Topic: SME 5.5 Port Forwarding panel doesn't work

[TJ]

hi,
i've read the posts about portforwaring, but i just can't get it to work.

in servermanager i've created a port forwarding entry like tcp, 80, 192.168.21.67, 80 pointing to my imac running osx and apache on the inside. but no reply...
is there anything else that has to be opened or configured?

yes, i've rtfm

thanks.
--
tj

[Bill Talcott]

Two things. The SME uses 80 by default, so that may be causing some issues. Try another port? Also, it forwards only from the external interface. LAN users will still have to use the other computer's private IP to access it.

[TJ]

thanks!
as i'm rather new to this, i'm not quite shure i get it...
should i forward to, say, port 8088 on the mac? does apache listen to other ports as well, or do i have to do some reconfiguring there?
forwarding only from the external interface means that i can't test it from the inside, right? i've tested it from the outside as well, but doesn't get any reply.
after a reboot, now i just get the default page from the sme-server, even though i still got the portforwarding set to the mac.

its an old pentium in my basement that runs the sme. on the inside is a 8-port switch on the outside i a zyxel 650R-13 adsl modem.
--
regards,
tj

[Bill Talcott]

TJ wrote:
>
> should i forward to, say, port 8088 on the mac? does apache
> listen to other ports as well, or do i have to do some
> reconfiguring there?

You can forward port 8088 of the SME to port 80 of the Mac. This would cause http://mysmeaddress.com:8088/ to forward to http://maclanaddress:80/, so you wouldn't have to change anything on the Mac. You could, but probably don't want to, forward to port 8088 on the Mac. You want to forward requests coming in to the SME on 8088 to the Mac's default port... If you absolutely must have the SME forward requests from port 80, I think there's a contrib HowTo on how to change the port that the SME listens to by default.

> forwarding only from the external interface means that i
> can't test it from the inside, right? i've tested it from the
> outside as well, but doesn't get any reply.

Right, the connection MUST be coming in from the outside to be forwarded. The LAN PCs can all reach each other (unlike the internet trying to reach the NATed PCs behind the SME), so portforwarding from the SME to another LAN PC would be solely a convenience factor. On every router I've seen personally, the internal side will not port forward. I think it might mess up outgoing requests or something?

> after a reboot, now i just get the default page from the
> sme-server, even though i still got the portforwarding set to
> the mac.

After changing the port, or using 80? If that's when using 80, it's because the SME is answering the request, not forwarding it to the Mac.

[TJ]

thanks again,
i forward the external 8080 to the 80 on inside-mac, and it works
but i think i'll have a look at the contrib HowTo on how to change the port that the SME listens to by default.
--
regards,
tj