MR said:
Hi I'm trying to set up a thing called Port Forwarding and I'm a little
bit confused as to how WinXP attributes IP addresses to both my wireless
router
and my ADSL modem. I have a wireless router with the address 192.168.1.1
and an ADSL router with the address 10.1.1.1
When I refer to various guides on the Internet about how to set up Port
Forwarding I am told to enter the address 192.168.1.1 in my TCP/IP
settings for my wireless connection but in the guide, the 192..... address
refers to
the ADSL modem and not the wireless router. Should I just switch the 2
addresses around?
Would really appreciate it if someone could help me make sense of these
two IPs.
It is unclear to me (and probably to you) what equipment you really have.
Are you saying you have three boxes - a modem, a router, and an additional
wireless router? If yes, then the wireless router is probably acting as an
access point. You need to clarify exactly what you have. However, here is
an explanation of what you will need to do once you figure out what you
really have.
Windows doesn't assign IP addresses. In a normal consumer-level situation,
you have a DSL modem which gets a public IP address from your Internet
Service Provider. This is on the WAN (Wide Area Network) side and allows
you to get Internet access.
Then you have a second "box", a router (usually with wireless capability).
The router does what is called NAT (Network Address Translation) and hands
out private IP addresses to all the devices on the LAN (Local Area
Network). The router will also do DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration
Protocol) to dynamically assign IP addresses to the devices on the LAN
unless you are using static (unchanging) IPs.
Port forwarding is done on the router and means that traffic over specific
ports will be sent by the router to a particular computer on the LAN. Let's
use the example of pcAnywhere, a program that allows you to access a
computer on the LAN from a different network outside the LAN. It doesn't
matter if this isn't what you're using - the concept is the same.
pcAnywhere traffic comes over Ports 5631 (TCP) and 5632 (UDP). All work is
done from the router's configuration utility. You get into the router's
configuration utility from a computer connected to the router by ethernet
cable. Open a browser and go to the router's IP address. In this example,
I'll use Linksys settings so the router's IP address will be 192.168.1.1.
You will be prompted for a username/password.
1. Set the DHCP range to something reasonable - 192.168.1.2-149 for
instance. This leaves you 192.168.1.150-254 for static IP addresses.
2. On the computer to which you want the pcAnywhere traffic forwarded,
change the "Automatically assign IP address" and "Automatically assign DNS"
to something like 192.168.1.155 and set DNS to the router's address.
http://ask-leo.com/how_do_i_configure_my_static_ip_address.html
(BTW, this website is useful for your question.)
3. Still in the router's configuration utility, look for the port forwarding
feature. You will see where to open the specific ports (in our example 5631
TCP and 5632 UDP) and to forward traffic over those ports to 192.168.1.155.
I hope this has clarified the process for you. You can Google any of the
terms used and find a lot more information. Your router manual will also
have information about opening ports. If you didn't get a CD with the
manual on it, go to the router mftr.'s website and the information will be
there.
Malke
