This is detail about a detail in setting up a server. The advice arose in helping users of FarWatch, but the advice has other applications. It relates to port forwarding issues with the D-Link G604T
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ARGHH!!! This essay addresses two things... one fixed, the other not.
The fixed item is how to set up a D-Link G604T router for port forwarding for FarWatch. Even if you have a different router, if you are having problems with this aspect of FarWatch setup, you may want to read what follows.
The not fixed item is some weird behavior I see with the G604T... which again MAY occur with other routers. Please write me, if you discover another router which behaves the same way. They don't all do this... I have another FarWatch setup which works as I would hope it would. That one happens to have a Motorola router, but I doubt that the "works my way" situation is restricted to Motorola setups.
The weird behavior is that when I try to access the FarWatch computer with a different computer on the same LAN (via the DSL connection provided to all computers on the LAN by the G604T) instead of getting the page I want (from the Apache server running in the FarWatch computer), I get the log in page for the router. But! If I use a simple dial up internet connection from that computer, it will fetch the FarWatch report properly. So! There IS a way to check your FarWatch, if you have a computer with dial up, and an account. I asked D-Link about this, and a very helpful tech took pains to be sure he understood my question, went and checked with the senior tech support person, and came back to me with a very honest "We've seen that happen; we don't have a cure". I'll buy D-Link again, since I know I can trust them to tell me the truth, and since I was actually able to get through to someone to discuss the question with! (I DID TRY to find it addressed in the FAQs and knowledge base, first!)
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On my first attempts to set up FarWatch on the system served by the G604T, I thought maybe using a DMZ instead of port forwarding might be the answer. It isn't. You get the same problems, and the computer in the DMZ is more exposed than it needs to be for the purposes of FarWatch.
Here are detailed notes on setting up port forwarding in the D-Link G604T router. Whatever router you have will probably need similar steps.
a) If you search the web for further help, do include the "T" in the model designation... I gather that there are several not-similar DLink products with "604" in the name
b) Throughout this, be careful to distinguish between a computer's IP address on your LAN, and the "public" IP address that your router uses to connect to the internet. Make sure that the computer running FarWatch is on a static LAN address. (It will be if you set it up as you were told to.) You'll have to set the computer's network properties, AND you will have to set the router's DCHP services...
c) (Setting router's DCPH services:)
i) Go into your router, usually the address for the G604T is 192.168.1.1
ii) Use "Setup | DCHP Config". Set start and end to something like 192.168.1.2 / 192.168.1.249, primary DNS 192.168.1.1 (or router's address, if you have changed that) (Lease time of 3600 seconds (default) is okay). Click Apply. If you have made changes, use Tools | System Commands | Save all. Then log out. It may be overkill, but at that point I would shut everything- router and connected PCs- down, and once all are "dead", I would re-power them.
d) Once you have your LAN working as needed... the FarWatch computer on a static address... you can start setting up router's the port forwarding.
Before talking about the details... a little word as to what is going on....
Ordinarily, when a computer on your LAN asks for, say, Google's page, it passes a message over the LAN to part of the innards of the router. From there, the request goes out over the internet, but the "return address" is the ROUTER'S INTERNET IP.... not the local computer's LAN address. In due course, Google sends to you whatever you requested. Inside your router, the innards say "Oh Good! There's the stuff from Google". it is re-addressed, and passed on over the LAN to the computer that asked for it.
In the case of a request from somewhere out on the net for something from your FarWatch computer, the request goes to the router's IP address (either because that is static, or, if you are reading this, more likely because DynDns.org is keeping the public internet DNS servers appraised of your router's changing-from-time-to-time internet address. If you have set up port forwarding right, the router's innards say "Humm... we haven't passed any requests for stuff to the net, and this incoming thing is tagged with the FarWatch (and other web-server stuff) port number... because of the port forwarding settings, I will pass this request on to the computer designated for such things."
