[Mono-list] Remoting and firewalls

[Helge Lenuweit]

Hello mono folks,

I am writing a service that offers a remoted object on either Windows or 
mono/Linux. While this indeed works great on mono, my solution uses the 
commercial GenuineChannels product on Windows that offers a 
bidirectional TcpChannel implementation. This allows to get around 
firewalls and NAT routers but unfortunately only runs on Windows 
(offering lots of additional features like security sessions, 
impersonation, direct exchange etc. which aren't used in my case).. I'm 
now looking at something similar for mono, or any other solution to "get 
connected" to the server.

My research so far brought up the following, most of it from a 
discussion on this list about two years ago:
- SSH tunneling to the server might be an option. What I tried was 
forwarding the server port to my client machine which allowed me to 
connect to a singleton. Then a method is called and a CAO returned, only 
that the new object's URI points to the real server's name instead of 
localhost again. (I used this to allow for an interface-based design).
- Anyway, requiring an SSH connection doesn't seem the most intuitive 
for the end user... Also I couldn't figure out what to do for the 
callback channel (I use the "new TcpChannel(0)" constructor for an 
arbitrary callback port).

I'd be happy to learn about possible hints or solutions for this problem 
or pointers for helpful reading.
Regards, Helge