fortis

I never did very well at the basics in school - perfering instead to jump to more interesting things (like actual coding). As such, I am fairly week on this subject, and would appreciate any direction.

Scenario:

I have my computer.

My computer has an internet connection.

I have on my computer the following applications talking to the internet consiting of the following:

1) Internet Explorer displaying my stock picks (all doing badly)
2) A gaming program that is located on my computer, however uses the internet for multi-gaming purposes.
3) My email program
4) Other programs that require internet

Question:

Is it possible for me to conceptualize the connections going to these programs as 'pipes' of internet traffic? In other words, there are separate pipes for each application and each application sends/receives data down each pipe?

I want to know if it is possible to maybe write a piece of middle ware that sits on my computer BEHIND my gaming application and in FRONT of my internet connection (IOW: all internet traffic associated ONLY with my gaming app passes through this application).

???????????

Flyguy

You need something like a firewall or a proxy server, (some of) these programs are capable of logging program activity.

Garmour

To help you better understand exactly whats going on in your computer try doing a google for 7 layer osi
That'll teach you some basics.

fortis

Nah - I know the OSI (logically), however that's the problem - conceptually I have a problem with it.


Anybody can offer some insight?

Thinker

Each packet of information is wrapped with headers. As packets
are passed down the stack, each layer of headers is stripped off
and information in the header points to the next most specific
layer and application to process. At some point, it gets passed to
the actual app (like your game) with all the higher level routing
headers stripped off. It sounds like you want a packet sniffer that
only looks at packets destined for your game (which is how most
game cheat/trainer programs work). I wonder what you are really
trying to do?

fortis

What I want to do is as I mentioned, run the game using programmed logic. Obviously there are several ethical questions involved, however I'll make no secret that I want to see if I can build a program that will handle (I.e. interpert) incoming and send (I..e process) it's pre-programmed response.

Flyguy

You are using a lot of words but you don't say anything.
Can you try, at least for the less intelligent readers like myself, to explain WHAT you want to do?

Squirm

fortis wishes to capture packets going to his game, read their data and do various calculations on the data, before creating a new packet and sending it back out again (as if it came from the game).

Flyguy

I figured that out based on his second reply after Thinker asked him whether he want to create a cheat/trainer, but if you read his original question it's just ... "misty"