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i have not forwarded my port

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Tip-o-the-week: Port Forwarding

Since we?re dealing with network problems, we might as well end with a networking tip. If you use a router to allow multiple computers access to the same internet connection, you may have encountered times when you wanted access to file sharing on your home computer, or you wanted to host a network game and found that you were unable to. Your router is the problem, and I?m here to provide the solution.

Here?s the crux of it: when trying to access your computer from the outside world, you likely only have one IP address. That means that when you access this IP address, it?s going to go to your router. Since the router has multiple computers connected to it, it won?t know to which computer to send the request. So if you try to access file sharing, for example, you?ll get an error when you put in your home?s IP address.

The solution is port forwarding ? it instructs your router to send requests to certain computers based on the port of the request. Since certain ports are tied to certain applications, you can often guarantee access to your computer, even from the outside.

Here?s how to do it: first of all, look at your router?s manual to figure out how to do port forwarding. Mine involves accessing the router using a web browser, and then going to the ?Virtual Server? section. You?ll also need two other pieces of information ? the ports you want to forward, and the internal IP address to which you want to forward those ports.

To get the ports, you can often just do a Google search on the application name and the word ?port?. If you?re looking to forward a service like file sharing, you can consult a list like this one from Apple?s website or this unofficial list.

To get the internal IP address, just choose [Apple menu ?> System Preferences? ?> Network], choose your internet connection in the ?Show? popup menu, click the ?TCP/IP? tab, and then note down the IP address listed at the top labelled, appropriately, ?IP Address?. Note, however, that if you use DHCP configuration, you?ll want to note down all the numbers and change it to manual so that you can keep your internal IP address constant. Otherwise, the next time your IP changes, your port forwarding won?t work anymore.

Now just go back to your router configuration page, and on a single line, put in the port number and the internal IP address to which to redirect. (If it asks for the protocol, UDP or TCP, then use the ?Both? option if you can, and ?TCP? if you can?t.)

(Another note: this whole section applies if you use an Airport Base Station. An AirPort base station acts as a router for your wireless computers, meaning that you need to forward ports to your wireless computers if you want to host network games and such. Port forwarding can be accessed by opening the AirPort Admin Utility located in /Application/Utilities/ , selecting your base station and pressing ?Configure?, and then going to the ?Port Mapping? section.)

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