UDPTunnel 1.1
Author: Jonathan Lennox
Keywords: UDP; RTP; TCP; tunnel

# UDPTunnel (Version 1.1)

## Name

> `udptunnel` - Tunnel UDP packets over a TCP connection

## Synopsis

> `udptunnel -s TCP-port [-r] [-v] UDP-addr/UDP-port[/ttl]`
> `udptunnel -c TCP-addr[/TCP-port] [-r] [-v] UDP-addr/UDP-port[/ttl]`

## Description

UDPTunnel is a small program which can tunnel UDP packets bi-directionally over a TCP connection. Its primary purpose (and original motivation) is to allow multi-media conferences to traverse a firewall which allows only outgoing TCP connections.

## Installation

Source code for Unix is available from: ftp://ftp.cs.columbia.edu/pub/lennox/udptunnel/.

To build, unpack the tar file, then type:

> `./configure`
> `make`
> (optionally) `make install`

The `configure` script is a standard GNU autoconf-generated configure script; the usual options for it apply. The only option which should be necessary for normal use is `--prefix=/path/to/install`, which allows you to specify where `make install` will put the installed binary. Type `./configure --help` for a full list of supported options.

UDPTunnel should compile on any Posix-compliant platform supporting sockets. It has been tested on Solaris 2.6, Linux 2.2.5 (RedHat 5.2), and FreeBSD 3.1. Information about success or failure on other platforms is welcomed.

## Usage

UDPTunnel can be run in two modes: a client mode and a server mode. The client mode initiates the TCP connection before relaying UDP; the server waits for an incoming connection before doing so. After the TCP connection is established, the behavior of the two modes is identical. If you are using UDPTunnel to traverse a firewall as discussed above, the client would be run inside the firewall, and the server would be run outside it.

### Options

> `-s` TCP-port
>   Server mode
>   If udptunnel is invoked with the -s option, it runs in server mode: the server will wait for an incoming connection on the specified TCP port, and then relay UDP to and from it.
> `-c` TCP-addr[/TCP-port]
>   Client mode
>   If udptunnel is invoked with the -c option, it runs in client mode: it will open a TCP connection to the specified TCP host and port, and then relay UDP on it.

>   The TCP port may be omitted in this case; it will default to the same port number as the UDP port.

> `-r`
>   RTP mode
>   In order to facilitate tunneling both RTP and RTCP traffic for a multi-media conference, this sets up relays on two consecutive TCP and UDP ports. All specified port numbers in this case must be even. Note that both the client and the server must use the `-r` flag for this to work; the server will not begin relaying packets until both its connections have been established.
> `-v`
>   Verbose output

>   This flag turns on verbose debugging output about UDPTunnel's actions. It may be given multiple times. With a single `-v`, information about connection establishment is printed on UDPTunnel's standard error stream; with a second one, per-packet information is also shown. Note that this latter case can produce a prodigious amount of information.

>   If this flag is not given, UDPTunnel will remain silent unless an error occurs.

One of the two options `-c` and `-s` must be given; if not, it is an error.

In all cases, the UDP address and port to tunnel is given after all options. UDPTunnel will listen to this adddress for packets, and will send received packets on this address. The address may be a multicast address; in this case, a multicast TTL should be specified, and tunneled packets will be sent with this TTL. All addresses, TCP and UDP, may be specified either as an IPv4 dotted-quad address (e.g. 224.2.0.1) or as a host name (e.g. `conrail.cs.columbia.edu`). Port numbers must be in the range of 1 to 65535; TTLs must be in the range 0 to 255.

## Packet Format

The packets are sent on TCP using the obvious, simple format: a sixteen-bit length field, in network byte order, precedes each data packet. This format was proposed in early drafts of RTP for RTP-over-TCP, but was dropped from the final specification.

## Known Bugs/Issues

UDPTunnel does not check incoming UDP packets to verify that they are indeed coming from the address which the user specified; it binds to INADDR_ANY, and accepts any UDP packet arriving on the specified port. This could potentially allow denial-of-service or spoofing attacks. If two or more `-v` options are given, per-packet identification will be printed of each packet's source address as it is received, allowing such a situation to be diagnosed.

For multicast, UDPTunnel turns off packet loopback, as it has no way to distinguish its own packets it sent out from packets genuinely arriving on the multicast group. This means that if you are tunneling traffic from or to a multicast group, both ends of UDPTunnel must be run on different hosts than any member of the group. (In general, the only way to distinguish looped packets from packets genuinely received from other applications on the local host is with application-layer labeling, as RTP does.)

UDPTunnel is designed to tunnel RTP-style traffic, in which applications send and receive UDP packets to and from the same port (or pair of ports). It does not support request/response-style traffic, in which a client request is sent from a transient port X to a well-known port Y, and the server's response is returned from port Y to port X.

UDPTunnel deliberately ignores "Connection Refused" errors on the UDP port, clearing the socket error state, so that a tunnel may be set up before conferencing tools are started on both ends. This may mean that a mis-typed UDP address or port is not recognized, as no error is printed. If two or more `-v` options are given, a diagnostic will be printed whenever the error state is cleared from the socket.

Once one endpoint of a tunnel is taken down, closing the socket, the other one exits as well; to re-establish the tunnel, UDPTunnel must be restarted on both sides.

IP version 6 is not supported.

## History

Version | Date | Notes
1.0 | 1999-05-19 | Initial release.
1.1 | 2001-09-06 | Re-released under a BSD-style license. Documentation updates. No code changes.

## Copyright

Copyright © 1999, 2001 by Columbia University. All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

## Authors

UDPTunnel was written by Jonathan Lennox. It incorporates code written by Henning Schulzrinne.

Last modified 2001-09-06 by Jonathan Lennox <lennox@cs.columbia.edu>.

A current version of this page is located at http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~lennox/udptunnel/.