by roto (mozy.org/psp/).
If you haven't been paying attention the past few
weeks, you probably don't know that inside of the surprisingly decent
and fun to play Wipeout: Pure game lies a feature-limited but still
fairly usable web browser. Sony did a good thing by including 802.11b
wireless networking in the PSP, good for playing multiplayer games and
now good for browsing the web.
In this short article I will explain how to first
jump straight into browsing the web from your PSP, followed by a
step-by-step guide to setting up your own portals and jumping-off
points for browsing the web. I will explain how to set up
the required DNS and HTTP servers on both Windows and FreeBSD platforms
(the latter can easily be applied to any Linux distribution with a bit
of configuration file juggling). And I'll also include a guide on
setting up a Proxy server, this step is optional for those without
static or semi-static IP's. On the Windows side there is a fair
amount of options for DNS/HTTP servers, but these two I've picked as
decent and useable. I also decided to stay away from first party
servers on the Windows
platform for obvious reasons.
Some warnings before we start. You WILL need a
wireless connection
(this
should be obvious), whether at home or somewhere else. In certain
situations you will need totall access to the wireless router. I'm
going to explain how to be able to access your "portal" from anywhere
in the world using a combination of the DNS/HTTP setup but with a Proxy
and a DynamicDNS account so that you won't need to worry about static
IP addresses. But if you aren't going to go the proxy route you WILL
need a public static IP address if you want to access your portal from
outside of your
LAN;
if you're using someone else's WiFi connection you WILL need a static
IP address to access YOUR portal. You can use your semi-static
Cable/DSL address...but it will change sooner or later so you'll be
left out in the cold. Depending on the service, your IP might not
change for a month or so. One more thing, each WiFi router has its own
"quirks", you will need to know how to work the router by yourself:
you'll need to know how to forward ports and such, also on routers
likethe ones made by
D-Link in certain situations you will need to set DNS server settings
to
your local LAN server for this guide to work. I don't think I have
to say this but you WILL need the game Wipeout:
Pure, this is something alot of people seem to not pay attention to.
INDEX:
1 - Quick guide to get up and running so
you could
browse the web with your PSP. Uses pre-made "portals" from which to
access online content. Easy.
2 - Guide to setting up your own Windows
DNS and
HTTP servers (
TreeWalk for DNS and
Abyss for
HTTP, both are Freeware with no set time-limits.) to create a PSP
portal.
3 - OPTIONAL - Guide to accessing your portal
without needing a static IP (through a Proxy).
4 - Guide to setting up
FreeBSD
DNS and HTTP servers (BIND and Apache, both free and both available
prebuilt from the Ports and Packages collection).
IP ADDRESS LEGEND:
WiFi Router = 192.168.2.123
Server (DNS/HTTP/Proxy) = 192.168.2.1
PSP = 192.168.2.33
- 1 - Give me the Web, NOW!
Ok, this one is the easiest. All you have to do is
complete the following steps and you'll be browsing the web in no time.
1.0 - Boot up the PSP into the system menu and enter
"Network Settings"
1.1 - Go into "Infrastructure Mode"
1.2 - Select a connection to edit. If you already
have a wireless connection set up, select it from the list. Skip over
entering the Connection Name, skip over the WLAN settings if you
already have those set up.
1.3 - In "Address Settings" click down to "Custom",
leave "IP Address Setting" Automatic.
1.4 - In "DNS Setting" click down to "Manual". We'll
be using the portal already set up by
Engadget
in this example. Note:
There is also another very good portal set up by "fugimax" at DNS IP
67.171.70.72. But anyway, in the DNS Settings enter "208.42.28.174" as
your Primary DNS IP and 0.0.0.0 as your secondary.
1.5 - In "Proxy Server" select do not use. Confirm
everything and press "X" to save.
1.6 - You're set, launch Wipeout and go to the
Downloads menu. Select your wireless network connection and any minute
now you should see the Engadget portal.
- 2 - I want to set up my own
portal!
Right, here we'll be setting up some servers on a
Windows XP Professional machine. This is pretty involving, even for
Windows. I'm going to go into as much detail as is necessary. Alot of
things that I won't mention will be in the help files and instructional
files of the said software. Abyss and TreeWalk are pretty nice and easy
to use
servers. They're also very much free. Free is good.
2.0 - Setting up
the HTTP (Web) Server
2.0.1 - Download and install the Abyss Web Server
X1(http://www.aprelium.com/abyssws/). The installation is very easy,
you can select whether you want to start the server Manually,
Automatically or even as a Windows Service. I chose Manual start.
