Sharing files over the internet (Web Sharing) question

  • Thread starter Thread starter Deja User
  • Start date Start date
D

Deja User

I setup a shared folder on a Windows 2003 server machine and opened
port 80 on the firewall. For now, this allow all incoming traffic,
later I will allow only selected IPs.

Users from remote locations are trying to add "Network Place" from
their client PCs (Win2k and WinXP). People from location-A have no
problem. But people from location-B kept getting the login prompt.
If location-B is behind a firewall, do they need to open up any port?

I thought websharing used port 80.. am I correct?

Uses from both locations can access this shared folder using IE
without a problem. This indicates that their login/password is
correct.

Any ideas?
 
We seem to have a slight confusion here. Adding a "network place" and
accessing a web server are completely different things!

When you open port 80 on the firewall, that's the port used by web servers.
So anyone w/ knowledge of your ISP assigned IP address, and w/ proper
configuration of your firewall to "redirect" the request from the public IP
address of your router, to the internal IP address of the webserver, can
then find it, and access it. A fairly straight-forward, common practice.

But, the issue of sharing "Windows resources", such as files, printers,
whatever, has NOTHING to do with the above! Those resources are shared over
different ports, specifically 137-139, if I recall correctly. Those are
*Windows* ports related to windows resource sharing. You need to open
*those* ports for that purpose. The webserver and port 80 has absolutely
nothing, NADA, ZIPPO, to do w/ any of this! Once you open those ports,
*AND* enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP on your clients, your remote clients will
be able to gain access to the local Windows resources such as file and
printers. But just as if they were local, they will need authorization,
*Windows* authorization that is.

HTH

Jim
 
Jim,

Thanks for the response. Sorry about not being clear.

Basically, I wanted to share some folder/files to people outside the
company. So, using Window's built-in "Web Sharing" feature, I shared
those folders. I have turned on the NT authentication and anonymous
access off.

These shares are accessable to users using Internet Explorer (i.e.
http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/sharename). This works great if users just
want to view files.

If users want to upload/modify/delete files, they have to add a
"network place" on their Win2k, XP machine. I am trying to find out
if this uses port 80 or something else.

On my home PC, I have shared some folders same way, and I am able to
access them from my work. My router blocks all ports except 80 and
everything works fine.
 
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