I had not used ICQ in a while and now I want to use it again but I get an error message saying it cannot establish a P2P connection due to the firewall and I need to use SOCKS proxy (and I assume the other person too as they have pretty much the same firewall and configuration). It is ICQ V 2003a build 3800.
I do not understand how a SOCKS (4 or 5) proxy works or what it does exactly. I believe I would just find one and put the IP and port into ICQ but I am not sure. Searching Google brings up programs to download which I do not understand as I believe I would not need to install and run anything, only configure ICQ to point to the proxy server. It also brings up many pages located in .ru which does not inspire confidence.
So, the question is, how do I get ICQ to be able to connect P2P with another ICQ user? I assume I only need to configure the Proxy settings to
- using firewall
- using proxy
- http / https / socks4 / socks5 (which one?)
- proxy server host (IP): ?
- port: ?
- authentication: ?
I would like to solve the problem but I would also like to understand how this works. It seems the problem is caused by using firewall. Why is this? Can’t I just configure something in the firewall so that ICQ works again?