2.0.1.1 - You'll now be asked to enter some data to
be able to access the configuration console of Abyss. Select your
language.
2.0.1.2 - Enter the ID and Password you want to use
to access the config page of Abyss; obviously don't forget what you
enter here..
2.0.1.3 - You are now in the Abyss configuration
menu. Now depending on your machine, Abyss might not be running
on your local LAN IP. That was the case with me. So I had to go into
"Configure" menu ("Configure" button, next to Stop).
Followed by "General".
You're
now in the General settings screen. Click the "Edit" button.
You
are now in the Advanced Configuration screen. In "Bind to IP Address"
enter your IP given to you by your router for the machine you are going
to be serving pages from. In My case that was
192.168.2.1. Now Abyss will listen on 192.168.2.1 port 80. Click
through the OK buttons and restart the server as required.
2.0.2.1 - Open up Windows Explorer and travel on to
C:\Program Files\Abyss Web Server\htdocs and create a folder called
"wipeout" in there.
2.0.2.2 - Create an index.html with your code (such
as links, etc) and place it in the wipeout folder. Or use the one I
provided below. This one will start you off pretty good:
<html>
<head></head>
<body><br><br><br><br>
<center>My PSP Portal
<br><br>
<a href="http://www.engadget.com/">Engadget</a>
<a href="http://www.google.com/xhtml">Google</a>
<br>
<form name="goURL" onSubmit="return gotoURL()">
Enter URL:
<input type="text" size=30 name="goURL2" value="">
<input type="button" value="Go!" onClick="gotoURL()">
</form>
<script>
function gotoURL(){
window.location="http://" + document.goURL.goURL2.value
return false
}
</script>
</body>
</html>
|
2.0.2.3 - You're done with the HTTP server part
2.1 - Setting up
the DNS Server
2.1.1 - Download and install TreeWalk DNS
(http://ntcanuck.com/).
Installation is easy and straight forward. The DNS server will start as
a Service the next time you restart. You can turn off this option in
the Administration options of your Control Panel. I did that, and I
start the DNS server when I need it through the TreeWalk control panel
in the Start Menu. You can use any other DNS server but I find TreeWalk
to be easy and best of all free.
2.1.2 - We're going to set up the DNS Zone for
scea.com here. (Remember, Wipeout accesses ingame.scea.com and we are
going to fool the game into going to OUR server instead of the official
one run by Sony). Open up
Windows Explorer again. Point it to "C:\Windows\System32\dns\etc" and
create a file called "scea.zone" (or just scea.txt) and put this into
it:
; BIND db file for scea.com
$TTL 86400
@
IN SOA
scea.com fake.scea.com. (
2005040201 ; serial number YYMMDDNN
28800 ;
Refresh
7200
; Retry
864000 ; Expire
86400 ; Min
TTL
)
;This should cover
ALL bases:
NS 192.168.2.1
A 192.168.2.1
ingame
A 192.168.2.1
webcluster
A 192.168.2.1
$ORIGIN scea.com.
|
This basically tells our DNS server how to process a
request to "ingame.scea.com". 192.168.2.1 Is my WindowsXP DNS/HTTP
server machine, so when Wipeout tries to access
"http://ingame.scea.com/wipeout/index.html" (the online server run by
SCEA for Wipeout updates) it will go to
"http://192.168.2.1/wipeout/index.html" (which is our local server) and
read our local index.html. I won't go into detail on how DNS works,
just remember the internet functions using numbers (IP addresses) not
letters (names).
2.1.3 - Oh almost forgot we need to tell our named
server that we will be a master server for the scea.com zone. Do this
by editing the file "named.conf" (still in the same directory). Add the
following text to the bottom of "named.conf", this tells us that for
"scea.com" requests we need to check the scea.zone file for mapping
information:
zone "scea.com" {
type
master;
file
"scea.zone";
};
|
2.1.4 - Next go back to the TreeWalk DNS Control
Panel and click "Reload". This is basically it, you may read the help
file for more info on TreeWalk, but this is all you need so far to
start off.
Now click start to start up your server (if its not
already running):
2.1.5 - One more time go to the PSP Network Settings
and this time for DNS server enter "192.168.2.1" (or whatever IP your
server is). Basically repeat steps 1.1 through 1.6 except for the
DNS server enter your server's IP.
2.1.6 - Now fire up Wipeout, go to Downloads and
connect. You should see this:
You can turn off WLAN
Power Save for a slightly better connection.
- 3 - OPTIONAL - Lets do it
through a Proxy.
