WAN, LAN, TCP/IP ports and ipMIDI question

I have been discussing this with an ipMIDI coder and the manufacturers of the equipment involved, but of yet I have no solutions:

I have two rooms each with a mac and hui emulating console using ipMIDI.  Each room has it's own switch connected to the house WAN.  I cannot have both systems online without ipMIDI freaking.  I have to keep one mac directly connected to a console, and change network preferences to either use the internet or the console.

The ipMIDI uses multicast UDP and not TCP/IP so I am having problems just switching that off.  Is there some other way to block UDP at one switch to make each room isolated for ipMIDI?

I barely know what I am talking about while I spike-up and climb this learning curve!
Mike

Keywords to search for: router or firewall.

As always, it's a tradeoff between cost/effort and flexibility.

Most cheap routers block Multicast UDP from traveling from the inside port to the outside port.If you buy a $40 SOHO router and put it between one of the room's switches and the house WAN, this will effectively isolate the ipMIDI multicasts. In some (rare) cases you need a router for each room.

This, however, might make direct communications between the Macs in both rooms awkward if not impossible. If the room Macs still need to be able to 'see' each other (as opposed to when they only communicate with a file server on, say, your WAN segment), you may need a firewall (more accurately: a filter) between the room's switches and the WAN, to block only the ipMIDI traffic but transparently pass all other traffic.

Maybe your switches can be configured to handle this functionality. Some (the more expensive ones) can.

I'm assuming there's no way to tell the console "talk/listen to this room's Mac's IP address only".

JDB.

Oh, and:

sodderboy said:

I have to keep one mac directly connected to a console, and change network preferences to either use the internet or the console.

Click to expand...

So this Mac has two network interfaces?

You can configure the Mac to have both active at once, and filter the UDP Multicast stuff. MacOS has all the bits included standard; setting this up is a matter of digging into your Network configurations. Either DIY and spend somewhere between an afternoon to a weekend on it (and learn a new skill), or get a Mac guy to do it (should not cost more than one billable hour).

Does the console ever need to talk to something other than the Mac?

JDB.

Thanks for the hand-up to the next ledge, JD!  I will post the final solution when resolved.
much appreciated,
Mike

I didn' t follow quite well but Mac OS has a built in firewall called "ipfw"

It is a command line tool, you enter commands either from terminal app or with a script
Eg: a command for blocking UDP packet coming from a specific IP adress would be:

sudo ipfw add deny udp from <IP adress> to any <UDP port number> in

or something like that

Download a program called "Brickhouse".  Easy to use interface.

google Brickhouse OSX