From the Hamachi website:


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With Hamachi you can organize two or more computers with an Internet connection into their own virtual network for direct secure communication.

Hamachi is fast, secure and simple. It is also free.

What's in it for me
Think - LAN over the Internet.

Think - Zero-configuration VPN.

Think - Secure peer-to-peer.

Access computers remotely. Use Windows File Sharing. Play LAN games. Run private Web or FTP servers. Communicate directly. Stay connected.
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This isn't inherently a bad thing. But what it does mean is it bypasses any firewalls and such you may have and gives access to others as though they were on your LAN.

It does this by design.

This means that you can do certain things over the Internet you couldn't otherwise do. As an example, I use a VPN (not Hamachi) for remote access to work machines, or from work to remotely manage many of my clients. Clearly this is a good and useful thing.

This is also a security issue though. A large Hamachi network means that everyone now has access to machines bypassing their firewalls and routers. Unless you are convinced you trust all those you are on a network with, bad things can happen. As we've seen.

[quote:a7cb55896c="Julius Darrant"]This is also a security issue though. A large Hamachi network means that everyone now has access to machines bypassing their firewalls and routers. Unless you are convinced you trust all those you are on a network with, bad things can happen. As we've seen.[/quote:a7cb55896c]

With that said, any attempts at hosting VTMR games over Hamachi will have to be in secure password-protected networks that aren't made public. The password of said networks could only be spread to the members of those games, to further control any possible LAN invasions.

Still, Hamachi is a great program. For people like me, whom work through a router in addition to a firewall, Hamachi is the only means of connecting to a VTMR game. I've tried port-forwarding, and it's flawed. The only way you can forward ports correctly through a router is if the machine you want forwarded is also the master computer or directly connected to the router itself.

Maybe a better solution will be found some day, but for now Hamachi is a worthy substitute. In my opinion.