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Firewall Friendliness

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Groove Workspace enables real-time, inter-enterprise interaction by automatically and transparently crossing firewalls. Users never need to go through special steps to set up shared spaces with third parties such as customers, partners or suppliers.

Since most companies have configured their firewalls to allow employees to access the Web, when necessary Groove leverages this existing configuration to send and receive information. This technique is known as HTTP tunneling. If a firewall isn't in the path between two devices interacting with Groove, then Groove utilizes Simple Symmetric Transport Protocol (SSTP) over TCP/IP to exchange data.

Groove operates most efficiently if users can establish direct connections using Groove's SSTP over TCP/IP. Firewalls may be configured in many different ways, both in the types of packets they allow from behind the firewall to the Internet, and from the Internet to behind the firewall. If a Groove client is behind a firewall that only allows outbound connections, then the only possible way for that client to communicate with users outside their firewall is through a relay service on the Internet.

Groove Workspace can be configured for additional transport types that work through some firewalls and proxies at less of a performance cost. These types are:

a) HTTP/SSL - Use a Secure Socket Layer proxy to connect to the relay via port 443.
b) SOCKS - Use a SOCKS proxy to connect to the relay via port 2492.
c) Various HTTP encapsulations with mechanisms to maintain the TCP connection for multiple operations.

For additional information, see "My company would like to open our firewall to all Groove ports and resources. What do we have to do?" at:
http://www.groove.net/support/technotes/ detail.gtml?id=6&docid=43625455-844C-4142 -A48F-2A0F6AF9D415

The Groove Networks Knowledge Base contains several technical documents explaining which steps to take to ensure that Groove Virtual Office will work with particular types of personal firewalls, such as the Norton Personal Firewall, Zone Alarm and the Windows XP, ServicePack2 Firewall.

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Posted on June 17, 2003 at 06:33 PM

Updated on January 27, 2005 at 04:24 PM

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