UDP Port Settings - Airport Extreme - MacBook

I cannot get past the region handshake. After researching this on the web and the SL Knowledge Base, I found this article:
https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417
which mentions a firewall is blocking UDP traffic.

I am fairly technically savvy, but I am not familiar with how to open or map ports with my airport utility and trial-and-error are growing increasingly frustrating.

It doesn't help that I'm not sure this is the problem.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Mike

iirc Airport base-stations don't block any ports by default. How does your base-station connect to the internet?

Having a quick look now I can't find ANY port-mapping options for my base-station, but it may be due to the way I've got it set-up to extend an existing router's network rather than creating its own.

My DSL router plugs directly into the Airport Express. I think outgoing UDP packets are being blocked as I discovered after posting last night that I cannot set up a non-web browser based chat such as iChat.
You bring up an excellent point that I somehow neglected to think about. I should troubleshoot starting at the DSL router first to see if the DSL router is blocking the UDP packets.

Thanks for taking the time to write. I'll post if it has been resolved when I check after work today; I'm optimistic.

Mike (Sorcari)

by default you shouldn't need to manually open/map any INCOMMING ports for full SL functionality (although you can specify which port SL should use for more complicated LAN setups).

but SL does assume that is has full tcp & udp OUTGOING access.

virtually all domestic/light-commercial dsl/cable modem/routers allow all outgoing connections by default, including the Airport Exp/Ext.

however you might have a software firewall installed that is blocking SL - there might be an application white-list that SL needs to be added to. this would certainly explain your symptoms. although you'd normally get a pop-up from the firewall to ask if it's OK to allow SL, unless you already accidentally said No / Always No.

if you're running SL on a Mac (do you get the frequent freezes/spinning-beach-ball too?), the OS X firewall doesn't block outgoing traffic at all. all you can do is white/black-list incoming connections (all/essential/selected-apps).

obviously if you're running both a hardware & software firewall, for any app that does need incoming ports mapped, you have to configure that in both - unless you've got UPnP or NAT-PMP enabled so that apps, OS & router can work it all out for themselves.

as for port-mapping on an Airport, in case you ever need to do it:

remember that the Airport Express/Extreme can be configured to be merely a wifi access point (where your dsl/cable-modem/router does the routing/firewall functionality, so port-mapping should be done in there, not in the AirportE), just as easily as where the Airport does all routing/firewall/wifi functionality, and the dsl/cable modem/router is used in bridged mode. same thing for one of the other replies, his Airport is only config'd to extend the wifi network of another base-station, not do routing/firewalling.

so first up you need to know which way your Airport is configd. launch the Airport Utility and click on 'Manual config...'. click on the 'Internet' icon, & note the 'Connect using' & 'Connection sharing' pull-down lists. the various combinations of those are what set the Airport's fundamental config. check Airport doco for details...

maybe one day Apple will turn those screens into something with pretty diagrams so that "normal people" can actually understand what's going on and stop wasting time trying to configure their Airport when it should be their dsl/cable-modem/router they should be changing (or vice-versa).

cheers, Anthony.

I am a little embarrassed and must apologize for not catching this before. The issue was that prior to implementing the airport express, I had been selected a firewall setting on the DSL router/modem. That setting "Medium" as opposed to the "Basic" setting was blocking outgoing UDP.
Thanks for the replies...it's a pleasure to have such help available.