Why would I play UO through a proxy ?

This essay is directed at all people who have an internet connection on one computer (the server) and want to play Ultima Online on another computer (the client) that does not have an internet connection. A proxy is a piece of software, sometimes even hardware, that acts as a gateway between the two computers. The proxy makes a connection so that the client computer can use the internet connection that the server computer has.

What hardware do I need ?

First of all you need to have a network connection set up between the two computers. For that you need two network cards, simple ethernet NE2000 compatible cards will do, and a cable and some connectors to connect those two cards ofcourse.

Next you need to let the two computers talk to each other. Because we will be using this setup to connect to the internet it's best to use the TCP/IP protocol for this. You can set all this up by using the default windows 95/98/NT networking software. Once you managed to get this working you're ready to install the proxy software.

It is beyond the scope of this article to explain in great detail how to set up this basic peer-to-peer network. Instead I will point you to an excellent website on this issue at www.homepclan.com. Make sure you follow the instructions found under Installation 95/98 to set up your home network properly.

What software do I need ?

When all the hardware is installed and the network is working properly you should be able to share drives and printers between the two computers. If that is so, you're ready for the next step; installing the proxy software. In this essay I will discuss a proxy called WinGate.

WinGate comes in different flavors. I will concentrate on version 2.1d because this version is free if you use it to connect just one extra computer. Version 3 has more features, but is no longer free. You can find version 2.1d at Oxford Internet Consultants. Also download the v2.1 manual from there, it describes in detail how to install WinGate.

After you successfully installed WinGate on the computer with the internet connection (the server) and have set up the applications you wish to use on the other computer (the client), you should be able to use your web browser, IRC, ICQ and other internet applications on the other computer (the client). But no matter how hard you try, Ultima Online will not work with this setup. That is because the UO client does not know it needs to talk to the proxy, but tries to access the internet directly.

To overcome this problem we need a piece of software that will make a connection between the UO client and our proxy. For this you can use SocksCap32. You can download SocksCap32 from the NEC Socks website. Like WinGate 2.1, when used in a mini-network for non-commercial use, SocksCap is free.

To set up SocksCap just install it on the client computer you wish to run UO on. You'll have to tell SocksCap the name of the proxy to use (which is WinGate if you installed WinGate with the suggested settings) and the port (which is 1080 by default). You can choose to use Socks4 or Socks5, both will work just fine. When you run SocksCap for the first time click the "New..." button to add UO to the list of programs you wish to run and tell SocksCap in which directory it can find your UO.EXE file.

It's all set up, I want to play!

Now to finally play UO on this setup make sure you have started the WinGate program on the server computer by selecting "Start WinGate Engine" from the Windows start menu. On the client computer start SocksCap and select UO from the list of installed applications, then click the "Run Socksified" button. If you installed it all correct then you should be able to play UO.

Please note that this method will not allow you to log on with two characters at once. You will be able to play UO on both machines, but with one account you'll only be able to play with one character at a time.

- Xena Dragon