Ports required by Aurea List Manager
Aurea List Manager requires some ports to be open in your firewall to work effectively.
The table below shows the necessary ports needed to open on your firewall:
| Port Number | Purpose |
|---|---|
| 25 |
|
| 53 | UDP for DNS lookups (outbound traffic) |
| 80 | Web interface |
| 119 | TCP for NNTP (reading newsgroups, inbound traffic) |
| 1024 | 65535 Inbound traffic |
| 202 | TCP for Tclport |
Some strict firewalls have problems with Aurea List Manager's DNS lookups. Aurea List Manager initiates the transaction from a random source port (range 1024-65536) to port 53 on remote name servers, and the UDP DNS packet returns to that random port.
Most firewalls can keep the state appropriately. They recognize that the request was initiated internally and allow the inbound connection on the higher port. However, the firewall may need some additional rules to permit DNS information to be returned correctly to Aurea List Manager.
It may be required to specify which IP addresses Aurea List Manager should use for SMTP, NNTP, and DNS. The IP addresses Aurea List Manager uses for SMTP and NNTP may be configured for each site in Utilities > Administration > Sites. The IP address that Aurea List Manager should use for DNS lookups may be configured for the Aurea List Manager machine in Utilities > Administration > Server: Server Settings > Machine/Node Settings.
If you are running your web server on a different machine outside your firewall or are running scripts against Aurea List Manager from a machine outside your firewall, you also need to have the following port open, port 2021 TCP for Tclport
How Aurea List Manager initiates connections
Database connections
- Aurea List Manager initiates a TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) connection to your database server. (typically
port 1433for MSSQL andport 1521for Oracle).
SMTP connections
- Aurea List Manager initiates TCP connections to
port 25of external and internal mail servers. Incoming TCP connections come toport 25of Aurea List Manager for incoming SMTP traffic (bounces, unsubscribes, and so on).
DNS connections
- UDP (User Datagram Protocol) DNS traffic initiates from Aurea List Manager to
port 53of worldwide name servers and returning UDP DNS response traffic fromport 53of remote name servers.
HTTP connections
- Outgoing HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) TCP on
port 80on the Aurea List Manager host machine is useful for configuration, downloading libraries, and web fetch. - Incoming HTTP TCP traffic to
port 80of the Aurea List Manager web server, allows Aurea List Manager to track opens and clickthroughs and allows access to the Aurea List Manager web interface.
TCLPort connections
- The Aurea List Manager web server initiates TCP traffic over
port 2021to the Aurea List Manager server for information to render web pages. The web server does not talk to the database directly It uses Aurea List Manager as a proxy to get information from the database.
Ports required for Aurea List Manager to send mail
- For Aurea List Manager to function at its maximum speed and functionality, specific ports must be open in the firewall.
- For mail sending,
port 25must be open in the firewall for TCP network traffic bi-directionally. Aurea List Manager must be able to initiate a connection to a server onport 25and must be able to receive connections onport 25from servers sending it mail. - For resolving DNS requests, the firewall must allow Aurea List Manager to send to
port 53using UDP from any highport (1024-65535)on the Aurea List Manager machine. - The firewall must allow the response to this UDP request to return from the Internet to the same high port on the Aurea List Manager server. The Aurea List Manager DNS resolver uses UDP only, never TCP, and so no TCP ports need to be open for DNS requests.
- For clickthrough and clickstream tracking, the firewall must allow access to the Aurea List Manager web interface, typically on
port 80. - For NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol) (MultiView/newsgroup reading), the firewall must allow access on
port 119inbound to Aurea List Manager.
Solution for ports that cannot be opened.
- Aurea List Manager's speed and full features need ports mentioned earlier to be open. However, there are those who need to enforce strict rules on their firewall that prohibit them from opening these ports.
- If your company cannot open the ports for email sending and DNS resolution, Aurea List Manager has the ability to relay mail to another server for actual Internet delivery.
- As mentioned before, most mail servers cannot keep up with the high speeds with which Aurea List Manager can deliver mail. However, if your Aurea List Manager license has a low-speed limit, the slower speeds of a relay server may not be an issue for you.
- Additionally, relaying mail reduces Aurea List Manager's ability to correctly report delivery statistics or delivery attempt details, since a different server does the actual delivery.
- When using a relay server, Aurea List Manager reports 100% success in delivering the mail, since the relay server should accept all mail provided to it. In reality, the relay mail server is unlikely to be able to deliver 100% of the mail to the Internet, but Aurea List Manager cannot report which recipients actually received the mail.
- Since Aurea List Manager does not know about failed delivery attempts, it cannot manage members by removing those who are permanently undeliverable. Normally, ListManager monitors who cannot receive mail and stops delivering to them. Without information about failed deliveries, Aurea List Manager continues to attempt delivery to these addresses, using bandwidth and other resources.
- Lyris Technologies strongly recommends that every attempt be made to open these firewall ports or to put the Aurea List Manager server in a DMZ where these ports may be open. However, if corporate firewall rules make doing so impossible, using a relay server is an option for some users.
Note
If one or more relay hosts are defined, domain connection limits have no effect. For more information, see Domain Connection Limits