Hello,
I know your frustration. I have 4 computers in my house all sharing
the same cable fat pipe, and I also have the Dreamcast broadband
ethernet adapter as well.
What the main problem here is the proxy/NAT (network address
translation) being performed by the router. I'll draw an analogy to
why it's not working using the postal system. If you can imagine
living in a house with your mom and dad, it's quite easy for you to
send a letter to anybody else in the world if you know their address.
What's impossible for them to do is address a letter which will appear
on your desk. They can go as far as to write your house address with
yourname on it, and then it's somebody's job (in this case the router)
to take that letter, and make sure it's put on your desk. In order to
do this in computer terms, the router has to sort through the
different internet information packets and make sure that they're
going to the specific computers (and Xbox) that request them.
This is pretty easy for simple webpages and things like that, but when
it comes to non-standard applications (such as games or voice
telephony applications) the routers and as good as sorting the
packets, and because of that, the computer that you're using never
hears back from the computer you're talking to and it looks like
nothing's working. Really it's just that the traffic can only get as
far as the router, and no further.
There are two options to go from here, and since I have the same
broadband Linksys router (both the 4-port Broadband and the 4-port
Wireless Access Point) you have, I'll walk you through the steps. One
is to set up a DMZ computer in the set up of the router. A DMZ host is
short for De-Militarized Zone host. What that means is it's no longer
shielded by the router's anonymity (good or bad) so it's as if that
computer were hooked up to the internet by itself. Bad if you're
worried about security issues, but good if you want games and things
like FTP to work. This will however only work for one computer, and
you have to set it as a static IP address. They walk you through the
manual step-by-step on how to do this.
The second option is to upgrade your router's firmware to the latest
found here (if you have the BEFSR41):
ftp://ftp.linksys.com/pub/befsr41/befsr-fw-1442z.zip
Then go through the set up and enable something called port
triggering. What is port triggering? It's a way of temporarily
redirecting all traffic that comes in on certain ports to the
computers that request them without having to enable DMZ on one
computer. The downside of this is you'll have to know all of the ports
used for each application that you use. FTP is port 21, so if you set
up a port trigger for outgoing 21 and incoming 21, whatever computer
is using FTP at the time (only one can at any one time) the router
will redirect the traffic to that computer for as long as the
connection remains constant. For certain games such as Counter-strike,
the port triggers are 27015 and 27016, but for your Xbox games, I
don't know, you'd have to contact their technical support. Once you
have a list of applications and what ports they use, it's very easy to
set up port triggers to accomplish what you're looking for. Please see
the links below for more information, and good luck!
Search Strategy:
linksys triggering on google:
://www.google.com/search?q=linksys+triggering
"what is dmz" linksys on google:
://www.google.com/search?q=%22what+is+dmz%22+linksys
Additional Links:
Manual for Linksys BEFSR41 Gateway/Router:
ftp://ftp.linksys.com/pdf/befsr11_befsr41ug.pdf
Linksys FAQ on DMZ and Port Forwarding/Triggering:
http://www.linksys.com/tech_helper/faq.html
More info on Port Triggering:
http://www.hansenonline.net/Networking/LinksysNews.html
A bit on DMZ and Port Triggering and how to set it up:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,803403,00.asp
Thank you for the opportunity to answer your question, if you require
more information, please clarify the question, or if you find this
answer satisfactory, please feel free to rate it. Thank you!
skermit-ga |
Request for Answer Clarification by
jboyden-ga
on
27 Jan 2003 14:58 PST
Thanks, your explanation makes some real sense. I'm trying port
triggering just to get FTP working, and I'm not having any luck. The
Netgear modem even has a little pulldown where you select FTP it at
automatically fills in port 21, I do that, I type in the IP address
shown in the Network control panel of my Mac, and the result is I then
cannot surf the internet or FTP. Very strange, I know. My network is
currently all DHCP. Is that the problem? I thought it might be, so I
tried assigning a static IP address to the Mac, restarted it,
restarted the DSL hub and the modem and still the computer can't go
online with a static IP (the IP I'm giving it is the same as the
static IP, only the final number is 20 instead of 4. But when I switch
back to DHCP, boom, I'm back online (but still can't FTP).
|
Clarification of Answer by
skermit-ga
on
27 Jan 2003 15:05 PST
Make sure your computer is run as static IP. Once you issue a static
IP to your mac, make sure that you fill in the DNS servers and use the
IP address of your router as the Gateway. This will allow you access
to the internet. I'm not sure about the Netgear, or its capabilities,
because I thought you were using your Linksys. Have you had luck using
the Linksys? If these don't work, try this. Make your mac the DMZ host
with a static IP address, and then use port triggering for your Xbox
games/applications, then you only have to worry about finding port
numbers for the games you use.
skermit-ga
|
Request for Answer Clarification by
jboyden-ga
on
27 Jan 2003 15:46 PST
I have my Mac working now with a static IP (I wasn't putting a DNS
entry in there before, whic was the problem). I can surf the internet
just fine, but I set up port forwarding on the router for FTP, and I'm
still not able to FTP. I've tried messing around with some of the
options in two different FTP clients, but nothing seems to be working.
(I can use the Linksys router instead of the Netgear one if you think
that makes a difference -- the netgear interface is nicer, which is
the only reason I'm using it). I don't know if this is a big deal or
not, I went to the DSL modem configuration page and it says this:
Current Mode: UHP
ADSL Line Status: Up
PPPoE Status: Connected
I don't really know what PPPoE is, except that one of my friends told
me not to sign up with a DSL service provider (SBC-Yahoo) who uses it.
I didn't think Earthink did. I didn't have to do anything like provide
a username/password in my computer itself to get on to the internet (I
did in the modem, obviously). Could this have anything to do with it,
or is PPPoE just a standard, and I shouldn't worry about it. My Mac
has a special tab where I can enter PPPoE information, which is why I
ask....
I really appreciate your help so far with this. I knew it'd be a
nightmare, which is why I priced it so high. I hope you feel like it's
still worth it for you.
|
Clarification of Answer by
skermit-ga
on
27 Jan 2003 16:25 PST
I'm just wondering if you could use the Linksys since I have
experience because I own two of their routers, and am more familiar
with them. Also, did you try making your computer a DMZ host since
it's now statically IP'ed? If that doens't work, try turning on/off
PASV (depending on what it's set to already) in your FTP program, that
helps when the computer's behind a router/firewall.
skermit-ga
|
Request for Answer Clarification by
jboyden-ga
on
27 Jan 2003 16:42 PST
Yay! I figured it out. I went into the PPPoE settings of my router and
entered my PPPoE username and password that Earthlink provided me
(that I had previously entered into my DSL modem). Now everything
works perfectly. No static IPs, no port forwarding, no DMZ host. I
wish Earthink could have told me this on the phone. "We don't support
networking" they told me, but it seems like this should be in their
FAQ on their website at least! Thanks for all of the help you gave me,
nevertheless. I needed the moral support! :-)
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Clarification of Answer by
skermit-ga
on
27 Jan 2003 20:07 PST
Well if you DO have any port problems in the future, you have the
solution in advanced. Glad to hear it all works!
skermit-ga
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