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Are you having
problems connecting to the CCFP collaboration? Are you authorized to connect? The audience for the CCFP collaboration is the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Air Traffic Control System Command Center (ATCSCC) and associated nationwide air traffic centers. The product is also used by the Center Weather Service Units (CWSU), Meteorological Services of Canada (MSC), and private sector dispatchers, primarily commecial airlines. You must have been issued a user name and password in order to access the collaboration software. If you need authorization to use the CCFP chat room software contact: Have you connected before? The most common problem is an incorrect username or password. Both the username and password are case sensitive. Check to make sure you positively know both the username and password and thier case. Often, the Caps Lock will have been inadvertantly hit, which will cause the case of your username and password to be incorrect. It could be possible that the network between you and the AWC is down. To check this on a PC running Win 9x. Click Start->Run then type "ping cdm.aviationweather.noaa.gov". If you see a dialog box popup and lines scrolling in the box which look something like "Reply from 204.227.127.35", then the network is up. If not you may try the following command to see where the failure is happening: "tracert cdm.aviationweather.noaa.gov". If you get a few series of **** then the previous jump is the last successful jump. Do you have a supported browser? Netscape 3, Netscape 4, IE4, IE5 and
any other browser which supports java JDK 1.0 or greater. Netscape 6 will work,
but there may be minor problems such as flickering. Do you get a blank window when you think you've connected to the
CCFP collaboration? If you don't see the whiteboard and
chat window when you connect, it means that your browser has not been able to
connect to the CCFP server. The first time you connect (and after any
updates to the site), it will take a while for your browser to download the
java classes, so leave it at least 5 minutes. The messages in the
status window at the bottom of your browser will tell you if it is still
downloading. Does it appear as if the CCFP java applet crashed your browser? It didn't. The reason your browser crashed is because it has a buggy
implementation of java! If you are having problems, try using Netscape 4.5 or
4.7 which seems to be reasonably stable (tested on Windows 98, NT4, Solaris and
Linux). Also make sure you have enough free swap space. Java tends to use about
20 Megs before it even thinks about doing anything! When using Netscape 4 on
UNIX, it is generally best not to have any other browser windows open when
running any java applets (Netscape on UNIX just doesn't seem to work well for
us). Do you get a message "unable to locate server", but can
still surf the CCFP site? If the CCFP server is up and
running (i.e., you can view the web pages on the site with no problem), but you
get an error saying that your browser is unable to locate the server when
running the java, the problem could be RealPlayer. Try uninstalling RealPlayer,
restart your computer and try the Groupboard again. This is a bug in
RealPlayer. This is sort of a long shot so it could be a lot of other things
too. Are you still having problems after getting this far? The ability to create network
connections in Java applets is a very powerful feature that most other Web
based applications do not have. The CCFP Collaboration System uses a Java
applet to allow collaboration through the use of the Groupboard (COTS)
software. For more information on the Groupboard software please visit
http://www.groupboard.com. However, the existence of firewalls presents a
challenge to the Groupboard Java applets that use persistent network
connections (i.e. TCP/IP socket) between the your computer (client) and the
server at the AWC. What is a firewall and why would it cause a problem? A firewall can be viewed as a
combined hardware/software system that links two isolated networks, usually a
private network and the Internet. A firewall polices the traffic between the
two networks, blocking access from the Internet to the private network, while
providing controlled Internet access to internal computers. For software
applications, a proxy server does this kind of policing. Client applications
like Java applets (Groupboard) can be downloaded and run by computers that are
in their own firewall protected networks. How does the Groupboard software work? The Groupboard Java applet creates
a network connection to the AWC, which is outside the your firewall. The only
way to create such connection is by going through the your proxy server. The
difficulty here is that the Groupboard applet has no prior knowledge of the
your firewall and its proxy server. By default, the Groupboard will
attempt to connect using a normal socket connection (NOT using a tunnel). If
this fails, you should use the tunneling connection version. This version
allows the Groupboard to run through proxy servers allowing connections to http
port 6666. If your firewall has been
configured to not allow connections through port 6666 (you will need to ask
your network administrator) then you will not be able to use the Groupboard
software to establish a connection through your firewall. So is all lost and will you never be able to connect? No. There are several options you can employ and at least of
them will work. 1) You can ask your network administrator to open port
6666 so that you may collaborate with the rest of the aviation weather
community. You may have to stress how critical it is that you be allowed
to participate in the CCFP collaboration. This is probably the easiest and most
convenient solution. 2) Ask your network administrator to offer a solution around
this problem. Because of their intimate knowledge of the subject matter, they
frequently can do some pretty innovative things to solve these sorts of
problems. They also know how your firewall is configured. 3) Several CWSUs are using a program to aid in solving the firewall
issues. The most commonly used is called AutoSOCKs and has worked out extremely
well for them. The software, called Aventail AutoSOCKS, is a 16- and 32-bit
Windows application for authenticated firewall traversal. It provides secure
and managed access to and from your network behind a firewall. We found some
information on the web at: http://www-4.ibm.com/software/security/firewall/downloads/solutionpack/aventail/ While were not experts in this
type of software, briefly, this is what WE found: AutoSOCKS transparently makes
Windows-based TCP/IP applications SOCKS compliant. By implementing AutoSOCKS
with a corporations existing TCP/IP applications, clients can communicate
through the SOCKS-enabled servers. While communications within the local network
may proceed unchanged, all communication with external networks can be
redirected through a single point of access, which would be the SOCKS server,
so that network administrators can control traffic out to the Internet and into
your network. AutoSOCKS works by intercepting
WinSock communication requests issued by applications, then processing the
requests based on a set of rules. These rules govern whether or not a WinSock
request is redirected through the SOCKS server. To further support deployment of
this AutoSOCKs configuration for CWSU on the FAA LAN, Cliff Wawiernia (Ohio SMO
DSS/CNA) has established a Web Page on the Ohio SMO Web Site where you can
download AutoSocks and the configuration files for the AWA, AMC, and AWP
Proxy/firewalls servers. Youll also find detailed instructions for installing
and configuring AutoSocks at this website. ZOB and ZKC have both reported
success in using AutoSocks. Those on the FAA Intranet please visit: http://aglohiweb.faa.gov/psu/dss/irm/NOAA/noaa.html Lastly, we are sure there is other
products like AutoSOCKs and many more helpful sites out there so if you
discover any of those in your investigations, please share with us so that we
can collectively benefit. 4) There is
one solution that has worked every time for every user. Get a computer
with a modem and dial up to an Internet Service Provider (ISP). By doing this
you completely avoid the firewall issues. The
AWC cannot solve your firewall woes, but we are happy to help you with testing
and working with your network administrators. We are working on other solutions
to this problem from our end, and if we find one we will definitely let
everyone know. As CCFP evolves we will continue to strive to provide you with
the most stable and robust software possible. |