name) who then sends me a message back (possibly via the server?)

which says "sending you file #x please accept the file"

as soon as i recieve the above message, i get disconnected from the server instantly (which means the file transfer doesnt get chance to start) sometimes before i even get this message.

so.....all i can think of is, BT appears to start blocking after the server sends me the start packet, or however it works. now, if im correct... once a DCC transfer starts, its sent on the specified port of the sender, to a random port your on PC, which means BT is blocking something before that...

anyway, what i would like to know from some IRC buff (i dont really know the tech side)

when a DCC is started, what happens? is it how i said?

user #1 messages the server who messages user #2

but what happens here?

does user #2 send a message to the server once he recieves the message, or does he send it directly to me? what i was thinking was, he sends it to the server, and the server does something, which leads to BT blocking it.

any info would be great, as if they phone me and say they cant find the problem, i can possibly give them some more info.

when you send a file to a user your mirc sends a hidden message across the irc server to the reciever of the file this is the format

DCC SEND filename ipaddress port filesize

This is a /CTCP, which is a infact a /MSG with a $chr(1) leading and trailing the text

so say your ip address was 1.2.3.4 and your going to send the file "bob.txt" which is 1024 bytes in size on port 9999 then your sending this....
//msg reciversnick $chr(1) $+ DCC SEND "bob.txt" 16909060 9999 1024 $+ $chr(1)

16909060 is the 32bit IP value of 1.2.3.4

So knowing that, you now know that, be you sent or reciving a file, you get a message like this or send a message like this.
Said message goes to the irc server, BT is monitoring connections and when it detects a message in this nature it terminates the connection.
Alot of people well have seen the "user suchand such sending you a file on (1.2.3.4)" or something like that, this is a polite let you know /notice mirc sends just prior to sending the DCC SEND message outlined above. From what i have gathered the connection is broken the instant the DCC SEND is detected, you do not receive the DCC SEND so you know a file should be coming becuase you saw the notice, that was however not actually part of the file send.

[edit: oops pushed submit]

There is also apparently some other dcc's BT catches , i think
$chr(1) $+ DCC CHAT chat longip port $+ $chr(1)
is also caught and terminates your irc server connection

It should be noted an actual DCC connection can be made by you, should you be connecting to a leistening port dcc chat/send/fserve as i have tested this with a BT customer, i was able to connect to his and he to mine.

just what i was looking for, thanks... Works kinda how i imagined it did.

Any idea from your experience why BT would be blocking this (even as an accident)?
Could it be something to do with IRC based trojans/botnets?

I spoke to someone in BT Edinburgh who said it might be also related to the 6.1.1.R firmware update. Mine was upgraded from 6.1.1.M, without so much as a by your leave from me, and stopped working. It was designed to fix a bug in IE7 for Vista, and has borked the entire network. They may/will have to issue a retrograde to unfix this new "feature".

Talk about annoyed. I got the run around from a "technical service officer" and ended up trying to diagnose the problem myself. I tried dcc in OS X and Fedora Core Linux to locate the problem to the router or the network. I thought I might have changed something in a firewall etc, so I reset the router and put it back to "factory", but still with 6.1.1.R.

It is ridiculous that we have no control over automatic "upgrades". They should issue a new firmware patch, which allows you to TURN OFF upgrades, from the web interface.

So it may take a while to get sorted. I think we should get a class action for damages going. I lost my Sunday off due to this utter BS from BT.

Your 'umble servant, gordboy

not 100% sure what you mean, maybe your talking about a firmware update for a router?...either way if it helps i have tried 3 of bts modem/routers

green frog
voyager
bt home hub

same problem on all 3, also tried my DLINK dsl504T same problem on that, its definatly something on the network, as i can take my router, and my comp to my gfs, plug it into hers and it works instantly without changing any settings.

Yeah, I was talking HomeHub firmware upgrade. Well that settles it. BT are officially Kings of the Network Clowns.

Like everyone else, I've been unable to DCC for over two weeks now. I tried it again after some people reported it fixed last week, still with no joy. I did a little experimenting and found a couple of interesting things. I know it's of little use, since the problem is clearly on BT's end, despite what the support staff keep telling me (I've yet to have someone who will even admit the problem exists), but I thought I'd pass the information on in the hopes that one of the more knowledgeable people here can make sense of it.

After I receive a DCC request I'm still able to send data. I just can't receive any. I can continue talking in a channel and everyone sees my text, but I can't see anything that other people say. I can still disconnect properly, with other people seeing my standard signing off message, but if I leave it connected I'll eventually time out.

While I was testing this I started a second mIRC session to monitor things. This client was, more often than not, able to continue working normally after the first encountered problems. It started exhibiting similar behaviour to the first client on a couple of occasions, but only after several minutes. It was never cut off at the same time as the client which received the DCC request.

Apologies if both of those have been discussed already and I just missed it.

noticed the exact same things as you menkey, connecting to the same server with multiple clients, only one is "dropped" when a dcc occurs, the other client appears to work perfect.

Well, a bt "second level" tech is supposed to be phoning in the morning, they have allready said on the phone something is definatly wrong, so he better have some answers for me .

I posted a message asking for an update in news.btbroadband.support FAO BT, this is the reply:-
'Unfortunately we have not received any firm update as yet. The only information we have received is that it is unlikely that an update will beavailable before 27/12/06.

I can only apologise for this - in the meantime I have asked whether it is possible for the Helpdesk to be briefed on the outstanding issue.'

well, they phoned me tuesday, said it should be fixed wednesday, then they phoned me wednesdays said it should be fixed thursday, then they phoned me thursday......and well, you can guess what they said, there customer service is appauling, if its not fixed tommorow, i will be contacting there complaints department via the phone, and if that fails, cancelling my service and blocking them from my bank account.

Mines started working today and been worikng all day so far

dcc has been working ok for 2 hours here

tested 2 downloads, appears to be working so far...lets hope it stays working

I'm still having problems with DCC sends...

Anyone else?

nope, BT got their fingers out i think...

....for now anyway

btk