You will need to have the windows
DNS/HTTP servers for this step, its an optional step to be able to
access your portal from anywhere on the net without needing a static
IP. You can substitute any proxy you want in here but then you need to
check your own settings. There are no pictures here, so pay attention
to the words. Don't expect to set this up for anyone but a close group
of friends because if you release this into the world...your ISP will
kill you off for eating up bandwidth.
3.0.1 - Download and install Privoxy (
www.privoxy.org or
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/ijbswa/privoxy_setup_3_0_3-1.exe?download).
This is yet another free server, free == good. Installation is typical.
You can choose whether you want it to start up automatically or not, I
chose not.
3.0.2 - Start up Privoxy and go to Options->Edit
Main Configuration. Scroll down to 4.1 "listen-address" and change the
listen-address line to "listen-address 192.168.2.1:8080"
3.0.3 - Kill Privoxy and restart it. Now your proxy
is listening on 192.168.2.1 port 8080.
3.0.3 - Start up the Abyss HTTP server and TreeWalk
DNS server.
3.0.4 - Configure your WiFi router to port-forward
port 8080 from the WAN port to 192.168.2.1 (or your server machine).
This you have to know how to do yourself.
3.0.5 - Go to www.dyndns.org and make yourself an
account, follow the steps and activate the account. Create a hostname
and set your IP to the IP given to you by your ISP (should be
automatic). Download any dynamic IP update clients you want (thats left
up to you). Once your DynDNS hostname is set up (ex.
psp-proxy.dyndns.org) you can use that hostname as your proxy's
address. This is much better than using the DNS trick because you can
have the DynDNS IP automatically updated and the hostname won't change.
3.0.6 - Fire up your PSP and enter the network
connection setup again. Go through steps 1.0-1.4 again but this time
edit the proxy settings (Leave DNS Automatic). Enter your DynamicDNS
hostname as the proxy
and port 8080 as the...port. Thats it, try it out. If anything's not
working double check all spelling and re-read this guide.
- 4 - I like my servers pure,
thank you! (FreeBSD)
This guide is minimal, its not for
beginners. I won't go into installing or configuring FreeBSD. Most of
what you read here can be applied to any Linux distribution, with minor
changes ofcourse. Here we are going to set up the DNS and HTTP
settings on a FreeBSD machine. The configuration is surprisingly simple
and easy. I'll be assuming that you already have FreeBSD 4.X or 5.X
installed. There are small configuration differences between 4 and 5 so
watch for those. Oh and if something's wrong here..sorry, I'm doing
this from memory.
4.0.1 - Install the BIND DNS server if you don't
already have one:
roto@skyline$ cd /usr/ports/net/bind9
roto@skyline$ make
install clean
|
4.0.2 - Edit /etc/namedb/named.conf and add this to
the bottom of the file:
zone "scea.com" {
type
master;
file
"scea.zone";
};
|
4.0.3 - Create a "scea.zone" file in
"/etc/namedb" by running "touch scea.zone" and use your favorite *nix
text editor to add this to that file:
; BIND db file for scea.com
$TTL 86400
@
IN SOA
scea.com fake.scea.com. (
2005040201 ; serial number YYMMDDNN
28800 ;
Refresh
7200
; Retry
864000 ; Expire
86400 ; Min
TTL
)
NS 192.168.2.1
A 192.168.2.1
ingame
A 192.168.2.1
webcluster
A 192.168.2.1
$ORIGIN scea.com.
|
4.0.4 - Type "named.restart" and thats pretty much
it for the DNS part.
4.1.0 - Install Apache:
roto@skyline$ cd
/usr/ports/www/apache13
roto@skyline$ make
install clean
|
4.1.1 - I won't go into setting up Apache, its
pretty easy but can get detailed. The default setup should work out of
the box. Move to "/usr/local/www/data/" and create a directory (mkdir)
called "wipeout", cd into wipeout and use your favorite text editor to
write an "index.html" or just copy and paste and grab the portal.html
that I provided above. Honestly, if you are already running FreeBSD you
shouldn't even have to read this part. I don't have space to make this
too detailed (such as instructions on INSTALLING FreeBSD...search the
web for that) so this is about as detailed as I'll get. Your apache's
documents directory may vary, so figure that out by yourself
4.1.1 - Do an "apachectl start" and "named.restart"
and HOPEFULLY you are up and running. Thats it for this part. I don't
think I'm missing anything important so you should be set.
THE END.
Thats pretty much all of it, hope you enjoyed reading this!
Thanks to:
Omlette
Engadget
Richard N.
FuMan
NeoG, |Laz| (for testing, thanks again!)