So! That's what you're trying to accomplish. Instructions for setting it up on a D-Link G604T follow. These instructions are for a G604T with the following firmware version: V1.00B02T02.UK.20040618. When I researched port forwarding on the web, there were discussions from January 2006 saying that with some G604T firmware, the setting up of port forwarding was "hidden" under "Virtual Server"... which is, after all, a good name for what we are creating.
i) Get into the router... usually address 192.168.1.1
ii) Use "Advanced | Port Forwarding". Choose the broadband connection you will be using, using from the drop down list. (Most of us will only have one choice here!) Set the LAN IP to the static LAN address you assigned to the FarWatch computer. Select the "Servers" button in the left hand column ("Category"). Click on "Web Server" in the "Available Rules". Click Add. KEEP READING... you're not done yet!... Click "Apply". Go to Tools. Click "Save All". (Then "Back"... to return from acknowledgement of the "Save All") Click "Restart". Wait... it takes a little time. After the restart, you should find yourself looking at the screen for logging into your router. That should do it! But! The router's Internet address may have been changed during the reset. Read the following account of the time I wasted, and note the points on the IP address change.
=== A little account of some time I wasted hoping that I'd not only set up the port forwarding, but fixed the problem of accessing the FarWatch page over the LAN. I hadn't fixed that... it can't be fixed, D-Link tells me... but the following may be relevant so some readers.....
At that point, without resetting anything else, I tried accessing my FarWatch computer. On the first attempt, I got the login page for my router... what I got before setting up the port forwarding, which is what I should have got back then. I think this came from my browser's cache. I hit "reload", and got no response for quite a while, but eventually, I got "Could not connect to the remote server". I suspect that when I reset the router, I reset the DSL connection, and got a new IP address. A quick visit to a random Google page proved my internet connection was good. I logged into the router, checked Status | Connection Status, and was told that my internet address was 82.3.75.92 at that time. (Logged into my DynDns account.... sure enough- it was showing a different IP address.) Now... if your FarWatch system is not accessible, you CAN just leave it... in due course, that computer will look at the IP address, detect the change, and send word to the nice people at DynDns.org, and all will be well, as soon as word has got around the various DNS nodes. If you set your FarWatch up the way I told you to, this will probably have all happened within the next 20 minutes, or an hour at the outside. In order to test this, I didn't touch my FarWatch machine. On the other hand, if you DO have access to the FarWatch machine, as is likely, you can call up the DynDnsUpdater (which should always be running in a FarWatch computer with no static INTERNET address (i.e. one connected through a router to a static public, internet, not LAN) address).... ummm... as I was saying... if you do have access to the FarWatch machine, call up it's running copy of DnynsUpdater, and invoke a "Force Update". Even when you've done this, I think... not sure... that there may be a little delay before every computer in the world will be able to reach your FarWatch system... there may be caches in various nodes of the DNS system that take a little while to note what the nice people at DynDns.org will tell them when they ask.
In any case, once DynDns.org has the right IP address for your router, any requests to it from the web for information from the FarWatch computer should be passed through, and you'll see what you expect to!
Catch!! If you have previously, in desperation, accomplished access to the FarWatch computer by putting it in a DMZ, I'm pretty sure you will need to turn the DMZ provisions off again before the connection will work. (You SHOULD turn of the DMZ even if it doesn't stop the FarWatch system working.) And you'll need to do the Tools / Save All / Restart stuff again, too, if you didn't notice this bit until you'd already done it. And that may change your router's internet address again, don't forget! To turn off the DMZ: Advanced | Advanced Security) (A computer in a DMZ is more accessible than it needs to be for FarWatch.)
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Argh! While trying all of the above for you, I wiggled the mouse on my FarWatch computer, to cancel it's screensaver. When it came up, as it had once before it seemed to launch the AVG (free) anti-virus updater... or maybe the updater was already running... or maybe (worse yet) it was only TRYING to run.... in any case, before I could test all that I wanted to (I was trying the DynDnsUpdater's "Force update" command), the system crashed, and I had to reboot. I will keep working on what is going on. Sorry.)
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