Allow UDP broadcast through firewall

Hello everyone, I’m using an Android app that sends broadcast UDP messages to all the hosts on the subnet.

So what I do on my laptop, which is running openSUSE 12.3, is open a terminal and type:

nc -luv 192.168.0.255 9000

The thing is: If I stop the firewall the messages arrive, if I enable it they don’t.

I tried adding a rule to the Broadcast section on the YaST Firewall GUI with the following parameters:

  • Zone: external
  • Network: 0/0
  • Service: custom
  • Protocol: UDP
  • Port: 9000

Still nothing.

According to my packet sniffer (Wireshark), the packages have the following properties:
Source: 192.168.0.100 // Note: this is the ip of my android device running the app
Destination: 192.168.0.255
Source port: 9003 (9003)
Destination port: clistener (9000)

Which rule should I apply? I don’t want to enable/disable my firewall everytime I use this app, and I don’t want to leave it disabled.

Beforehand, thank you for all the help you can provide. Greetings!

I don’t actually know the answer. But I would try adding it to the services section as an allowed service. Click on the “Advanced” button and put in the udp port 9000.