Topic: Obataining external IP address

[Dean]

Hi

After much experimentation and and fiddling I have been able to setup port forwarding from my netgear RT338 isdn router to my external ethernet card on my e-smith-4.1.1. Everything works , i can connect via ssh/http/smtp etc. The only problem is finding out what the IP address on the external RT338 router is. If i do a traceroute from my e-smith box to an internet IP it resolves the internal RT338 IP and then gives me the IP of the router/dhcp server that I connect to(ISP). It does not give me the IP on the external RT338 Router. Are there any scripts I could run to work out what this IP address is(ie the first legal IP address) I would very much like to use dyndns.org so that I am able to connect to my e-smith box when it is online, but it seems that the dyndns.org scripts are only activated if you have a dialup connection which technically i do , only e-smith is configured for a permanent connection, as the RT338 controls the isp hookup.

[Lloyd Keen]

If you go to www.grc.com and probe your ports it will give you your public IP address. I dunno whether they're going at the moment, they had some probs recently.

[Dean]

Thanks their site worked fine but what I am after is a way for e-smith to figure this out so that when the connection is open , it can update a dyndns.org account and  ake the system available to the internet.

Dean

[Graeme Robinson]

Dean,
But this is exactly how dynamic ip works on e-smith - there is a script built in to e-smith that handles this.  You get your account at dyndns and then select dyndns as your dynamic service when you configure your server for the first time.  Then every time the IP changes the  dyndns.org database is updated.  All this is in the downloadable e-smith manual.  If you read the manual and do searches on the phorums you will find the answers to most questions to get started with e-smith.

[Dean Mumby]

Sorry I thought I had made my situation clear. I Have my e-smith box with two NIC's.

1. Connected to my local lan acting as DHCP with ip (192.168.1.1)
2. Connected to my Netgear RT338 ISDN MODEM/ROUTER with a static ip(192.168.2.2)

my deafualt gateway is 192.168.2.1 . Esmith is configured with a dedicated internet connection becuase the RT338 establishes the connection to my isp. I have configured the RT338 to route all inbound traffic directly to my esmith box (192.168.2.2).

What I want to do is allow e-smith to find out what the internet ip on the RT338 is and update dyndns.org with that information.

I just ran the config utility when logged in as admin and as I thought there is no option to use dyndns.org when e-smith is configured with a static Ip and permanent internet connection. I know the dyndns.org scripts are installed and just not set to executable because under normal circumstances it would not be neccessary. However as I am sure you can see these are not normal circumstances. Most likely the scripts will need to be hacked ???

If you have any ideas I would really like to hear them.
Thank you for your efforts so far.

Dean

[Graeme Robinson]

The dns update scripts are tightly integrated with the e-smith server and cannot be easily changed to monitor changes of IP on a different server.  I would be going back to your dynamic dns provider and looking for a client which does this - I think there are a few for windows machines.

A better solution would be to replace the RT338 with the e-smith server directly, unless there is some good reason why you can't do this.   I'm guessing but if your router is on a dynamic ip it's probably not performing a lot of comlex routing, right?

[Dean Mumby]

The RT338 is an external ISDN Modem/Router I need it to connect to my isp as I am on a standard  ISDN dialup internet access account. There are very few linux compatible ISDN modems in South Africa so I opted to go for a solution which did not require an compatibility whatsoever. As soon as the e-smith box requests any connection the RT338 establishes it (it takes about 4 seconds) and I am away.

Thanks again for your continued help

[Graeme Robinson]

I don't have an answer for you Dean.

I don't see how getting dyndns working with that router is going to help you anyway, not unless you can perform portforwarding on it and the RT338 looks to be a very simple little router, not capable of this.

[Dean Mumby]

Thats what I thought initially but it does I have set it up to forward all traffic to the e-smith box and it works, I can ssh straight into e-smith when I know what the RT338 external IP is . Getting the ip everytime is an abolute pain though( someone inside the network has to telnet into it or go to a website like grc.com, it doesnt make for effective access), thats why I was hoping there was a "simple ish" solution.

Thanks again Graeme