OT? Hamachi question

[Drystan1]

OT? Hamachi question

Topic: Hamachi

I've done a bit of searching, and while some have been informative, I'm not exactly sure what it does.

I know it fakes a new network, or something like that, but I don't feel comfortable with what it does to my connection. I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced this (following,) and what it means.

When I run Hamachi, it reconnects me to the net. I don't think there's an actual interuption in the connection, but the "connected" icon (systray) disappears, and comes back a few seconds later saying "... now connected."

It also reassigns my IP address, which is quite unusual because I can't manually configure it. (If I try to assign an IP to any other IP other than the predefined IP, the router decides it can't detect anything (even itself.))

Now, the reason I'm uncomfortable with it, is that it reconnects me to something, which I'm not sure what, while managing to alter my IP. Am I just confused and paranoid, or is this normal?

Thanks in advance,
~Dryst.

 

[Thyiad1]

I'm not a techy person but my ex is a software engineer with 10 years experience and a speciality in networds and he uses hamachi sometimes. The only thing he did say was to check the box on installation that isolates your windows files.

It isn't changing your ip address, it is giving you a 5.x one in addition. If you host a game people can log in on your 'normal' IP addy or the 5.x one.

I haven't experienced what you describe with hamachi, but I only use it if joining someone who is unable to host without it, so my experience is very limited.

 

[Drystan1]

Thanks Thyiad! I remembered a few tests I should do (thanks to your info ) and they all returned normal responses.
Not sure why my connection says it has just connected again, but everything looks fine. I guess it's just a setting that doesn't need to be enabled.

I guess the idea of adding a new connection which isn't there confuses me a bit. The fact that it appears to be reconnecting also didn't reassure me. Thanks for that!

 

[silospen1]

The IP address:

Each Hamachi client is assigned an IP address from the 5.0.0.0/8 network. This address is assigned when the client logs into the system for the first time, and is henceforth associated with the client's public crypto key. As long as the client retains its key, it can log into the system and use this 5.x.x.x IP address.

The 5.0.0.0/8 network is used to avoid collisions with private IP networks that might already be in use on the client side. Specifically - 10.x.x.x/8, 172.16.x.x/12 and 192.168.x.x/16. The 5.0.0.0/8 network has been reserved by the IANA for the past ten years and is not used in the Internet routing domain. Should this range be allocated, Hamachi users will not be able to connect to any Internet IP addresses within the range as long as the Hamachi client is running.

On the connection:

When a member of a network goes online or offline, the server instructs other network peers to either establish or tear down tunnels to the former. When establishing tunnels between the peers, Hamachi uses server-assisted NAT-traversal technique, similar to UDP hole punching. Detailed information on how it works has not been made public.

So what it seems to say is that instead of connecting to the internet, you're connecting to their servers which are then connecting you to the net, hence the small break in your connection.