MagicJack Installation, Firewall Setup and Port Settings

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UPDATED ON APRIL 7, 2011 Magic Jack, this amazing usb device will allow you to make unlimited calls to the US and Canda for $20.00 per year and better yet, you get a registered landline number that allows you to receive calls. I’ve found a lot of sites on how to set up routers, firewalls and access points to allow Magic Jack to pass through. None of them worked. It was agitating so I had to do some tests on my own. Read on for the complete port lists.

 

magic jack dongle

 

Magic Jack is very easy to install in the first place. Just plug it in and then plug your phone to it. The executable or installer should run automatically, if not open the flash drive, find it and then run it. The next part will deal with firewalls and port settings.

 

I used Active Ports to find out what ports MagicJack was using and it turns out that it uses a lot of UDP ports and two TCP ports. Their website specifically states that the device only uses UDP ports 5060-5070 (reference: LINK (removed) – GOOGLE’S WEB CACHE OF THE PAGE UPDATE April 7, 2011:The knowledge base has been down for a while but I managed to retrieve Google’s cache of the site.) which I found out was clearly not true. I found this out by performing calls to a random list of phone numbers (except 911 numbers ^_^). I dialed at least 40 phone numbers repeatedly. After this, I was able to conclude that MagicJack uses random UDP ports in the high range. UDP ports might seem a bit less important than TCP ports but as a Systems Administrator this will create a highly unsecured and exposed network. I was only able to achieve 100% connectivity with the 40 phone numbers after opening a range of UDP ports.

 

magicjack ethernet dongle

 

I also stumbled upon a lot of sites and forum posts that tell magic jack users to setup port forwarding, this is NOT true!

 

Below is the exact list of the TCP and UDP Ports that I had to open in my firewall and router (NOT port forward) to achieve 100% connectivity:

 

TCP Ports List: 80 (HTTP), 443 (HTTPS)

UDP Ports List: 5060, 5070, 10000-65535

 

It is really strange why the device was designed like this. My guess is that the device is intended solely for home use and not commercial use.

 
 
 

The Science of Opening a New Ketchup Bottle… Easily! >_<

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tomato.jpgAnother slow day, I was trying to open a bottle of ketchup a while a go and it seemed really hard to do so and it just hit me. Why does this have to be so hard? It should not be an enigma c(”,)

As I found out I was exerting force towards the center of the cap while trying to twist it around. For bigger hands this is a problem because you will be exerting more force in compressing the cap rather than twisting it >_<. It seems I have found the answer why smaller hands do better in opening bottles, such as soda and ketchup.

ketchup1.jpg

I sat down and looked at the bottle for a few minutes. Can this be solved without googling it? Woooot! I was able to solve it, take a look at the image below, hehe. To be able to open the bottle it would be better to apply two twists on it, one at the cap and a counter-acting one at its body. What this does is you will be able to multiply the effort in trying to open the bottle. I also thought that it kind of heats up the inside of the bottle which should expand it a little bit. Also shaking the bottle might do so but I do not think that it helps out a lot c(”,)

ketchup2.jpg

+1 Post! lol