Firewall Configuration and Networking

This section provides information about the following:

Firewall Configurations

Media Blender communicates with the Trailhead Server through the corporate firewall using the Sun Microsystems Remote Method Invocation (RMI). This section describes the firewall configurations supported in this release, as well as special setup required for optimal performance.

The firewall between Media Blender and the Trailhead server can be set up in any of the following four modes:

Polling Over Outbound Socket Connections Mode

The polling mode allows outbound socket connections from Media Blender to the Trailhead server. Media Blender connects to the Trailhead server using TCP/IP socket connections. If you use this mode, ensure that your firewall permits outbound socket connections from Media Blender to Trailhead on all ports. This mode provides high throughput and is the recommended configuration.

Note: In this mode, you must disable attempts by the Trailhead server to automatically connect to the Trailhead medium. The Trailhead.server.properties file contains a property, connection<n>.disableautoconnect, which you must set to true to ensure the Trailhead server does not try to automatically connect to the Trailhead medium. This property setting ensures that the Trailhead medium will instead poll the Trailhead server from inside the firewall.

Two-way Socket Connection Mode

In the two-way socket connection mode, the firewall allows both of the following:

If you use this mode, ensure that your firewall permits inbound and outbound connections between Media Blender and Trailhead on all ports. This mode provides the highest throughput and the lowest delays of the four modes.

Note: If the firewall will allow both inbound and outbound communication, you must set the connection<n>disableauotoconnect property in Trailhead.server.properties to false. This property setting ensures that the Trailhead server will connect to the Trailhead medium automatically, initiating two-way communication through the connections.

Classic HTTP Proxy Mode

In the Classic HTTP proxy mode, the firewall permits outbound HTTP communication only to all ports. Media Blender connects to the Trailhead server using HTTP to the RMI registry port (1099 default). This mode provides the lowest throughput of the four modes. Make sure the checkurls property in the Trailhead.properties file on the Media Blender server is always set to false.

If you set up your firewall using this mode, you must make sure you set up the proxy parameters on the Media Blender using Servletexec Administration and the LoadWLRoot servlet. (See the Media Blender Installation Guide for more information.)

Transparent HTTP Mode

The firewall permits HTTP communication over all ports. There is no special set up required for this mode.

Networking Considerations

The following are some networking considerations:

The hosts file on the Blender machine must have an entry for the Trailhead server; the hosts file on the Trailhead server must have an entry for the Blender machine.