Hi, I just moved to uni, and am unable to take advantage of the increibly great connection because I can't get any games to play online. I've configured to proxy as told and IE works fine, but when I try to play CoD I get 'waiting for response from master server' and it just doesn't get one. I doubt if it's simply because the server is down because it's been that way for over a month. It worked fine when I was at home on a super rubbish 56k.

Likely the school admin(s) have blocked unprivleged port access at the firewall/proxy server.

You could talk to them, but ultimately, you'll probably be forced to get your own ISP/BSP connection for gaming.

Having been through this situation for 4 years I can assure you that if you are living in Uni College accomodation, the only way you can play online games is if you pay for the bandwidth with a private ISP. That is of course if you are allowed to dial-out through the PABX which is also highly unlikely. You could always hope that an ISP has a local WIFI point though (this wasn't available when I was at uni).

The bottom line will be this for a college:
All ports will most likely be blocked and any traffic to the outside world will go through a proxy (http/ftp) or a mail server. There are ways around this via tunnelling programs etc but it contravenes(sp) school policy so expect to be raked over the coals if caught. You won't get thrown out for doing it because you aren't doing anything illegal but you may have your account restricted.

This is done so that nobody from the outside world can see/exploit unprotected computer systems and to stop Kazaa and all other sh1tware from contaminating the network. It also means that they can be seen to be attemtping to limit piracy of movies, music etc etc etc by blocking these programs and not allowing anyone to run any type of server other than for legitimate educational uses. There are huge fines for organisations that do not actively discourage piracy or allow it to go unabated.

Best solution for you - find a bunch of people within your uni/college who enjoy the games and play against them. You'll still have the same amount of fun and everyone will have great pings/no lag. Plus, as you know the people personally, you can beat the crap out of them if they cheat or exploit the server.

F.

They say that internet games aren't blocked by default and apparently it should work if I configure the proxy in IE, which I did, and still nothing happens

Okay,
Ping a bunch of different sites ie microsoft.com, dell.com and see if they resolve and then if they get a response.

If they don't, do a "tracert" on each of those and look at the path taken. Likely it will stop at your Uni firewall.

Don't post your results here as you will be contravening the IT policy by posting the names of the servers/routers on the net.

I am quite familiar with the mechanics of Uni IT policy as they tried to use it to throw me out of uni once.

'Request timed out' - that mean I'm screwed?

Yes, yes it does.

Your only option is via ISP either by dial-up or WIFI.
Other than that, get someone in your college with more money than sense to build a dedicated machine that will serve as the games server. Don't waste money on graphics card, just RAM, processor and hard drive and have it serve multiple multiplayer games to the college.
Then frag away. You can also challenge other colleges to clan wars.