Does Ghost Solution Suite support Multicasting or Unicasting across a NAT (Network Address Translation) Firewall

Products

• Ghost Solution Suite

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms
When using GhostCasting, either with Multicast or Unicast method, the client machines will try to request an IP address from the GhostCast server. The Client machines will not be able to get the GhostCast servers private IP address because of the NAT Firewall and will be returned an address from the NAT. The client machines will time out as they cannot get the private IP address of the GhostCast Server.

Cause

RML (Reliable Multicast Library) across NAT will never work, in either Unicast or Multicast mode. NAT Firewalls do not support multicast across the NAT itself, but furthermore, RML is based on a fixed range of UDP port numbers, and these can’t be changed by the firewall without breaking connectivity.

Resolution

Ghost cannot Multicast or Unicast across a NAT Firewall.

RML (Reliable Multicast Library) across NAT will never work, in either unicast or multicast mode. NAT firewalls do not support multicasting across the NAT itself; furthermore, RML is based on a fixed range of UDP port numbers that can’t be changed by the firewall without breaking connectivity.