Bonehead needs networking assistance
 

I have been reading various questions relating to getting my Mac under OS 10.2.5 to show up on the Internet. I have a huge amount of files relating to my hobby I wish to make available to other members of my club who are well disperssed around the country.

So far a lot of what is said goes completely over my head. If someone could help in simple terms I would be overjoyed.

System :
G4 1.25 ghz Power mac
OS 10.2.5
Home broadband service connected via router

Configuration:
Sharing is turned on for Personal web + Personal File
Firewall is turned on
Using a software program I have identified my IP instead of the routers IP

Question is:

Why does my computer not show on the Internet to others?

Can you yourself access your site through a web browser?

Just enter http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/~username/site_folder/index.html etc. where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is firstly your real ip address and then secondly, your router's ip address.

I tried what you sugested and I can get the site with the router address but not through the Internet with the assigned IP (found from software)

well, it seems like incoming requests "stop" at ur router... What u need to do is called portmapping from your router to the ip of your mac...
So u just have to figure out, how to change the settings of ur router. Most of them provide a webinterface. Hope this helps

For someone with snow on the roof and a Port is where the Queen Mary used to stop - well only a little!!

I have the option of Port redirection on the router menu, but there is no indication of port numbers. I presume this is what you are talking about, so where are the port numbers held, or is that another bit of software.

The router port 80 should point to your computer's port 80.

networking tutorial
 

VinceC:
Here is a relatively short tutorial on networking and routers:
http://support.easystreet.com/easyds...ptutorial.html

It explains why your computer's IP address is not visible from the Internet and hence why someone outside your home network will need to use the IP address of your router and you will have to use port forwarding to tell your router to forward certain packets to your Mac.

If you intend to provide a web server with documents for your club members, you will likely want to use something like http://dyndns.com/ so that people can use a name instead of an IP address (which is likely to change evry few days or weeks, depending on your ISP).

Of course, an alternative to all of the above is to put your documents on a web server provided by your ISP. Most ISP's provide at least a limited web server account for their customers.

Hayne

That is a most useful document. Thanks for the link, I will study it.

Just to clarify, I do have an Internet club page which is limited by the provider to 50 Mbytes, but I have an extra 4 + Gbytes of data that needs to be accessed.

what kind of router
 

if you give us more info, maybe we can help a little more, though honestly that link before is a very good sarting spot.
small warning regarding those gigs of maerial you need to share, too much traffic on your end may result in a change in your service bill..... some providers retain the right to charge ou more if you exceed a certai amount of data per month, look at your service contract/agreement to duble check.

This actually isn't a good test. Not all routers support returning outbound packets to the LAN. I can't remember if it was on this forum or on press3's forum, but there was a discussion on this a year or so ago.

Either way, the test of using your external IP address from inside your LAN could fail even if everything is set up correctly and everything works from the WAN side.

It wasn't meant to be a test. It was a question. I wanted to see what the result was so I could offer up some more help, but someone beat me to it :)

Thanks all for trying to help. I appreciate that helping froma distance can be difficult.

I haven't got anywhere as yet but I will keep trying. The Router I use is a D-Link 500. I did try patching Port 80 on the router to 80 on the computer but this had no effect.

The best way to make it easier for us to help you is to tell us in detail what you have done and what the results were. E.g. copy and paste any error messages, etc.

In particular, please tell us how you are testing access to your web server (in detail, preferrably giving URLs that we can try) and what results you get when you do this.

At the moment my

WAN is 212.30.4.10

I will leave my computer on so it does not change.

My LAN is 192.168.0.2

If I use Explorer and enter http://212.30.4.10 I get error

"The attempt to load 'Accessing URL: http://212.30.4.10/' failed"

If I use Explorer and enter http://192.168.0.2

I get the file index.html on my internal web page

The settings are as first para in this thread

PAT and NAT
 

I'll try to keep this simple, and if its to simple let me know and we can go from there.

Your router is translating your real internet address to a local, private, address, while at the same time hiding your machines actual address (192.168.0.x). This is NAT

Unless you have more than one IP address from your ISP this is the best your going to do for giving people address to use.

What you need to do is called PAT or port address trnaslation. This can be done using most routers (I'm not familiar with your model I'm affraid)

Your best bet is to look through the documentation for your router, and maybe even some forums dedicated to it to find out how to properly iimplement PAT for your setup. You dont actually have to use port 80 on your real IP address. port 80 could be translated to anything, the important thing is that it is set to go to port 80 on your inside interface.

Ok maybe I've got ahead of things...fell free to private message me if you've got questions.

I tried your URL
 

I tried your URL (http://212.30.4.10/) and although it seemed to connect to something on your end, the connection was closed immediately. So it does look like your router settings are the problem.

The port forwarding you will need to do on your router will involve specifying that you want to forward all packets that come to port 80 on your router onto your Macintosh machine at port 80. So look for a place in the configuration that talks about "port forwarding" or "port mapping" etc. and where you can type in a port number (80) and the IP address of a machine (your Mac's internal address).

Is the 192.168.0.2 your Mac's internal address? Look in the Network Preferences panel on your Mac, in the TCP/IP tab.

And by the way, it is pointless for you to attempt to test the external URL (http://212.30.4.10/) from a machine inside your network - you need to be outside your network for that address to work.

hayne

I have configuered the ports as you suggest under port re-direction. They are both set to 80 and my Mac internal address to 192.168.0.2 as per network prefs.

By the way, I have read the manual but it covers only the basics of plugging in and making the DHCP connection. It wasn't much help

I just had to do a restart after updating Quiktime and have a new WAN

212.30.5.208

I can now see your page. It's just the default Apache "you've reached an Apache web server page."

I also can see it
 

I also successfully accessed the URL http://212.30.5.208 which gave me the default Apachge page. So it seems you are ready to go - just make some HTML pages and you are on the net!

But before you go too far, you should revisit the question of whether it is financially feasible for you to be provide the gigabytes of data that you earlier mentioned. As discussed above, most ISPs put a relatively low limit on the amount of uploads and downloads that you are allowed before they start charging you a quite substantial amount per megabyte transferred. And many ISPs prohibit running a server - which is of course what you are doing. So check into your service agreement before you get too far along.

Thanks guys for all your help. I will take note of your concerns and look into the contract. The information I will be displaying will only be for occasional use and on demand.

If I can ever help you guys out with making radio controlled scale gliders with in excess of 4 metre wingspan then I'm your man.

Thanks once again

Vince