WallCooler and Firewalls

Introduction	Norton Personal Firewall	Zone Alarm
Windows XP	Other Firewalls

Have a question or need some more information? click here to submit your question

Introduction

Typical WallCooler Usage

Let us consider the following example:
You are connecting with your laptop computer (named MyLaptop) from a hotspot wifi connection (Hotel, bar) to your Office network (where WallCooler is installed on your desktop computer named WorkDesk).

On the public network (wifi hotspot), your laptop (MyLaptop) is assigned address 10.200.50.3
Your office network is 172.168.2.X, and your desktop computer (WorkDesk) is assigned 172.168.2.11

Fig1: Typical usage of WallCooler

To be able to work, MyLaptop firewall should permit:

WallCooler to access the Internet (Vedivi online servers)
MyLaptop to access the remote Computer (WorkDesk)
MyLaptop to access the remote network computers (some computers or the whole network)

Depending on your firewall & settings, you will have to perform some (or all) of the following configurations:

Grant WallCooler access to the internet (trust the application named WallCooler)
Allow access to the computer host "WorkDesk" or the Address 172.168.2.11
Allow individually each remote host you want to authorize (like "OtherDesk" or "FileServer")
or trust the whole remote network (172.168.2.11/255.255.255.0).

Some application require more permissions to work than others, for instance:
RemoteDesktop only requires an outgoing TCP connection to the remote computer,
but
FileSharing requires TCP and UDP to function properly, so the remote computer (or file server) needs to configured as fully trusted on the local personal firewall.

Do I need to configure my personal Firewall?

WallCooler needs certain privileges to be able to function normally. Many personal Firewall might not automatically grant WallCooler those privileges (depending on you configuration).
You would then need to configure you firewall manually.

Only personal firewalls need to be configured. (firewall running on your computer).
Corporate firewall (installed elsewhere on the network) do not need any specific configuration for WallCooler to work.

Why do I need to configure my firewall for WallCooler?

WallCooler needs access to Vedivi servers on the internet. This is required to establish a connection with the remote computer.
If you fail to connect to the Vedivi network, it is likely that your firewall is blocking these and you need to allow outgoing connections for WallCooler.

Note that this is about outgoing connections, not incoming connections.

Once connected to the remote network using WallCooler, the remote network is accessible locally, but your firewall might still prevent any access to it.
To access computers on the remote network, you might also need to allow connections to the remote network.

How to configure your firewall for WallCooler?

Select your firewall and see how you should configure it.