Installation Steps for the Alstone Java Proxy for use in UAE.

 

This narrative describe the ways to By-pass the Etisalat censoring proxy using Alstone Java Proxy. The basic principles may apply to other localities as well. One of the serious limitation of the narrative is that it address only the most basic features of the proxy. For details please contact the proxy author.

The Alstone proxy was developed by Craig Carey of Proxy Methods List. It converts the IP address (unique address of each web site) using various ciphers in such a way that the censoring proxy (Etisalat) is fooled into giving access to a restricted site.

I am a novice on any of the stuff you read here, the reason I wrote is just to make sure that people like me can use the proxy. If you have any doubt please ask Craig who has written the program or send a mail to the mailing list he runs. Wayne (https://www.angelfire.com/wy/1waynes/) is another person who contribute greatly to the above mailing list and is among the main support behind this narrative. This writing is influenced by all the contributors of the Proxy-methods mailing list, especially Glow, MADali and others, and of course Wayne and Craig..

If you feel uncomfortable looking at all these details and still want a way out of the censoring proxy, read the foot note on Unfrozen, another very good program written by Glow Armageddon, which offer similar features.

 

Assumptions

 

The Downloads:

You need to down load the following software. Click the links below

 

Installation:

JRE installation- Once you finish downloading the JRE, file, locate it and double click on it and the installation will begin. You can say Yes to installation and keep clicking Next in the setup menu to keep the default setup option. You may be better off sticking to the default setup options. Once JRE is installed you will see a folder (provided you installed in the default location) with JRE.EXE as follows: C:\Program Files\Javasoft\jre\1.1\bin\ . Note down this location.

Alstone Proxy Installation- If you do not have an Unzip/Zip utility, download and install it now. After the Unzip/Zip utility is installed, double click on the Alstone Proxy zip file and it will be opened in the Zip utility you installed. Then choose the ‘extract‘ button in Winzip (may be Unzip or some other command in other utilitues). You will be asked to select a folder to extract the files. I would suggest extracting the files to a [wayne: new] folder called C:\Alstone (where ‘C’ is the drive where you have chosen to unzip the files), but you may chose any folder you wish to. You should remember where you have unzipped the Alstone Proxy.

Getting ready to run Alstone

Now that you have installed all the software, you can start running Alstone proxy.

First start a DOS session in Windows using the MSDos Icon or by typing command at Start>Run and hitting Enter.

Navigate your way to the directory where you have unzipped Alstone [wayne: cd /d c:\alstone]. In my case it is C:\Alstone

Once in this directory, check whether the file called Alstone.class exist in the directory[wayne: dir]. (In DOS you will see a file called Alston~1.cla., for details see the note in gray color. MSDOS file names later) Now type the following command and at the Alstone proxy folder and hit enter.

c:\progra~1\javasoft\jre\1.1\bin\JRE.EXE -cp . Alstone -n 84 -f 194.170.168.15:8080 -o

The command is explained below:

The Blue text- Is the path where JRE is installed. This is the default installation path and if you have changed the path during installation, please put that in instead.

One important thing to note here is that even though the actual default installation path is C:\Program files\javasoft\jre\1.1\bin I have used progra~1 instead of Program files. This is because DOS can understand only 8 character long filenames and under DOS Windows automatically assign a 8 character file name to all the long file names in Windows. The default DOS name for Program Files folder is Progra~1, however this may not be the case all the time. To verify go to a DOS prompt and type dir at the C:\ prompt and check how DOS display program files folder name and use it. You must also make sure that whenever the long file or folder names are involved you should put the DOS name for that and not the long file shown in Windows explorer.

The "-n 84" tells the Alstone to listen on 127.0.0.1 on port 84

The "-f 194.170.168.15:8080" tells the Alstone where to connect to.

The "-cp ." tells JRE.EXE to search in the current directory for Alstone.class

Red text - Is the proxy address for Etisalat and 8080 is the port address. You can use any of the following proxies given below, but the ones in blue colour should give better result if you are accessing blocked sites.

194.170.168.94

194.170.1.13

194.170.168.15

194.170.168.68

194.170.168.3

194.170.168.8

194.170.163.8

[wayne: Aseef adds the following update:

I just tested some of the Etisalat proxies you had mentioned earlier for unrestricted access with Octals. The results are:

All of the following give 'almost' 100% access with Ocatals (I used Unfrozen)

This one is mixed, some sites get through, some don't.

These were not working for any sites. Possibly down at the time of testing.

]

If you have done everything correctly you will see the following text at MS-DOS window (depending on the Etisalat proxy you have chosen)

Mode = Client (encoding) mode, Encoding = Octal, Hostname_Tail = ''

Listen = 84, Remote = 194.170.168.15:8080

Now all that is left is to configure your browser to use the proxy 127.0.0.1 on port 84. I shall explain how to do it in IE5 versions. I guess Netscape users should use Manual proxy option.

  

How to Change the IE5 Proxy setting to use Alstone

Your are done and can start browsing to any of the restricted sites as long as you have the Alstone Proxy Dos window open. Once that is closed you must change the proxy address back to http://proxy1.emirates.net.ae to access the web sites.

 

Creating an Icon on your desktop.

Now that you have successfully running Alstone, you would want to avoid typing again and again all those possibly complicated commands at the DOS prompt whenever you wish to use the proxy. Luckily there is a easy way out. You can create an icon (a DOS bat file to be exact) which will launch Alstone ready to use. You must however make sure the browser is set to use Alstone. Here how to create an Icon on desktop.

Open Notepad and copy the text below into a Notepad window:

cd\

c:

cd alstone

c:\progra~1\javasoft\jre\1.1\bin\JRE.EXE -cp . Alstone -n 84 -f 194.170.168.15:8080 –o

Explanation:

The green text C: is the hard disk drive letter and alstone is the folder where you have unzipped Alstone proxy and should contain alstone.class file. If you have unzipped the proxy to some other drive and/or folder, please give that instead. An example is given below:

F:

cd trial\proxy

Special note: Under NT, 'cd /d f:\trial\proxy' works instead of: f: cd \trial proxy

Meaning the proxy is unzipped into a folder called F:\trial\proxy

Other explanation is the same as described above.

Now save the file as follows. From File menu chose, Save as and type the following:

"C:\Desktop\Alstone.bat"

You must type the double quote (" "), otherwise the file will be saved as a text file. You are finished and you have an icon on Desktop. Double click and Alstone is ready to go. When you are finished just close the Dos Windows running Alstone.

Limitations:

The method actually exploit the weakness of the Etisalat censoring proxy which get fooled by the IP Address conversion. Once Etisalat is rectify this, you are out of luck.

The three proxies recommended are observed to give unblocked access to all sites, except a few. It might change over time and refuse to give access.

When the proxy gets busy, you might experience problems accessing even unblocked sites.

When replacing the hostname with an IP number returns a different document, Alstone might fail to fetch the web site you need. For major web sites this problem is less likely.

The Etisalat proxy will have logs of the sites accessed, but may not be serious.

Unfrozen 3rd Degree

If you must have something simpler try downloading Unfrozen 3rd Degree written by Glow Armageddon. It works in a similar fashion is a small file (about 350 kb) and is very easy to set up and run. Install it (a simple click and finish work), set your browser to the Etisalat proxies in blue color, and type the site address in the Unfrozen application. You should have access to all most of the sites. You should find the 'Auto-capture link' option in Unfrozen pretty useful. Download Unfrozen here.

 

Aseef

March 30, 2000